Res Gestae

And also even in the case of Pompey, some malevolent critics, who after much search found nothing for which he could be blamed, noted these two laughable and silly facts: that in a certain characteristic way he used to scratch his head with one finger, and that for some time, to cover up an ugly ulcer, he wore a white bandage tied around his leg; the one of these things he did, they affirmed, because he was dissipated, the other because he planned a revolution, snarling at him with the somewhat pointless reason, that it mattered not what part of his body he bound with the emblem of kingly majesty[*](The white fillet, to which the bandage was likened, was emblematic of royalty; see Suet., Jul. 79, 1.) —and this to a man than whom, as the clearest of proofs show; none was more valiant or circumspect with regard to his country.