velavit nudasque nates ac terga reliquit, 305
ludibrium mensis; erecto pectore dives
ambulat et claro sese deformat amictu.
candida pollutos comitatur curia fasces,
forsitan et dominus. praebet miracula lictor
this year of office, to ensure that by his efforts alone he leaves nothing not dishonoured, ruining the army as its general, the courts as their judge, the imperial fasti as a consul.
No portent so monstrous but time past has given it birth and the labour of bygone centuries produced it. Legend tells us that Oedipus married his mother and Thyestes his daughter; Jocasta bare brothers to her husband, Thyestes’s daughter gave birth to her own brother. Athenian tragedy tells the sad tale of Thebes and the baneful war of Troy. Tereus was changed into a bird, Cadmus into a snake; Scylla looked in amaze on the dogs that girt her waist. Ancient story relates how one was transformed into a tree and thus attached to earth, how another grew wings and flew, how a third was clothed with scales and yet another melted into a river. But no country has ever had a eunuch for a consul or judge or general. What in a man is honourable is disgraceful in an emasculate. Here is an example to surpass all that is most laughable in comedy, most lamentable in tragedy.
A pleasant sight in truth to see him strain his sapless limbs beneath the weight of the toga, borne down by the wearing of his consular dress; the gold of his raiment rendered his decrepitude even more hideous. ’Twas as though an ape, man’s imitator, had been decked out in sport with precious silken garments by a boy who had left his back and quarters uncovered to amuse the guests at supper. Thus richly dressed he walks upright and seems the more loathsome by reason of his brilliant trappings. Dressed in white the senate, perhaps even his master,[93] accompanies the dishonoured fasces. Behold a portent! A lictor more noble than the
[93] i.e. the Emperor.