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At first no sound broke the stillness of the night, save the laboured breathing of the weary runners and the strokes of their leathern cothurni upon the hard ground; but soon other noises came to mingle with these and, at last, to drown them: the lowing of thousands of cattle, now scattered far and wide over the plain and hillsides, and then the distant clash of arms and the cries of combatants.
The captains, who wore bronze cothurni, had placed themselves in the central path, beneath a gold-fringed purple awning, which reached from the wall of the stables to the first terrace of the palace; the common soldiers were scattered beneath the trees, where numerous flat-roofed buildings might be seen, wine-presses, cellars, storehouses, bakeries, and arsenals, with a court for elephants, dens for wild beasts, and a prison for slaves.
He pressed his hand upon his mouth to check his sobs, and half-swooning with intoxication, let go the halter of his dromedary, which was proceeding with long, regular steps. Matho had relapsed into his former melancholy; his legs hung down to the ground, and the grass made a continuous rustling as it beat against his cothurni. The journey, however, spread itself out without ever coming to an end.
A tall, gaunt man, in plain and somewhat battered armour; a face sharp-featured, very dark, and deeply lined wherever the wrinkles lay that expressed pride and contempt and violent passions; lowering brows from beneath which shone little beady, cunning eyes that opponents feared and distrusted: this was Lucius Aemilius Paullus, the conqueror of Illyria, the man who had barely escaped conviction for his peculations, the colleague of Varro the butcher, a patrician of the bluest blood in Rome, a knave in pecuniary matters, selfish and ungoverned, but a brave and wary soldier from cothurni to crest.
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