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In the very heart of the country, especially round about Chateau-Chinon, its marvellously placed little capital, we still see the saie, a garment identical with the Gallic sagum, and the Morvandial, although gradually losing his once so strongly-marked characteristics, prefers his own dialect to French. Throughout the entire country, indeed, Morvandial is spoken.

Actæon had seen the Celtiberian introduce his right hand into the sleeve of his sagum, and, drawing a knife, stab the legionary in the thick neck he had been staring at with the fixity of a wild beast while the fallen man mocked at Carthage. The tavern shook with the strain of the combat.

I do not suppose that when Crassus was in Parthia, or Cæsar in Gaul, the sagum was worn. It was not exactly known when the distant battles were being fought. But Cicero had taken care that the sagum should be properly worn, and had even put it on himself to do which as a Consular was not required of him.

They appear to have been in most favour among the Roman provincials in Gaul and Britain, particularly as the nature of the winters obliged them to seek in the heavy woollen sagum, or in the skin mantle, some greater protection against the inclemency of the weather than their southern conquerors required.

And soon in the palace at Lyons, so full of terrible memories to this orphan girl, the courteous Aurelian, now no longer in beggar's rags, but gorgeous in white silk and a flowing sagum, or mantle of vermilion, publicly engaged himself, as the representative of King Clovis, to the Princess Clotilda; and, according to the curious custom of the time, cemented the engagement by giving to the young girl a sou and a denier.

He wore a simple, dirty, and threadbare sagum, like any one of those Celtiberians who lay snoring in the tents roundabout, and, as a sign of command, there shone on his wrists two broad golden bracelets, which added strength by their confinement of the tendons and muscles of the arm. For more than a month he had been before the walls of Saguntum without achieving any advantage.

A tattered sagum, which had once been scarlet, but which had faded since, hung, detained at the shoulder by a rusty buckle, and bordered by a laticlave, loosely about his form.

Mantles of finest linen and costly purple brushed against the naked limbs of slaves or against the Celtiberian sagum of black wool buckled at the shoulder.

The other clung to the back of his steed with his strong bare legs; he wore the sagum of the Celtiberians, a short wool tunic over which the broadsword hung from his shoulder, and his hair, as thick and dishevelled as his beard, outlined a brown and manly countenance. "Greeting, Lachares! Greeting, Alorcus!" replied the pilot with an expression of respect. "Shall you see Sónnica, my mistress?"

The "sagum" was a common military cloak, which the early Romans wore instead of the toga when they went out to war. In later days, when the definition between a soldier and a civilian became more complete, they who were left at home wore the sagum, in token of their military feelings, when the Republic was fighting its battles near Rome.