poetic
terms; consigning him gracefully to the infernal regions; accentuating
a fictitious and harmonious anger; drying his forehead without
disarranging his hair; suffocating with the emotions he evoked;
displaying real tears, and with them a knowledge, not only of law,
rhetoric, philosophy, but of geometry, astronomy, ethics and the fine
arts; blinding his hearers with the coruscations of his erudition;
stirring them with his tongue, as with the point of a sword, until, as
though abruptly possessed by an access of fury, he seized the plaintiff
by the beard and sent him spinning like a leaf which the wind had
caught.

It would have bored no one either to have assisted at his triumph when
he returned from Gaul, when he returned after Spain, after Pharsalus,
when he returned from Cleopatra's arms.

On that day the Via Sacra was curtained with silk. To the blare of
twisted bugles there descended to it from the turning at the hill a
troop of musicians garmented in leather tunics, bonneted with lions'
heads. Behind them a hundred bulls, too fat to be troublesome, and
decked for death, bellowed musingly at the sacrifants, who, naked to
the waist, a long-handled hammer on the shoulder, maintained them with
colored cords. To the rumble of wide wheels and the thunder of
spectators the prodigious booty passed, and with it triumphs of war,
vistas of conquered countries, pictures of battles, lists of the
vanquished, symbols of cities that no longer were; a stretch of ivory
on which shone three words, each beginning with a V; images of gods
disturbed, the Rhine, the Rhone, the captive Ocean in massive gold; the
glitter of three thousand crowns offered to the dictator by the army
and allies of Rome. Then came the standards of the republic, a swarm of
eagles, the size of pigeons, in polished silver upheld by lances which
ensigns bore, preceding the six hundred senators who marched in a body,
their togas bordered with red, while to the din of incessant insults,
interminable files of prisoners passed, their wrists chained to iron
collars, which held their heads very straight, and to the rear a
litter, in which crouched the Vercingetorix of Gaul, a great moody
giant, his menacing eyes nearly hidden in the tangles of his tawny hair.

When they had gone the street was alive with explosions of brass,
aflame with the burning red cloaks of laureled lictors making way for
the coming of Caesar. Four horses, harnessed abreast, their manes dy