Fabulla, thou sayest, is an adulteress. Then let her be condemned, if you will have it so, and Carfinia also. Yet though condemned, she would not put on such a dress as that. "But it is July, it is raging hot, I am on fire!" Then plead stark naked![90] To be thought mad would be a less disgrace! Is that a dress to propound laws and statutes in, in the ears of the people when flushed with victory, with their wounds yet green, or that noble race, fresh from their plows? What an outcry would you make, if you saw such a dress on the person of a Judex! I ask, would such a robe be suitable even in a witness? Creticus! the implacable, the indomitable, the champion of liberty, is transparent! Contagion has caused this plague-spot, and will extend it to many more, just as a whole flock perishes, in the fields from the scab of one sheep, or pigs from mange, and the grape contracts the taint from the grape it comes in contact with. Ere long you will venture on something more disgraceful even than this dress. No one ever reached the climax of vice at one step. You will by degrees enter the band of those who wear at home long fillets round their brows, and cover their necks with jewels, and propitiate Bona Dea with the belly of a young sow and a huge bowl of wine; but by an inversion of the old custom _women_, kept far aloof, dare not cross the threshold. The altar of the goddess is accessible to males alone. "Withdraw, profane females!" is the cry. No minstrel here may make her cornet sound! Such were the orgies by the secret torch-light which the Baptæ celebrated, who used to weary out even the Athenian Cotytto.[91] One with needle held oblique adds length to his eyebrows touched with moistened soot, and raising the lids paints his quivering eyes. Another drains a Priapus-shaped glass, and confines his long thick hair with a caul of gold thread, clothed in sky-blue checks, or close-piled yellow stuffs; while his attendant also swears by Juno, the patron deity of his master. Another holds a mirror, the weapon wielded by the pathic Otho, "the spoil of Auruncan Actor,"[92] in which he surveyed himself when fully armed, before he gave the signal to engage--a thing worthy to be recorded in the latest annals and history of the day. A mirror! fit baggage for a civil war! O yes, forsooth! to kill old Galba shows the consummate general, to pamper one's complexion is the consistent occupation of the first citizen of Rome; to aspire to the empire as the prize on Bebriacum's[93] plains, and then spread over his face a poultice applied with his fingers! Such an act as neither the quivered Semiramis perpetrated in the Assyrian realms, or Cleopatra flying dejected in her Actian galley. Among this crew there is neither decency of language, nor respect for the proprieties of the table. Here is the foul license that Cybele enjoins, the lisping speech, the aged priest with hoary hair, like one possessed, a prodigy of boundless appetite, open to hire.