stripe seated themselves in the chairs which stood upon the level in
front of the stage, while those wearing the narrow stripes would
occupy the first fourteen tiers of seats rising just behind them. No
one else might, occupy those places. If some one who had been
improperly posing as a knight, or who had been degraded from his rank
because he had wasted his credit and his money and no longer possessed
either £3200 or a reputation, ventured to seat himself in the fourteen
rows in the hope of being unnoticed, he would be speedily called upon
by the usher to withdraw. Snobs occasionally made the attempt, and, at
a somewhat later date, we have an amusing epigram of Martial
concerning one who repeatedly but unsuccessfully dodged the usher and
who was at last compelled to kneel in the gangway opposite the end of
the fourteenth row, where it might look to those behind as if he were
sitting among the knights, while technically he could claim that he
was not sitting at all.

Elsewhere also, as for instance at the chariot-races in the Circus,
and at the gladiatorial shows in the amphitheatre, there were special
places set apart for the two orders.

Below the senators and the knights came the "people,"--the "commons,"
or "third estate"--with all its usual grades and its usual variety of
occupation or no occupation, of manners and character or absence of
both. With the life of these, as with the life of a noble, we shall
deal at the proper time.

So much for the Roman citizen proper. Other elements of the population
were the foreigners. At Rome these were exceedingly numerous, and the
city may in this respect be called--as indeed it was called--a
microcosm, a small copy or epitome of the Roman world. Gauls,