ppens to every one of us: no one knows himself to be avaricious or
grasping; and, again, the blind call for a guide, while we stray of our
own accord. I am not ambitious, we say; but a man cannot live otherwise
at Rome; I am not wasteful, but the city requires a great outlay; 'tis
not my fault if I am choleric--if I have not yet established any certain
course of life: 'tis the fault of youth. Let us not seek our disease out
of ourselves; 'tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact
that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more hard to be
cured. If we do not betimes begin to see to ourselves, when shall we
have provided for so many wounds and evils wherewith we abound? And yet
we have a most sweet and charming medicine in philosophy; for of all the
rest we are sensible of no pleasure till after the cure: this pleases and
heals at once." This is what Seneca says, that has carried me from my
subject, but there is advantage in the change.

CHAPTER XXVI

OF THUMBS

Tacitus reports, that amongst certain barbarian kings their manner was,
when they would make a firm obligation, to join their right hands close
to one another, and intertwist their thumbs; and when, by force of
straining the blood, it appeared in the ends, they lightly pricked them
with some sharp instrument, and mutually sucked them.

Physicians say that the thumbs are the master fingers of the hand, and
that their Latin etymology is derived from "pollere." The Greeks called
them 'Avtixeip', as who should say, another hand. And it seems that the
Latins also sometimes take it in this sense for the whole hand:

"Sed nec vocibus excitata blandis,
Molli pollici nec rogata, surgit."

["Neither to be excited by soft words or by the thumb."
--Mart., xii. 98, 8.]

It was at Rome a signification of favour to depress and turn in the
thumbs:

"Fautor utroque tuum laudabit pollice ludum:"

["Thy patron will applaud thy sport with both thumbs"
--Horace.]

and of disfavour to elevate and thrust them outward:

"Converso pollice vulgi,
Quemlibet occidunt populariter."

["The populace, with inverted thumbs, kill all that
come before them."--Juvenal, iii. 36]

The Romans exempted from war all such as were maimed in the thumbs, as
having no more sufficient strength to hold their weapon