day was rent with acclaiming shouts. Throughout the empire
sacrifices were ordered. Old people that lived in the country
fancied him, Philostratus says, the conqueror of new nations, and
sacrificed with delight.

But if as artist he bored everybody, he was yet an admirable
impresario. The spectacles he gave were unique. At one which was
held in the Taurian amphitheatre it must have been delightful to
assist. Fancy eighty thousand people on ascending galleries,
protected from the sun by a canopy of spangled silk; an arena
three acres large carpeted with sand, cinnabar and borax, and in
that arena death in every form, on those galleries colossal
delight.

The lowest gallery, immediately above the arena, was a wide
terrace where the senate sat. There were the dignitaries of the
empire, and with them priests in their sacerdotal robes; vestals
in linen, their hair arranged in the six braids that were symbolic
of virginity; swarms of Oriental princes, rainbows of foreign
ambassadors; and in the centre, the imperial pulvinar, an enclosed
pavilion, in which Nero lounged, a mignon at his feet.

In the gallery above were the necklaced knights, their tunics
bordered with the augusticlave, their deep-blue cloaks fastened to
the shoulder; and there, too, in their wide white togas, were the
citizens of Rome.

Still higher the people sat. In the topmost gallery were the
women, and in a separate enclosure a thousand musicians answered
the cries of the multitude with the blare and the laugh of brass.