Salazar Slytherin is described as power-hungry by the Sorting Hat, and was known as "shrewd Slytherin from fen". Salazar Slytherin was one of the first recorded Parselmouths, an accomplished Legilimens, and a notorious champion of pureblood supremacy." The pureblood supremacy angle may have been exaggerated over a thousand years. Slytherin is the only founder whose physical appearance is ever described in any detail; his statue in the Chamber of Secrets depicts a man "ancient and monkey-like, with a long thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of his sweeping robes." According to Dumbledore, the qualities that Slytherin prized in his handpicked students included his own rare ability to speak Parseltongue, resourcefulness, and determination. He also selected his students according to cunning, ambition, and blood purity. Slytherin's first name is a reference to the mid-20th-century Portuguese dictator's surname — Rowling's 1990-1993 stay in Portugal (where memory and legacy are present long after the dictatorship era) inspired this name choice.