CICERO AND THE TREVERI: NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD PUN

Extract

Sed, ut ego quoque te aliquid admoneam de vestris cautionibus, Treveros vites censeo: audio capitales esse: mallem auro, argento, aere essent.

However, if I may give you a caveat from your own legal arsenal, I advise you to keep clear of the Treveri: I hear that they are deadly customers, like their Roman namesakes. If you want a Board of Three, better try the Masters of the Mint.

The letter, from which this passage is taken, is one of a number that passed between Cicero and a young lawyer, Gaius Trebatius Testa, who was serving with Julius Caesar's army in Gaul in the late 50s BC.

As in most of his letters to Trebatius, Cicero revels in jokes and word-play with a legal flavour which, of course, would have suited this particular recipient. This passage is far from easy to translate adequately into English because it contains a ‘developing’ pun, the full force of which is inevitably lost in translation. The actual structure of the pun, however, is obvious enough: Trebatius' proximity to the tribe of the Treveri leads to a word-play with the Latin word, Tresviri (‘Board of Three’). The fact that the Treveri had a reputation for ferocity in battle causes Cicero to call them ‘deadly’ (capitales) which, in its turn, leads to an implied reference to the Tresviri Capitales, three junior officials in Rome who were in charge of executions and prisons.