When he declaimed for the three hundred Lacedaemonians, who also
opposed Xerxes' army of above three hundred thousand, he stretched
out his arms and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller,
and cried out in a very loud voice, "I rejoice, I rejoice!" We
wondered, I remember, what new great fortune had befallen his
eminence. "Xerxes," says he, "is all mine own. He who took away
the sight of the sea with the canvas veils of so many ships . . . "
and then he goes on so, as I know not what to make of the rest,
whether it be the fault of the edition, or the orator's own burly
way of nonsense.
This is the character that Seneca gives of this hyperbolical fop,
whom we stand amazed at, and yet there are very few men who are not,
in some things, and to some degree, grandios. Is anything more
common than to see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as
they cannot walk in without one to lead them? and a gown as long
again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room
without a page or two to hold it up? I may safely say that all the
ostentation of our grandees is just like a train, of no use in the
world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious.
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