Brewer's: Obolus

Give an obolus to old Belisarius. Tzetzes, a writer of the twelfth century, says that Belisarius, stripped of all his wealth and honours, was reduced to beggary in his grey old age; that he lived in a mud hut, from the window of which he hung an alms-bag, and that the used to cry to the passers-by, “Give an obolus to poor old Belisarius, who rose by his merits and was cast down by envy.”

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