Even in Roman times it kept its own coinage with the punning device of the bent arm holding a palm branch, and the head of Aphrodite on the reverse, and continued the use of the Greek language.
In early life he was a weaver, hence the punning description of him as Weevir, rex philosophorum.
It is picturesquely situated on both banks of the Mur,, just where this river enters a broad and fertile valley, and the beauty of its position has given rise to the punning French description, La Ville des graces sur la riviere del' amour.
It is characteristic that, while Paris had its Bossuets and Bourdaloues, Vienna was listening to Abraham a Sancta Clara, the punning Capuchin whom Schiller, regardless of dates, introduces into the opening scene of his Wallenstein.
We see a real man, but a man helpless anywhere save in the study or in the convent - a little fresh-coloured man, with soft brown eyes, who had a habit of stealing away to his cubiculum whenever the conversation became too lively; somewhat bent, for it is on record that he stood upright when the psalms were chanted, and even rose on his tiptoes with his face turned upwards; genial, if shy, and occasionally given to punning, as when he said that he preferred Psalmi to Salmones; a man who perhaps led the most placid uneventful life of all men who ever wrote a book or scribbled letters.