Filthy Lucre Pubblico Deposited
An expression meaning a gain in money, and usually employed in an ill sense, or with the sense of something base or unworthy. Alexander Pope has the line, "The lust of lucre, and the dread of death," and Byron, in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (xii.), has: "Who racked their brains for lucre, not for fame."
The translators of the New Testament make use of the following terms: "Not greedy of filthy lucre," I Timothy (iii. 3) ; "A bishop must be . . . not given to filthy lucre," Titus (i. 7) ; "Teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake," Titus (i. 11) ; "Feed the flock of God . . . not for filthy lucre," I Peter (v. 2).
- Frey's Dictionary (American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 50, 1916)