The Essays, vol 16 | Page 8

him particulars of what each could
advance. When all these answers were brought to him, every one of his
friends, not thinking it enough barely to offer him so much as he had
received from his bounty, and adding to it a great deal of his own, it
appeared that the sum amounted to a great deal more than Croesus'
reckoning. Whereupon Cyrus: "I am not," said he, "less in love with
riches than other princes, but rather a better husband; you see with how
small a venture I have acquired the inestimable treasure of so many
friends, and how much more faithful treasurers they are to me than
mercenary men without obligation, without affection; and my money
better laid up than in chests, bringing upon me the hatred, envy, and
contempt of other princes."
The emperors excused the superfluity of their plays and public
spectacles by reason that their authority in some sort (at least in
outward appearance) depended upon the will of the people of Rome,
who, time out of mind, had been accustomed to be entertained and
caressed with such shows and excesses. But they were private citizens,
who had nourished this custom to gratify their fellow-citizens and
companions (and chiefly out of their own purses) by such profusion
and magnificence it had quite another taste when the masters came to
imitate it:
"Pecuniarum translatio a justis dominis ad alienos non debet liberalis
videri."
["The transferring of money from the right owners to strangers ought
not to have the title of liberality." --Cicero, De Offic., i. 14.]
Philip, seeing that his son went about by presents to gain the affection
of the Macedonians, reprimanded him in a letter after this manner:
"What! hast thou a mind that thy subjects shall look upon thee as their
cash- keeper and not as their king? Wilt thou tamper with them to win
their affections? Do it, then, by the benefits of thy virtue, and not by
those of thy chest." And yet it was, doubtless, a fine thing to bring and
plant within the amphitheatre a great number of vast trees, with all their

branches in their full verdure, representing a great shady forest,
disposed in excellent order; and, the first day, to throw into it a
thousand ostriches and a thousand stags, a thousand boars, and a
thousand fallow-deer, to be killed and disposed of by the people: the
next day, to cause a hundred great lions, a hundred leopards, and three
hundred bears to be killed in his presence; and for the third day, to
make three hundred pair of gladiators fight it out to the last, as the
Emperor Probus did. It was also very fine to see those vast
amphitheatres, all faced with marble without, curiously wrought with
figures and statues, and within glittering with rare enrichments:
"Baltheus en! gemmis, en illita porticus auro:"
["A belt glittering with jewels, and a portico overlaid with gold."
--Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 47. A baltheus was a shoulder-belt or baldric.]
all the sides of this vast space filled and environed, from the bottom to
the top, with three or four score rows of seats, all of marble also, and
covered with cushions:
"Exeat, inquit, Si pudor est, et de pulvino surgat equestri, Cujus res legi
non sufficit;"
["Let him go out, he said, if he has any sense of shame, and rise from
the equestrian cushion, whose estate does not satisfy the law." --Juvenal,
iii. 153. The Equites were required to possess a fortune of 400 sestertia,
and they sat on the first fourteen rows behind the orchestra.]
where a hundred thousand men might sit at their ease: and, the place
below, where the games were played, to make it, by art, first open and
cleave in chasms, representing caves that vomited out the beasts
designed for the spectacle; and then, secondly, to be overflowed by a
deep sea, full of sea monsters, and laden with ships of war, to represent
a naval battle; and, thirdly, to make it dry and even again for the
combat of the gladiators; and, for the fourth scene, to have it strown
with vermilion grain and storax,--[A resinous gum.]--instead of sand,
there to make a solemn feast for all that infinite number of people: the
last act of one only day:

"Quoties nos descendentis arenae Vidimus in partes, ruptaque voragine
terrae Emersisse feras, et eisdem saepe latebris Aurea cum croceo
creverunt arbuta libro!.... Nec solum nobis silvestria cernere monstra
Contigit; aequoreos ego cum certantibus ursis Spectavi vitulos, et
equorum nomine dignum, Sen deforme pecus, quod in illo nascitur
amni...."
["How often have we seen the stage of the theatre descend and part
asunder, and from a chasm in the earth wild beasts emerge, and then
presently give birth to a grove of gilded trees, that put