The harangue to be made by Rullus is especially expected.
He is the projector of the law, and it was expected that he would carry himself with an air of special audacity.

When he was only Tribune elect he began to put on a different countenance, to speak with a different voice, to walk with a different step.

We all saw how he appeared with soiled raiment, with his person uncared for, and foul with dirt, with his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed."[168] In Rome men under afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the meaning here is that Rullus went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor fellow-citizens, who were distressed by the want of this agrarian law.
No description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the sorrows of the city.

The picture of the man with the self-assumed garments of public woe, as though he were big enough to exhibit the grief of all Rome, could not but be effective.

It has been supposed that Cicero was insulting the Tribune because he was dirty.