venience of the audience, and
a _curia_, in which the senate could meet, and where, eleven years
later, the great Dictator was murdered at the feet of Pompey's statue.

In spite of the magnificence of this building, it was by no means
destined to revive the earlier prosperity of the tragic and comic
drama. Even at the opening of it the signs of degeneracy are apparent.
Luckily for us Cicero was in Rome at the time, and in a letter to a
friend in the country he congratulates him on being too unwell to come
to Rome and see the spoiling of old tragedies by over-display.[511]
"The ludi," he says, "had not even that charm which games on a
moderate scale generally have; 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. What is the pleasure of a train of six
hundred mules in the Clytemnestra (of Accius), or three thousand bowls
(craterae) in the Trojan Horse (of Livius), or gay-coloured armour of
infantry and cavalry in some mimic battle? These things roused the
admiration of the vulgar: to you they would have brought no delight."
This ostentatious stage-display finds its counterpart to some extent
at the present day, and may remind us also of the huge orchestras of
blaring sound which are the delight of the modern composer and the
modern musical audience. And the plays were by no means the only part
of the show. There were displays of athletes; but these never seem to
have greatly interested a Roman audience, and Cicero says that Pompey
confessed that they were a failure; but to make up for that there were
wild-beast shows for five whole days (_venationes_)--"magnificent,"
the letter goes on, "no one denies it, yet what pleasure can it be
to a man of refinement, when a weak man is torn by a very powerful
animal, or a splendid animal is transfixed by a hunting-spear? ... The
last day was that of the elephants, about which there was a good deal
of astonishment on the part of the vulgar crowd, but no pleasure
whatever. Nay, there was even a feeling of compassion aroused by
them, and a notion that this animal has something in common with
mankind."[512] This last interesting sentence is confirmed by a
passage in Pliny's _Natural History_, in which he asserts that the
people were so much moved that they actually execrated Pompey.[513]
The last age of the Republic is a transitional one, in this, as in
other ways; the people are not yet thoroughly inure