embellished the Circus Maximus with marble barriers, and gilded goals,
which before were of common stone [517] and wood, and assigned proper
places for the senators, who were used to sit promiscuously with the
other spectators. Besides the chariot-races, he exhibited there the
Trojan game, and wild beasts from Africa, which were encountered by a
troop of pretorian knights, with their tribunes, and even the prefect at
the head of them; besides Thessalian horse, who drive fierce bulls round
the circus, leap upon their backs when they have exhausted their fury,
and drag them by the horns to the ground. He gave exhibitions of
gladiators in several places, and of various kinds; one yearly on the
anniversary of his accession in the pretorian camp [518], but without any
hunting, or the usual apparatus; another in the Septa as usual; and in
the same place, another out of the common way, and of a few days'
continuance only, which he called Sportula; because when he was going to
present it, he informed the people by proclamation, "that he invited them
to a late supper, got up in haste, and without ceremony." Nor did he
lend himself to any kind of public diversion with more freedom and
hilarity; insomuch that he would hold out his left hand, and (314) joined
by the common people, count upon his fingers aloud the gold pieces
presented to those who came off conquerors. He would earnestly invite
the company to be merry; sometimes calling them his "masters," with a
mixture of insipid, far-fetched jests. Thus, when the people called for
Palumbus [519], he said, "He would give them one when he could catch it."
The following was well-intended, and well-timed; having, amidst great
applause, spared a gladiator, on the intercession of his four sons, he
sent a billet immediately round the theatre, to remind the people, "how
much it behoved them to get children, since they had before them an
example how useful they had been in procuring favour and security for a
gladiator." He likewise represented in the Campus Martius, the assault
and sacking of a town, and the surrender of the British kings [520],