["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