half-tawdry

Updated: May 20, 2025

As he passed up the irregular and narrow streets that ascended to the citadel, groups of foreign mercenaries, half-ragged, half-tawdry knots of abandoned women, mixed here and there with the liveries of the Colonna, stood loitering amidst the ruins of ancient fanes and palaces, or basked lazily in the sun, upon terraces, through which, from amidst weeds and grass, glowed the imperishable hues of the rich mosaics, which had made the pride of that lettered and graceful nobility, of whom savage freebooters were now the heirs.

Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton - Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes