millions.

As the Emperor's viceroy it behoved him to give his assent to all that
was planned to feast his sovereign's eye and ear. On the whole, he left
the citizens of the great town free to act as they would; but he had,
more than once, to exert a decided opposition to their overdoing the
thing; for though the Emperor might be able to endure a vast amount of
pleasure, what the Alexandrians originally proposed to provide for him to
see and hear would have exhausted the most indefatigable human energy.

That which gave the greatest trouble, not merely to him, but also to the
masters of the revels chosen by the municipality, were the never-dormant
hostility between the heathen and the Jewish sections of the inhabitants,
and the processions, since no division chose to come last, nor would any
number be satisfied to be only the third or the fourth.

It was from a meeting, where his determined intervention had at last
brought all these preliminaries to a decision beyond appeal, that
Titianus proceeded to the Caesareum to pay the Empress the visit which
she expected of him daily. He was glad to have come to some conclusion,
at any rate provisionally, with regard to these matters, for six days had
slipped away since the works had been begun in the palace of Lochias, and
Hadrian's arrival was nearing rapidly.

He found Sabina, as usual, on her divan, but on this occasion the Empress
was sitting upright on her cushions. She seemed quite to have got over
the fatigues of the sea-voyage, and in token that she felt better she had
applied more red to her cheeks and lips than three days ago, and because
she was to receive a visit from the sculptors, Papias and Aristeas, she
had had her hair arranged as it was worn in the statue of Venus Victrix,