But all this time we take for granted that there were no shows in a course of exhibition, either the dreadful ones of the amphitheatre, or the bloodless ones of the circus.  If there were, then that became the business of all Romans; and it was a business which would have occupied him from daylight until the light began to fail.  Here we see another effect from the scarcity of artificial light amongst the ancients.  These magnificent shows went on by daylight.  But how incomparably greater would have been the splendor by lamp-light!  What a gigantic conception!  Eighty thousand human faces all revealed under one blaze of lamp-light!  Lord Bacon saw the mighty advantage of candle-light for the pomps and glories of this world.  But the poverty of the earth was the ultimate cause that the Pagan shows proceeded by day.  Not that the masters of the world, who rained Arabian odors and perfumed waters of the most costly description from a thousand fountains, simply to cool the summer heats, would have regarded the expense of light; cedar and other odorous woods burning upon vast altars, together with every variety of fragrant torch, would have created light enough to shed a new day over the distant Adriatic.

However, as there are no public spectacles, we will suppose, and the courts or political meetings, (if not closed altogether by superstition,) would at any rate be closed in the ordinary course by twelve or one o’clock, nothing remains for him to do, before returning home, except perhaps to attend the palaestra, or some public recitation of a poem written by a friend, but in any case to attend the public baths.  For these the time varied; and many people have thought it tyrannical in some of the Caesars that they imposed restraints on the time open for the baths; some, for instance, would not suffer them to open at all before two, and in any case, if you were later than four or five in summer, you would have to pay a fine which most effectually cleaned out the baths of all raff, since it was a sum that John Quires could not have produced to save his life.  But it should be considered that the emperor was the steward of the public resources for maintaining the baths in fuel, oil, attendance, repairs.  We are prepared to show, on a fitting occasion, that every fourth person[10] amongst the citizens bathed daily, and non-citizens, of course, paid an extra sum.  Now the population of Rome was far larger than has ever been hinted at except by Lipsius.  But certain it is, that during the long peace of the first Caesars, and after the annonaria prorisio, (that great pledge of popularity to a Roman prince,) had been increased by the corn tribute from the Nile, the Roman population took an immense lurch ahead.  The subsequent increase of baths, whilst no old ones were neglected, proves that decisively.  And as citizenship expanded by means of the easy terms on which it could be had, so did the bathers multiply.