of men were inspired by the same
desire to celebrate Hadrian's visit with unheard-of splendor. All that
the citizens could command of inventive skill, of wealth, and of beauty
was called forth to be displayed in the games and processions which were
to fill up a number of days. The richest of the heathen citizens had
undertaken the management of the pieces to be performed in the Theatre,
of the mock fight on the lake, and of the sanguinary games in the
Amphitheatre; and so great was the number of opulent persons that many
more were prepared to pay for smaller projects, for which there was no
opening. Nevertheless the arrangements for certain portions of the
procession, in which even the less wealthy were to take a share, the
erection of the building in the Hippodrome, the decorations in the
streets, and the preparations for entertaining the Roman visitors
absorbed sums so large that they seemed extravagant even to the prefect
Titianus, who was accustomed to see his fellow-officials in Rome squander
millions.

As the Emperor's viceroy it behoved him to give his assent to all that
was planned to feast his sovereign's eye and ear. On the whole, he left
the citizens of the great town free to act as they would; but he had,
more than once, to exert a decided opposition to their overdoing the
thing; for though the Emperor might be able to endure a vast amount of
pleasure, what the Alexandrians originally proposed to provide for him to
see and hear would have exhausted the most indefatigable human energy.

That which gave the greatest trouble, not merely to him, but also to the
masters of the revels chosen by the municipality, were the never-dormant
hostility between the heathen and the Jewish sections of the inhabitants,
and the processions, since no division chose to come last, nor would any
number be satisfied to be only the third or the fourth.

It was from a meeting, where his determined intervention had at last
brought all these preliminaries to a decision beyond appeal, that
Titianus proceeded to the Caesareum to pay the Empress the visit which
she expected of him daily. He was glad to have come to some conclusion,
at any rate provisionally, with regard to these matters, for six days had
slipped away since the works had been begun in the palace of Lochias, and
Hadrian's arrival was nearing rapidly.

He found Sabina, as usual, on her divan, but on this occasion the Empress
was sitting upright on her cushions. She seeme