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Pompeius is joining the Senate. Half the great men of Rome are in debt, as I have cause to know, and unless we have an overturn, with 'clean accounts' as a result, more than one noble lord is ruined. I am calling in all my loans, turning everything into cash. Credit is bad bad. Cæsar paid Curio's debts sixty millions of sesterces. That's why Curio is a Cæsarian now.
To the question whether on the previous occasion he had appeared for them gratuitously, they said they had given him 6000 sesterces, and on being asked whether they paid him a further fee, they replied, "Yes, a thousand denarii." Nepos demanded that Nominatus should be called, and matters went no further on that day.
He made no scruple of exhibiting on the stage, even in the spectacles presented to the people by private persons, and was offered by one of the praetors, no less than a million of sesterces for his services.
The Tiburtian yield to the Picenian apples in juice, though they excel in look. The Albanian you had better harden in the smoke. It is an enormous fault to bestow three thousand sesterces on the fish-market, and then to cramp the roving fishes in a narrow dish.
You are truly generous to desire and insist that I take for my share of the estate you purchased of me, not after the rate of seven hundred thousand sesterces for the whole, as my freedman sold it to you; but in the proportion of nine hundred thousand, agreeably to what you gave to the farmers of the twentieths for their part.
It was celebrated, in commemoration of a victory obtained over the Latians, the news of which was said to have been brought by Castor and Pollux, in person. This festival, was, at first, consecrated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. But it was afterwards made more general, and celebrated in honor of all the Gods. This procession was in the month of September. It began at the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, proceeded to the Forum Romanum, from thence to the Velabrum, and afterwards to the Grand Circus. You have in Onuphrius Panvinius, the order of this procession at large, of which the directors were the chief magistrates of the city: the sons of the nobility leading the van. Those of the Equestrian order, whose fathers were worth a hundred and fifty thousand sesterces, followed on horseback. It would be here foreign from my purpose to give the whole description of this procession, and of those who composed it. It is sufficient to observe, that processional dancing constituted a considerable part of it. The Pirrhic dance, executed to a martial air, called the Proceleumaticus, employed the men of arms. These were followed by persons who danced and leaped, in the manner of Satirs, some of them in the dress ascribed to Silenus, attended by performers on instruments adapted to that character of dance. These made the comic part of the procession, and the persons representing Satirs, took care to divert the people by leaps, by a display of agility, and by odd uncouth attitudes, such as were in the character they had assumed. There were also in another part of the procession twelve Salii, or priests of Mars, so called from their making sacred dances in honor of that God, the most considerable part of their worship; these were headed by their master or Præsul, the leader of the dance, a
For the last-mentioned production only, and before it was brought near to its accomplishment, we are told, that he was offered by Largius Licinius four hundred thousand sesterces, amounting to upwards of three thousand two hundred pounds sterling; an enormous sum for the copyright of a book before the invention of printing!
At a still later period the lex Papia Poppaea augmented the rights of patrons who had more wealthy freedmen. By this it was enacted that, whenever a freedman left property amounting in value to a hundred thousand sesterces and upwards, and not so many as three children, the patron, whether he died testate or intestate, should be entitled to a portion equal to that of a single child.
"A leather worker from Hispania," he thundered with persuasive rhetoric, "his age but two dozen years, his skill unequalled on either bank of the Tiber ... A tunic worked by him is softer than the fleeciest wool, and the sheath of a dagger becomes in his hands as hard as steel.... Good health and strength, two thousand sesterces were a poor price to pay for the use of these skilled hands.... Two thousand sesterces.... His lordship's grace, the censor Arminius Quirinius paid four thousand for him...."
The legate got little enough in return for his sesterces, but Phoebicius did not restore his wages of sin, and his rage against me knew no bounds when he was transferred to the oasis at the instigation of his betrayed chief. Now you know all, and never advise me again to return to that man to whom my misfortune has bound me. "Only listen how the poor little beast in there is whining.
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