In the fashion of his clothes, shoes, and all the rest of his dress, he did not
wear what was either national, or properly civic, or peculiar to the male sex,
or appropriate to mere mortals. He often appeared abroad in a short coat of
stout cloth, richly embroidered and blazing with jewels, in a tunic with
sleeves, and with bracelets upon his arms; sometimes all in silks and habited
like a woman; at other times in the crepide or buskins; sometimes in the sort of
shoes used by the lightarmed soldiers, or in the sock used by women, and
commonly with a golden beard fixed to his chin, holding in his hand a
thunderbolt, a trident, or a caduceus, marks of distinction belonging to the
gods only. Sometimes, too, he appeared in the habit of Venus. He wore very
commonly the triumphal ornaments, even before his expedition, and sometimes the
breast-plate of Alexander the Great, taken out of his coffin.