jewels and perfume; implements of construction and farming; metalwork;ceramics; religious idols; books and business ledgers; as well as common, everyday ‘coarse and rough’ possessions. Stolen goods were easily fenced, with no questions asked. According to the details of the Carmen, both male and female slaves were frequently used, but wealthy, well-connected men also handled stolen goods.
Like the items themselves, thieves were many and various. They could be acquaintances from outside the house, total strangers, or someone familiar to the family, a thief who ‘has entered for conversation and there is friendship between him and the people of the house and their trust is in this man, but then he steals’ (Carmen 5.35). They could be young, middle aged, or old. Once again, slaves were a common possibility. Their approaches and methods were varied. They might be ‘thieves of opportunity’ – in a house for another reason, for example, then seeing something tempting, steal it; they might use trickery and guile; they might dig through a wall, or break a lock, or get copies of keys, or sneak in through a skylight.
If you search for the culprit, it helps to know what he looks like. Fortunately, if you did not get a look at him, the stars could provide a description, depending on the dominant planet in the charts:
Jupiter: white, fat, great in his eyes, the whites of his eyes will be smaller than what is necessary for it to be because of the measure of that eye; and their beards will be rounded and curly, their personality will be gentle and good; Saturn: repulsive in his face, black in his color, his gaze toward the ground, broken and small eyes, slim, twisted in his gaze, of pallid color, a lot of body hair and bushy eyebrows, a liar and sickly; Mars: red in color, reddish hair, sharp vision, fat cheeked, a gay fellow, a master of jokes; Venus: handsome, a full head of hair, fat, black eyes, pale skin, gentle and courteous; Mercury: slim, emaciated, pale, confused in thinking. (Carmen 5.35)
All of this information clearly indicates that theft was a serious concern. When you add theft by slave property running away, perhaps the most consistently valuable and certainly most moveable possession, there is almost as much treatment in the Carmen of this topic as there is for marriage and the family. And in literature, thieves and theft are everywhere. Allusions to them are sprinkled throughout the NewTestament: Death comes ‘like a thief in the night’ (Thessalonians 5:2); ‘lay up treasures in heaven where moth and dust do not corrupt, nor thieves break in and steal’ (Matthew 6:20); ‘But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into’ (Luke 12:39); ‘the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy’ (John 10:10); ‘the day of the Lord will come like a thief’ (2 Peter 3:10). Then there are the frequent violent assaults on persons and property in Apuleius’ Golden Ass. And worries over theft became even greater because the authorities took ineffectual action at best. They were concerned with ‘keeping the peace’ and could form a posse to attack bandits, as happens in The Golden Ass, but unless a heinous crime was committed against the elite, or citizens took the initiative, inaction was the order of the day. In fact, both as individuals and as groups, men were left to their own devices in dealing with theft, as the Carmen clearly indicates by dwelling on what suspects might look like, where stolen goods might be found, who might be the thieves, and so on. This situation in turn meant that men took measures to guard their possessions and were constantly nervous about the possibility of theft.
Thieves once caught might be turned over to legal process, but they were also susceptible to mob violence, i.e. lynching. This is what happens in The Golden Ass when a posse from Hypata catches robbers and promptly kills them with
Like the items themselves, thieves were many and various. They could be acquaintances from outside the house, total strangers, or someone familiar to the family, a thief who ‘has entered for conversation and there is friendship between him and the people of the house and their trust is in this man, but then he steals’ (Carmen 5.35). They could be young, middle aged, or old. Once again, slaves were a common possibility. Their approaches and methods were varied. They might be ‘thieves of opportunity’ – in a house for another reason, for example, then seeing something tempting, steal it; they might use trickery and guile; they might dig through a wall, or break a lock, or get copies of keys, or sneak in through a skylight.
If you search for the culprit, it helps to know what he looks like. Fortunately, if you did not get a look at him, the stars could provide a description, depending on the dominant planet in the charts:
Jupiter: white, fat, great in his eyes, the whites of his eyes will be smaller than what is necessary for it to be because of the measure of that eye; and their beards will be rounded and curly, their personality will be gentle and good; Saturn: repulsive in his face, black in his color, his gaze toward the ground, broken and small eyes, slim, twisted in his gaze, of pallid color, a lot of body hair and bushy eyebrows, a liar and sickly; Mars: red in color, reddish hair, sharp vision, fat cheeked, a gay fellow, a master of jokes; Venus: handsome, a full head of hair, fat, black eyes, pale skin, gentle and courteous; Mercury: slim, emaciated, pale, confused in thinking. (Carmen 5.35)
All of this information clearly indicates that theft was a serious concern. When you add theft by slave property running away, perhaps the most consistently valuable and certainly most moveable possession, there is almost as much treatment in the Carmen of this topic as there is for marriage and the family. And in literature, thieves and theft are everywhere. Allusions to them are sprinkled throughout the NewTestament: Death comes ‘like a thief in the night’ (Thessalonians 5:2); ‘lay up treasures in heaven where moth and dust do not corrupt, nor thieves break in and steal’ (Matthew 6:20); ‘But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into’ (Luke 12:39); ‘the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy’ (John 10:10); ‘the day of the Lord will come like a thief’ (2 Peter 3:10). Then there are the frequent violent assaults on persons and property in Apuleius’ Golden Ass. And worries over theft became even greater because the authorities took ineffectual action at best. They were concerned with ‘keeping the peace’ and could form a posse to attack bandits, as happens in The Golden Ass, but unless a heinous crime was committed against the elite, or citizens took the initiative, inaction was the order of the day. In fact, both as individuals and as groups, men were left to their own devices in dealing with theft, as the Carmen clearly indicates by dwelling on what suspects might look like, where stolen goods might be found, who might be the thieves, and so on. This situation in turn meant that men took measures to guard their possessions and were constantly nervous about the possibility of theft.
Thieves once caught might be turned over to legal process, but they were also susceptible to mob violence, i.e. lynching. This is what happens in The Golden Ass when a posse from Hypata catches robbers and promptly kills them with
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