Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 6).pdf/91

 birth-days and public rejoicings.—That it appeared from the best historians of those times, that they frequently sent their cloaths to the fuller, to be cleaned and whitened;—but that the inferior people, to avoid that expence, generally wore brown cloaths, and of a something coarser texture,—till towards the beginning of Augustus's reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of habiliment was lost, but the Latus Clavus.

And what was the Latus Clavus? said my father.

Rubenius told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the learned:—That Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius, Ticinensis, Baysius, Budæus, Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Causonbon, and