Pecunia non olet
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Pecunia non olet (“money doesn't stink”) is a Latin expression.
The phrase goes back to the Roman emperor Vespasian . In ancient Rome , urine , especially "putrid" urine , from which alkaline ammonia is formed, was used as a means for tanning leather and cleaning clothes. In Rome, for example, amphora-like latrines were set up on busy streets to collect the urine needed by the tanners and washers.
In order to fill the empty state coffers , Emperor Vespasian levied a special latrine tax on these public toilets . Suetonius reports that Vespasian justified the tax in front of his son Titus by holding money from his first income under his nose and asking whether the smell bothered him ( ad nares, sciscitans num odore offenderetur ). When he said no , Vespasian said: Atqui e lotio est (“And yet it is from the urine”). In the course of time it became the phrase pecunia non olet , “money doesn't stink”.
The phrase has survived to this day to justify owning or acquiring money from unclean sources of income. The public toilets in Paris are still called Vespasienne today . In Italy, too, the public toilets are called Vespasiani .
In Germany in 2002 the “ Pecunia non-olet affair ” in Hildesheim attracted nationwide attention.
2005 brought Goldsieber an eponymous board game out, but that confuses the intended here amphorae with water-bearing latrines in which no urine could be collected.
swell
- Suetonius: Collection of the emperor's biographies from Caesar to Domitian . Numerous editions, for example with a German translation in: Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus: All preserved works . Magnus, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-88400-071-3 ( English translation )
Individual evidence
- ^ Suetonius, Vespasian 23
- ^ Translation by Adolf Stahr 1857 books.google.de p. 454