[31]
The
impression produced by such exhibitions is generally
enormous, since they seem to bring the spectators
face to face with the cruel facts. For example, the
sight of the bloodstains on the purple-bordered toga
of Gaius Caesar, which was carried at the head of
his funeral procession, aroused the Roman people to
fury. They knew that he had been killed; they
had even seen his body stretched upon the bier:
but his garment, still wet with his blood, brought
such a vivid image of the crime before their minds,
that Caesar seemed not to have been murdered, but
to be being murdered before their very eyes.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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