Smith, William: A smaller dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (London, 1871)

PSEUDEXGRAPHES.

314

the Athenian dicasts in giving their verdict.
[Cadiscus.J Hence i/nj'/u'feo-fou and its various
derivatives are used so often to signify voting,
determining, &c.

PSEUDENGRAPHES GRAPHS (v//eu5eyy-
pai/>>j? ypaifjri). The name of every state
debtor at Athens was entered in a register by
the praetores, whose duty it was to collect
the debts, and erase the name of the party
when he had paid it. If they made a false
entry, either wilfully, or upon the suggestion
of another person, the aggrieved party might
institute a prosecution against them, or
against the person upon whose suggestion it
was macie. Such prosecution was called ypa<(>»)
l/evSeyypa(l)9is. It would lie also, where a man
was registered as debtor for more than was
really due from him.

P8EUDOCLETEIA8 GRAPHS OevSo/cAr,-
Tei'a; ypaipr/), a prosecution against one, who
had appeared as a witness (.kAtjttjp or /cArjTiop)
to prove that a defendant had been duly sum-
moned, and thereby enabled the plaintiff to
get a judgment by default. The false witness
(/cAi)t))p) was liable to be criminally prose-
cuted, and punished at the discretion of the
court. The ypwpri ^evSoK^Teiaq came before
the Thesmothetae, and the question at the
trial simply was, whether the defendant in
the former cause had been summoned or not.

PSlLI OAiAoi). [Arma.J

PSYCTER (eVvKTJjp, dim. ^VK-rqpCiiov), a
wine-cooler, was sometimes made of bronze
or silver. One of earthenware is preserved
in the Museum of Antiquities at Copenhagen.
It consists of one deep vessel for holding ice,
which is fixed within another for holding
wine. The wine was poured in at the top.
It thus surrounded the vessel of ice and was
cooled by the contact. It was drawn off so
as to fill the drinking-cups by means of a
cock at the bottom.

P0BE8, PUBERTAS. [Impubks ; Ixfans.]
PUBLICAN I, farmers of the public reve-
nues of the lloraan state {vectigalia). Their
name is formed from publicum, which signi-
fies all that belongs to the state, and is some-
times used by Roman writers as synonymous
with vectigal. The revenues which Rome
derived from conquered countries, consisting
chiefly of tolls, tithes, harbour duties, the
scriptura, or the tax which was paid for the
use of the public pasture lands, and the duties
paid for the use of mines and salt-works (sali-
nae), were let out, or, as the Romans expressed
it, were sold by the censors in Rome itself to
the highest bidder. This sale generally took
place in the month of Quinctilis, and was
made for a lustrum. The terms on which
the revenues were let, were fixed by the cen-
sors in the so-called leges censoriae. The

people or the senate, however, sometimes
modified the terms fixed by the censors, in
order to raise the credit of the publicani ;
and in some cases even the tribunes of the
people interfered in this branch of the admi-
nistration. The tithes raised in the province
of Sicily alone, with the exception of those of
wine, oil, and garden produce, were not sold
at Rome, but in the districts of Sicily itself,
according to a practice established by Hiero.
The persons who undertook the farming of
the public revenue of course belonged to the
wealthiest Romans, and during the latter
period of the republic they belonged almost
exclusively to the equestrian order. Their
wealth and consequent influence may be seen
from the fact, that as early as the second
Punic war, after the battle of Cannae, when
the aerarium was entirely exhausted, the
publicani advanced large sums of money to
the state, on condition of repayment after
the end of the war. The words equites and
publicani are sometimes used as synonymous.
The publicani had to give security to the
state for the sum at which they bought one or
more branches of the revenue in a province ;
but as for this reason the property of even
the wealthiest individual must have been in-
adequate, a number of equites generally
united together, and formed a company (socii,
societas, or corpus), which was recognised by
the state, and by which they were enabled to
carry on their undertakings upon a large
scale. Such companies appear as early as the
second Punic war. The shares which each
partner of such a company took in the busi-
ness were called partes, and if they were
small, particulae. The responsible person in
each company, and the one who contracted
with the state, was called manceps [Man-
ceps] ; but there was also a magister to
manage the business of each society, who
resided at Rome, and kept an extensive cor-
respondence with the agents in the provinces.
He seems to have held his office only for one
year ; his representative in the provinces was
called sub magistro, who had to travel about,
and superintend the actual business of collect-
ing the revenues. Nobody but a Roman citizen
was allowed to become a member of a com-
pany of publicani ; freedmen and slaves were
excluded. No Roman magistrate, however,
or governor of a province, was allowed to
take any share whatever in a company of
publicani, a regulation which was chiefly
intended as a protection against the oppres-
sion of the provincials. The collection of
the taxes in the provinces was performed by
an inferior class of men, who were said
operas publicanis dare, or esse in operis socie-
tatis. They were engaged by the publicani,