any knowledge of the art. In short, he honoured with
his patronage all sorts of people who contributed in any way to the
success of the public entertainments. He not only maintained, but
enlarged, the privileges of the wrestlers. He prohibited combats of
gladiators where no quarter was given. He deprived the magistrates of
the power of correcting the stage-players, which by an ancient law was
allowed them at all times, and in all places; restricting their
jurisdiction entirely to the time of performance and misdemeanours in the
theatres. He would, however, admit, of no abatement, and exacted with
the utmost rigour the greatest exertions of the wrestlers and gladiators
in their several encounters. He went so far in restraining the
licentiousness of stage-players, that upon discovering that Stephanio, a
performer of the highest class, had a married woman with her hair
cropped, and dressed in boy's clothes, to wait upon him at table, he
ordered him to be whipped through all the three theatres, and then
banished him. Hylas, an actor of pantomimes, upon a complaint against
him by the praetor, he commanded to be scourged in the court of his own
house, which, however, was open to the public. And Pylades he not only
banished from the city, but from Italy also, for pointing with his finger
at a spectator by whom he was hissed, and turning the eyes of the
audience upon him.

(109) XLVI. Having thus regulated the city and its concerns, he
augmented the population of Italy by planting in it no less than
twenty-eight colonies [187], and greatly improved it by public works, and
a beneficial application of the revenues. In rights and privileges, he
rendered it in a measure equal to the city itself, by inventing a new kind
of suffrage, which the principal officers and magistrates of the colonies
might take at home, and forward under seal to the city, against the time
of the elections. To increase the number of persons of condition, and of
children among the lower ranks, he granted the petitions of all those who
requested the honour of doing military service on horseback as knights,
provided their demands were seconded by the recommendation of the town in
which they lived; and when he visited the several districts of Italy, he
distributed a thousand sesterces a head to such of the lower class as
presented him with sons or daughters.

XLVII. The more important provinces, which could not with ease or safety
be entrusted to th