Dear Phidias,
I have noticed of late, as I’m sure you have also, that he may as well be a Pompey, this sorry excuse for a Prime Minister: a grizzling mouth, a balding pate and a flapping body, all draped from head to toe in such preposterous ideas
about the quality of the purple; have you seen how he perambulates the passageways and halls of the Senate? Always only three steps ahead of the microphones, his staff, and his publicists? You must know Phidias
all our Legions, from the noble Generals and thrice burnished Centurions, to the lowliest of spear carriers, are quite filled up with the deepest disrespect for him; and the citizen body has long past begun to think it wiser to ignore his endless
blathering about the impropriety of our civic levies and the grinding price of corn. So would it really be disunity to say that like a vengeful flock of furies; beaks snapping, feathers flying; we should fall on him now and strip him to his under garments;
then to apply our nails to his naked genitals, his limbs, his hirsute chest and his laurel crown? I can now only exhort you to prepare yourself Phidias: best it should be done tonight when the moon is shrouded and the nightingale
is stilled in its song. After the wine and the water libation, I will kiss him on his pale cheek, then dismiss the rest of his bored retainers. You must be waiting in the shadows that surround the stunted olives, crouched there tightly in secret with our other friends.
All your heads must be properly covered with your togas; that much at least may be marked as seemly; but I digress: there is no need now for further talk about the shouting and fear; all that will no doubt stain the linen. As to the dousing of the torches and the bathos that must attend his final execution:
all of it, my dear Phidias, should not take very long …