ns that she had erected and] are in fine condition even now. In
honor of his mother he celebrated a very great and costly festival, events
taking place for several days in five or six theatres at once. It was then
that an elephant was led to the very top of the vault of the theatre and
walked down from that point on ropes, carrying a rider. There was another
exhibition at once most disgraceful and shocking. Men and women not only
of equestrian but even of senatorial rank appeared in the orchestra, the
hippodrome, and even the hunting-theatre, like the veriest outcasts. Some
of them played the flute and danced or acted tragedies and comedies or
sang to the lyre. They drove horses, killed beasts, fought as gladiators,
some willingly, others with a very bad grace. Men of that day beheld the
great families,--the Furii, the Horatii, the Fabii, Poreii, Valerii, and
all the rest whose trophies, whose temples were to be seen,--standing down
below the level of the spectators and doing some things to which no common
citizen even would stoop. So they would point them out to one another and
make remarks, Macedonians saying: "That is the descendant of Paulus";
Greeks, "Yonder the offspring of Mummius"; Sicilians, "Look at Claudius";
the Epirots, "Look at Appius"; Asiatics, "There's Lucius"; Iberians,
"There's Publius"; Carthaginians, "There's Africanus"; Romans, "There they
all are". Such was the expiation that the emperor chose to offer for his
own indecency.

[Sidenote:--18--] All who had sense, likewise, bewailed the multitude of
expenditures. Every costliest viand that men eat, everything else, indeed,
of the highest value,--horses, slaves, teams, gold, silver, raiment of
varied hues,--was given away by tickets. Nero would throw tiny balls, each
one appropriately inscribed, among the populace and that article
represented by the token received would be presented to the person who had
seized it. The sensible, I say, reflected that, when he spent so much to
prevent molestation in his disgraceful course, he would not be restrained
from any most outrageous proceedings through mere hope of profit.

Some portents had taken place about this time, which the seers declared
imported destruction to him, and they advised him to divert the danger
upon others. So he would have immediately put numbers of men out of the
way, had not Seneca said to him: "No matter how many you may slay, you can
not kill your successor."

It was now that he celeb