through, and partly by tunnelling, a mountain; thirty thousand men being
constantly employed in the work for eleven years [508]. He formed the
harbour at Ostia, by carrying out circular piers on the right and on the
left, with (312) a mole protecting, in deep water, the entrance of the
port [509]. To secure the foundation of this mole, he sunk the vessel in
which the great obelisk [510] had been brought from Egypt [511]; and
built upon piles a very lofty tower, in imitation of the Pharos at
Alexandria, on which lights were burnt to direct mariners in the night.

XXI. He often distributed largesses of corn and money among the people,
and entertained them with a great variety of public magnificent
spectacles, not only such as were usual, and in the accustomed places,
but some of new invention, and others revived from ancient models, and
exhibited in places where nothing of the kind had been ever before
attempted. In the games which he presented at the dedication of Pompey's
theatre [512], which had been burnt down, and was rebuilt by him, he
presided upon a tribunal erected for him in the orchestra; having first
paid his devotions, in the temple above, and then coming down through the
centre of the circle, while all the people kept their seats in profound
silence [513]. He likewise (313) exhibited the secular games [514],
giving out that Augustus had anticipated the regular period; though he
himself says in his history, "That they had been omitted before the age
of Augustus, who had calculated the years with great exactness, and again
brought them to their regular period." [515] The crier was therefore
ridiculed, when he invited people in the usual form, "to games which no
person had ever before seen, nor ever would again;" when many were still
living who had already seen them; and some of the performers who had
formerly acted in them, were now again brought upon the stage. He
likewise frequently celebrated the Circensian games in the Vatican [516],
sometimes exhibiting a hunt of wild beasts, after every five courses. He