l, seeing that you were
left almost alone in your lovely country. For I doubt not that in that
study of yours, from which you have opened a window into the Stabian
waters of the bay, and obtained a view of Misenum, you have spent the
morning hours of those days in light reading, while those who left you
there were watching the ordinary farces[561] half asleep. The remaining
parts of the day, too, you spent in the pleasures which you had yourself
arranged to suit your own taste, while we had to endure whatever had met
with the approval of Spurius Maecius.[562] On the whole, if you care to
know, the games were most splendid, but not to your taste. I judge from
my own. For, to begin with, as a special honour to the occasion, those
actors had come back to the stage who, I thought, had left it for their
own. Indeed, your favourite, my friend AEsop, was in such a state that no
one could say a word against his retiring from the profession. On the
beginning to recite the oath his voice failed him at the words "If I
knowingly deceive." Why should I go on with the story? You know all
about the rest of the games, which hadn't even that amount of charm
which games on a moderate scale generally have: for the spectacle was so
elaborate as to leave no room for cheerful enjoyment, and I think you
need feel no regret at having missed it. For what is the pleasure of a
train of six hundred mules in the "Clytemnestra," or three thousand
bowls in the "Trojan Horse," or gay-coloured armour of infantry and
cavalry in some battle? These things roused the admiration of the
vulgar; to you they would have brought no delight. But if during those
days you listened to your reader Protogenes, so long at least as he read
anything rather than my speeches, surely you had far greater pleasure
than any one of us. For I don't suppose you wanted to see Greek or Oscan
plays, especially as you can see Oscan farces in your senate-house over
there, while you are so far from liking Greeks, that you generally won't
even go along the Greek road to your villa. Why, again, should I suppose
you to care about missing the athletes, since you disdained the
gladiators? in which even Pompey himself confesses that he lost his
trouble and his pains. There remain the two wild-beast hunts, lasting
five days, magnificent--nobody denies it--and yet, what pleasure can it
be to a man of refinement, when either a weak man is torn by an
extremely powerful animal, or a splendid animal