Prayer to Perfidia

The slave Libanus in a comedy of Plautus gives thanks to a goddess — and the goddess is Treachery.

The joke rests on genuine Roman practice. Abstractions really were deified at Rome and given temples: Faith, Concord, Hope, Safety, Valour all had shrines and priests. Plautus founds a cult for a vice on the exact model of the cults of the virtues, and it is funny only because the model was familiar to everyone.

The formula is parodied word for word. Laudes gratiasque habemus merito magnas — praises and great thanks deservedly — is how one gave thanks for a deliverance. There follows the enumeration of the means by which the deliverance was obtained: slanders, deceits, cunning.

And the last line finishes it off: "on the confidence of our own shoulder-blades and the valour of elm rods". Virtus — the supreme Roman value, a goddess whose temple stood at the Porta Capena — is ascribed to the stick with which slaves are beaten.

The prayer is not addressed to Mercury. The Latin thanks Perfidia; Mercury's name is not in the text — the card's English translator inserted it. The reference to Plautus, Asinaria is correct; the card's identifier is not.