A bad ruler could be said to have a spiny, thorny face. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
See Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 25.
in ҫa iuhquj haoaio, in ҫa iuhquj vitzio, in jx, in jiollo, in jnemjliz: in jtlatol in aoccan tetlacama, in jnemjliz in jtlachioal = It is just as if spiny, thorny were his face, his heart, his life; his words nowhere conform to his life, to his deeds (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 25.