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A roar of vituperation drowned whatever answer the candidate might have made, as, with brandished clubs, cleavers, knives, styli any weapon that could be snatched up from the booths the nearest score of the crowd made a dash at the presumptuous noble. The litter-bearers were sturdy fellows, and their staves were stout, but the contest was far too unequal.
The head of Polyphemus appears prominently in the 96th case; and in the remaining cases miscellaneously grouped, are ancient dice, some of which have been loaded, suggesting the antiquity of roguery; ivory hair pins; bronze needles; glass beads; fragments of cornelian and other cups, and glass; bronze figures of animals; inlaid and enamel work; styli for writing upon wax; ancient medical instruments; and old Roman finger-rings.
Between us and Pericles lie a thousand years of night, when styli were stilled, pens forgotten, chisels thrown aside, brushes were useless, and oratory was silent, dumb. Yet we know the man Pericles quite as well as the popular mind knows George Washington, who lived but yesterday, and with whom myth and fable have already played their part.
Around the outer circumference were rows of seats, shaded by plane trees overrun with ivy, and there were already seated many young men of noble birth, chatting together, or betting, with their waxed tablets and their styli in their hands, some waiting the commencement of the race between Fuscus and Victor, others watching with interest the progress of a sham fight on horseback between two young men of the equestrian order, denoted by the narrow crimson stripes on their tunics, who were careering to and fro, armed with long staves and circular bucklers, in all the swift and beautiful movements of the mimic combat.
"Delectant me gladii parvi, seu styli scriptorii, in quos plus viginti coronatis aureis impendi: multas etiam pecunias in varia pennarum genera, audeo dicere apparatum ad scribendum ducentis coronatis non potuisse emi." De Vita Propria, ch. xviii. p. 57. De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 15.
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