[-30-] “The rest I urge you to arrange in the following way.  Adorn this city in the most expensive manner possible and add brilliance by every form of festival.  It is fitting that we who rule many people should surpass all in everything, and such spectacles tend in a way to promote respect on the part of our allies and alarm on the part of enemies.  The affairs of other nations you should order in this fashion.  First, let the various tribes have no power in any matter nor meet in assemblies at all.  They would decide nothing good and would always be creating more or less turmoil.  Hence I say that even our own populace ought not to gather at court or for elections or for any other such meeting where any business is to be transacted.  Next, they should not indulge in numbers of houses of great size and beyond what is necessary, and they should not expend money upon many and all kinds of contests:  so they will neither be worn out by vain zeal nor become hostile through unreasonable rivalries.  They ought, however, to have certain festivals and spectacles, (apart from the horse-race held among us), but not to such an extent that the treasury or private estates will be injured, or any stranger be compelled to spend anything whatever in their midst, or food for a lifetime be furnished to all who have merely won in some contest.  It is unreasonable that the well-to-do should submit to compulsory expenditures outside their own countries; and for the athletes the prizes for each event are sufficient.  This ruling does not apply to any one of them who might come out victor in the Olympian or Pythian games, or some contest here at Rome.[12] Such are the only persons who ought to be fed, and then the cities will not exhaust themselves without avail nor anybody practice save those who have a chance of winning, since one can follow some other pursuit that is more advantageous both to one’s self and to one’s country.  “This is my decision about these matters.—­Now to the horse-races which are held without gymnastic contests, I think that no other city but ours should be allowed to hold them, so that vast sums of money may not be dissipated recklessly nor men go miserably frantic,—­and most of all that the soldiers may have a plentiful supply of the best horses.  This, therefore, I would forbid altogether, that those races should take place anywhere else than here.  The other amusements I have determined to moderate so that all organizations should make the enjoyment of entertainments for eye and ear inexpensive, and men thereby live more temperately and free from discontent.

“Let none of the foreigners employ their own coinage or weights or measures, but let them all use ours.  And they should send no embassy to you, unless it involve a point for decision.  Let them instead present to their governor whatever they please and through him forward to you all such requests of theirs as he may approve.  In this way they will neither spend anything nor effect their object by crooked practices, but receive their answers at first hand without any expenditure or intrigue.