h to do so when
I shall have deserved it." He admitted the common people to see him
perform his exercises in the Campus Martius. He frequently declaimed
in public, and recited verses of his own composing, not only at home,
but in the theater; so much to the joy of all the people, that public
prayers were appointed to be put up to the gods upon that account; and
the verses which had been publicly read, were, after being written in
gold letters, consecrated to Jupiter Capitolinus.

He presented the people with a great number and variety of spectacles,
as the Juvenal and Circensian games, stage-plays, and an exhibition of
gladiators. In the Juvenal, he even admitted senators and aged matrons
to perform parts. In the Circensian games, he assigned the equestrian
order seats apart from the rest of the people, and had races performed
by chariots drawn each by four camels. In the games which he
instituted for the eternal duration of the empire, and therefore
ordered to be called _Maximi_, many of the senatorian and equestrian
order, of both sexes, performed. A distinguished Roman knight
descended on the stage by a rope, mounted on an elephant. A Roman
play, likewise, composed by Afranius, was brought upon the stage. It
was entitled, "The Fire"; and in it the performers were allowed to
carry off, and to keep to themselves, the furniture of the house,
which as the plot of the play required, was burned down in the
theater. Every day during the solemnity, many thousand articles of all
descriptions were thrown among the people to scramble for; such as
fowls of different kinds, tickets for corn, clothes, gold, silver,
gems, pearls, pictures, slaves, beasts of burden, wild beasts that had
been tamed; at last, ships, lots of houses, and lands, Were offered as
prizes in a lottery.

These games he beheld from the front of the proscenium. In the show
of gladiators, which he exhibited in a wooden amphitheater, built
within a year in the district of the Campus Martius, he ordered that
none should be slain, not even the condemned criminals employed in the
combats. He secured four hundred senators, and six hundred Roman
knights, among whom were some of unbroken fortunes and unblemished
reputation, to act as gladiators. From the same orders, he engaged
persons to encounter wild beasts, and for various other services in
the theater. He presented the public with the representation of a
naval fight, upon sea-water, with huge fishes swimming in