“Conferring also on him the imperial sceptres.” What a turn of speech! What splendor! What harmony! What are these imperial sceptres? There is one sceptre, not several; if indeed the Emperor carried a sceptre at all. Will now the pontiff carry a sceptre in his hand? Why not give him a sword also, and helmet and javelin? “And at the same time all the standards and banners.” What do you understand by “standards” [signa]? “Signa” are either statues (hence frequently we read “signa et tabulas” for pieces of sculpture and paintings;—for the ancients did not paint on walls, but on tablets) or military standards (hence that phrase “Standards, matched eagles”[475]). In the former sense small statues and sculptures are called “sigilla.” Now then, did Constantine give Sylvester his statues or his eagles? What could be more absurd? But what “banners” [banna[476]] may signify, I do not discover. May God destroy you, most depraved of mortals who attribute barbarous language to a cultured age! “And different imperial ornaments.” When he said “banners,” he thought he had been explicit long enough, and therefore he lumped the rest under a general term. And how frequently he drives home the word “imperial,” as though there were certain ornaments peculiar to the Emperor over against the consul, the dictator, the Caesar! “And all the pomp of our imperial eminence, and the glory of our power.” “He discards bombast and cubit-long words,”[477] “This king of kings, Darius, the kinsman of the gods,”[478] never speaking save in the plural! What is this imperial “pomp”; that of the cucumber twisted in the grass, and growing at the belly? Do you think the Caesar celebrated a triumph whenever he left his house, as the Pope now does, preceded by white horses which servants lead saddled and adorned? To pass over other follies, nothing is emptier, more unbecoming a Roman pontiff than this. And what is this “glory”? Would a Latin have called pomp and paraphernalia “glory,” as is customary in the Hebrew language? And instead of “soldiers” [milites] you say soldiery [militia[479]] which we have borrowed from the Hebrews, whose books neither Constantine nor his secretaries had ever laid eyes on!