Octavius, to whom the poem is dedicated, is addressed Octavi venerande and sancte puer, a clear reference to the remarkable honor that Caesar secured for him by election to the office of pontiff when he was approaching his fifteenth birthday and before he assumed the toga virilis.

Marcus Junius, created dictator on the authority of the senate, and Titus Sempronius, master of the horse, proclaiming a levy, enrol the younger men from the age of seventeen, and some who wore the toga praetexta: of these, four legions and a thousand horse were formed.

rideri possit, eo quod Rusticius tonso toga defluit, et male laxus In pede calceus haeret?

the toga prætexta and curule chair, as nothing else but a funeral parade: that when decked with these splendid insignia, as with fillets, [70] they were doomed to death.

Similarly they allowed them also to view spectacles in their company and to wear the toga praetextata at the ludi votivi.

So great his song we deem a little while That Song itself with his great voice hath fled, So grand the toga-sweep of his great style, So vast the theme on which his song was fed.