[19]
The other, O ye good gods! how
horrible was his approach, how savage, how terrible was he to look at! You
would say that you were beholding some one of those bearded
men,—an example of the old empire, an image of antiquity, a prop
of the republic. His garments were rough, made of this purple worn by the
common people you see around us, nearly brown; his hair so rough that at
Capua, in which he, for the
sake of becoming entitled to have an image of himself, was exercising the
authority of a decemvir, it seemed as if he
would require the whole Seplasia1 to make it decent. Why need I
speak of his eyebrow? which at that time did not seem to men to be an
ordinary brow, but a pledge of the safety of the republic. For
such great gravity was in his eye, such a contraction was there of his
forehead, that the whole republic appeared to be resting on that brow, as
the heavens do on Atlas.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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