nascentes informat equos? num Lemnius auctor
[40] curva Birt; codd. cura.
as it was possible to go on the house roofs; the ground seethed with men, the lofty buildings were aglow with women. Those who are young rejoice in an emperor of their own age, the old cease to belaud the past and count their destiny happy that they have lived to see such a day, blessing the kindly times when a prince so easy of access, so singular in courtesy, forbade the senators of Rome to march before his chariot, even though Eucherius, in whose veins ran regal blood on father’s and on mother’s side, and his own sister did honour to his triumph like simple soldiers. Such has been the teaching of that stern but loving parent who showed no more favour to his children than to himself, and refused a son honours he granted to nobles. Bent age and upstanding youth alike are loud in his praises and, comparing the new with the ancient rule, recognize in Honorius a true citizen, in his predecessors tyrants.
The women of Rome never tire of gazing at those blooming cheeks, those crowned locks, those limbs clothed in the consul’s jasper-studded robes, those mighty shoulders, and that neck, beauteous as Bacchus’ own, with its necklace of Red Sea emeralds. Many an innocent maid, while simple modesty blushes in her cheek, would bend her gaze o’er all and inquire of her aged nurse the meaning of the dragons on the colours. “Do they,” she would ask, “but wave in the air or is theirs a veritable hiss, uttered as they are about to seize an enemy in their jaws?” When she sees the mail-clad knights and brazen-armoured horses she would fain know whence that iron race of men is sprung and what land it is gives birth to steeds of bronze. “Has the god of Lemnos,”
indidit hinnitum ferro simulacraque belli
viva dedit?” gaudet metuens et pollice monstrat.
quod picturatas galeae Iunonia cristas 575
ornet avis vel quod rigidos vibrata per armos