rmy at his heels; a legion
of claquers, a phalanx of musicians, cohorts of comedians, and with
these for retinue, through sacred groves that Homer knew, through
intervales which Hesiod sang, through a year of festivals he wandered,
always victorious. It was he who conquered at Olympia; it was he who
conquered at Corinth. No one could withstand him. Alone in history he
won in every game, and with eighteen hundred crowns as trophies of war
he repeated Caesar's triumph. In a robe immaterial as a moonbeam, the
Olympian wreath on his curls, the Isthmian laurel in his hand, his army
behind him, the clown that was emperor entered Rome. Victims were
immolated as he passed, the Via Sacra was strewn with saffron, the day
was rent with acclaiming shouts. Throughout the empire sacrifices were
ordered. Old people that lived in the country fancied him, Philostratus
says, the conqueror of new nations, and sacrificed with delight.

But if as artist he bored everybody, he was yet an admirable
impresario. The spectacles he gave were unique. At one which was held
in the Taurian amphitheatre it must have been delightful to assist.
Fancy eighty thousand people on ascending galleries, protected from the
sun by a canopy of spangled silk; an arena three acres large carpeted
with sand, cinnabar and borax, and in that arena death in every form,
on those galleries colossal delight.

The lowest gallery, immediately above the arena, was a wide terrace
where the senate sat. There were the dignitaries of the empire, and
with them priests in their sacerdotal robes; vestals in linen, their
hair arranged in the six braids that were symbolic of virginity; swarms
of Oriental princes, rainbows of foreign ambassadors; and in the
centre, the imperial pulvinar, an enclosed pavilion, in which Nero
lounged, a mignon at his feet.

In the gallery above were the necklaced knights, their tunics bordered
with the augusticlave, their deep-blue cloaks fastened to the shoulder;
and there, too, in their wide white togas, were the citizens of Rome.

Still higher the people sat. In the topmost gallery were the women, and
in a separate enclosure a thousand musicians answered the cries of the
multitude with the blare and the laugh of brass.

Beneath the terraces, behind the barred doors that punctuated the
marble wall which circled the arena, were Mauritian panthers that had
been entrapped with rotten meat; hippopotami from Sais, lured by the
smell of carrots into pits