The document which defines their duties and privileges sets forth that every ceorl who throve so that he had fully five hides of land, and a helm, and a mail-shirt, and a sword ornamented with gold, was to be reckoned gesithcund.
And again- "And if a merchant throve, so that he fared thrice over the wide sea.
It was seen in the 10th century, by the Arab traveller Ibn-Haukal, in the neighbourhood of Palermo, where it throve luxuriantly in the pools of the Papireto, a stream to which it lent its name.
It throve especially among military posts, and in the track of trade, where its monuments have been discovered in greatest abundance.
But the gossip, not discouraged by Terence, lived and throve; it crops up in Cicero and Quintilian, and the ascription of the plays to Scipio had the honour to be accepted by Montaigne and rejected by Diderot.
