the top of a ladder, which he maintained upright as he danced,
telling meanwhile untellable stories to the frieze; and host and
guests, unvociferously, as good breeding dictates, chatted through
the pauses of the service; discussed the disadvantages of death,
the value of Noevian iambics, the disgrace of Ovid, banished
because of Livia's eyes.

Such was the Rome of Augustus. "Caesar," cried a mime to him one
day, "do you know that it is important for you that the people
should be interested in Bathylle and in myself?"

The mime was right. The sovereign of Rome was not the Caesar, nor
yet the aristocracy. The latter was dead. It had been banished by
barbarian senators, by barbarian gods; it had died twice, at
Pharsalus, at Philippi; it was the people that was sovereign, and
it was important that that sovereign should be amused--flattered,
too, and fed. For thirty years not a Roman of note had died in his
bed; not one but had kept by him a slave who should kill him when
his hour had come; anarchy had been continuous; but now Rome was
at rest and its sovereign wished to laugh. Made up of every nation
and every vice, the universe was ransacked for its entertainment.
The mountain sent its lions, the desert giraffes; there were boas
from the jungles, bulls from the plains, and hippopotami from the
waters of the Nile. Into the arenas patricians descended; in the
amphitheatre there were criminals from Gaul; in the Forum
philosophers from Greece. On the stage, there were tragedies,
pantomimes and farce; there were races in the circus, and in the
sacred groves girls with the Orient in their eyes and slim waists
that swayed to the crotals. For the thirst of the sovereign there
were aqueducts, and for its hunger Africa, Egypt, Sicily