died, and her he canonized; the other two he prostituted to the basest of
his own attendants. Of his wives, it would be hard to say whether they
were first sought and won with more circumstances of injury and outrage,
or dismissed with more insult and levity. The one whom he treated best,
and with most profession of love, and who commonly rode by his side,
equipped with spear and shield, to his military inspections and reviews of
the soldiery, though not particularly beautiful, was exhibited to his
friends at banquets in a state of absolute nudity. His motive for treating
her with so much kindness, was probably that she brought him a daughter;
and her he acknowledged as his own child, from the early brutality with
which she attacked the eyes and cheeks of other infants who were presented
to her as play-fellows. Hence it would appear that he was aware of his own
ferocity, and treated it as a jest. The levity, indeed, which he mingled
with his worst and most inhuman acts, and the slightness of the occasions
upon which he delighted to hang his most memorable atrocities, aggravated
their impression at the time, and must have contributed greatly to sharpen
the sword of vengeance. His palace happened to be contiguous to the
circus. Some seats, it seems, were open indiscriminately to the public;
consequently, the only way in which they could be appropriated, was by
taking possession of them as early as the midnight preceding any great
exhibitions. Once, when it happened that his sleep was disturbed by such
an occasion, he sent in soldiers to eject them; and with orders so
rigorous, as it appeared by the event, that in this singular tumult,
twenty Roman knights, and as many mothers of families, were cudgelled to
death upon the spot, to say nothing of what the reporter calls "innumeram
turbam ceteram."

But this is a trifle to another anecdote reported by the same authority:--
On some occasion it happened that a dearth prevailed, either generally of
cattle, or of such cattle as were used for feeding the wild beasts