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This does not appear to be at all applicable to the character of any conspicuous personage belonging to the Roman Empire in the first century, when Romans were warriors still, preserving, amid some effeminacy, much of the hardy vigour of their Republican predecessors, ever and anon throwing aside the toga for the sagum, and rushing from the Forum to the field, to battle with ferocious and demi-nude savages, whom ever subduing they carried home captives chained to their triumphal chariots; but it does seem to be uncommonly applicable to a time when many a priest, whose writings manifest a lax habit of thinking and betray a levity, indeed, licentiousness, ill according with a religious turn of mind, rose to the position of a great dignitary of the Church and a powerful arbiter of the destinies of his kind.
The Gauls in their pride stripped themselves of the sagum; they showed their great white bodies from a distance, and they enlarged their wounds to terrify the enemy.
Servilius declared his opinion that the citizens should relinquish the sagum, or robe of war; and that a supplication should be decreed in honour of the consuls and Octavius. Cicero rose next and delivered the following speech, objecting to the relinquishment of the robe of war, and blaming Servilius for not calling Antonius an enemy. The measures which he himself proposed were carried.
The flexible cuirasses, formed by several thicknesses of superposed linen, or those of leather, decorated with nails, were defensive arms which the Celtiberian never laid aside, not even when in bed. They slept dressed in the sagum, the metal greaves on their legs, and their weapons within reach of the hand, ready to fight the instant the slightest alarm might disturb their sleep.
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