TACITVS recite que parmy certains Roys barbares, pour faire vne obligation asseurée, leur maniere estoit, de joindre estroictement leurs mains droites l’vne à l’autre, et s’entrelasser les pouces: et quand à force de les presser le sang en estoit monté au bout, ils les blessoient de quelque legere pointe, et puis se les entresuçoient.
Tacitus relates that among certain barbarian kings, to make a binding pledge, their custom was to clasp their right hands tightly together and interlace their thumbs; and when by dint of squeezing the blood had risen to the tips, they pricked them with some light point and then sucked each other’s.
Les medecins disent, que les pouces sont les maistres doigts de la main, et que leur etymologie Latine vient de pollere. Les Grecs l’appellent αντιχειρ, comme qui diroit vne autre main. Et il semble que par fois les Latins les prennent aussi en ce sens, de main entiere: Sed nec vocibus excitata blandis, / Molli pollice nec rogata, surgit.
Physicians say that the thumbs are the master fingers of the hand, and that their Latin name comes from pollere. The Greeks call it αντιχειρ, as if to say “another hand.” And it seems that the Latins sometimes also take them in this sense, for the whole hand: But neither roused by coaxing words / nor urged by a gentle thumb, does it rise.
C’estoit à Rome vne signification de faueur, de comprimer et baisser les pouces: Fautor vtroque tuum laudabit pollice ludum: et de desfaueur de les hausser et contourner au dehors: Conuerso pollice vulgi, / Quemlibet occidunt populariter.
In Rome it was a sign of favor to press down and lower the thumbs: Your backer will praise your game with both thumbs; and of disfavor to raise them and turn them outward: When the crowd turns its thumb, / they kill whomever the people please.
Les Romains dispensoient de la guerre, ceux qui estoient blessez au pouce, comme s’ils n’auoient plus la prise des armes assez ferme. Auguste confisqua les biens à vn Cheualier Romain, qui auoit par malice couppé les pouces à deux siens ieunes enfans, pour les excuser d’aller aux armées: et auant luy, le Senat du temps de la guerre Italique, auoit condamné Caius Vatienus à prison perpetuelle, et luy auoit confisqué tous ses biens, pour s’estre à escient couppé le pouce de la main gauche, pour s’exempter de ce voyage.
The Romans exempted from war those who were wounded in the thumb, as if they no longer had a firm enough grip on their weapons. Augustus confiscated the property of a Roman knight who had maliciously cut off the thumbs of two of his young children to excuse them from serving in the armies. And before him, the Senate, at the time of the Italic War, had condemned Caius Vatienus to life imprisonment and confiscated all his property for having deliberately cut off the thumb of his left hand to exempt himself from that campaign.
Quelqu’vn, dont il ne me souuient point, ayant gaigné vne bataille nauale, fit coupper les pouces à ses ennemis vaincus pour leur oster le moyen de combattre et de tirer la rame. Les Atheniens les firent coupper aux Æginetes, pour leur oster la preference en l’art de marine.
Someone, I do not remember who, having won a naval battle, had the thumbs of his defeated enemies cut off, to take away their means of fighting and of pulling an oar. The Athenians had them cut off the Aeginetans, to take away their superiority in seamanship.
En Lacedemone le maistre chastioit les enfans en leur mordant le pouce.
In Sparta the schoolmaster punished children by biting their thumbs.