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Updated: May 5, 2025
Crassus paid one hundred thousand sesterces for a golden cup. Banqueting-rooms were strewed with lilies and roses. Apicius, in the time of Trajan, spent one hundred millions of sesterces in debauchery and gluttony; having only ten millions left, he ended his life with poison, thinking he might die of hunger. Things were valued for their cost and rarity rather than their real value.
His beds were silver, and his tables of gold. Tiberius gave a million of sesterces for a picture for his bed-room. A banquet dish of Drusillus weighed five hundred pounds of silver. The cups of Drusus were of gold. Tunics were embroidered with the figures of various animals. Sandals were garnished with precious stones. Paulina wore jewels, when she paid visits, valued at $800,000.
Tiberius, in the name of his adopted son, bestowed three hundred sesterces apiece upon all the citizens, and the Senate chose the popular favorite as consul for the ensuing year, in conjunction with the emperor himself. This prince was the son of Tiberius by his first wife, Vipsania, and was the cousin of Germanicus.
Its members always belonged to the aristocracy, whether of patrician or plebeian descent, and were supposed to be rich. Under Augustus it required one million two hundred thousand sesterces annually to support the senatorial dignity.
This appellation, which originally belonged only to the burgess-cavalry on service, came gradually to be transferred, at any rate in ordinary use, to all those who, as possessors of an estate of at least 400,000 sesterces, were liable to cavalry service in general, and thus comprehended the whole of the upper society, senatorial and non-senatorial, in Rome.
Athens, a city of five hundred thousand inhabitants, was filled with wonders of art, which time has not yet fully destroyed. Corinth was another grand centre of Grecian civilization, richer and more luxurious than Athens. When taken by the Romans she possessed the most valuable pictures in Greece. Among them was one of Dionysus by Aristides for which Attalus offered 600,000 sesterces.
Room had to be made for the masters of Rome, the wealthy and the idle, who threw sesterces about for the gratification of their smallest whim, as a common man would shake the dust from his shoes.
It took eighty thousand dollars a year to support the ordinary senatorial dignity. Some senators owned whole provinces. Trimalchio, a rich freedman whom Petronius ridiculed, could afford to lose thirty millions of sesterces in a single voyage without sensibly diminishing his fortune. Pallas, a freedman of the Emperor Claudius, possessed a fortune of three hundred millions of sesterces.
Manumission and a hundred thousand sesterces!" "In writing!" said Narcissus. "Dog!" growled Pertinax. "Go in and do as you are told!" But Narcissus only grinned at him and squared his shoulders. "Death means little to a gladiator," he remarked. "Leave him to me!" ordered Marcia. "Go and sit down at that table, Pertinax. Take pen and parchment. Now then what do you want in writing? Make haste!"
A circular table of cedar wood, inlaid with ivory and brass, so that its value could not have fallen far short of ten thousand sesterces , stood in the centre of the floor-cloth; with a bisellium, or double settle, wrought in bronze, and two beautiful chairs of the same material not much dissimilar in form to those now used.
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