he took the field.  The festival held in honor of the return of Augustus was managed by Gaius together with Piso, in his place.  The Campus Agrippae (except the portico) and the Diribitorium Augustus himself made public property.  The latter was the largest house ever constructed under a single roof; now the whole top of it has been taken off because it could not be put together solidly again, and the edifice stands wide open to the sky.  Agrippa had left it still in the process of building, and it was completed at this time.  The portico in the plain, which Polla his sister (who had also decorated the race-courses) was making, was not yet finished.  Meantime funeral combats in honor of Agrippa were given, all except Augustus wearing dark clothing and even his sons the same, and there were both duels and contests of groups; they were held in the Saepta out of honor to Agrippa and because many of the structures surrounding the Forum had been burned.  The blame for the fire was laid upon the debtor class and they were suspected of having set it with the purpose of having some of their debts remitted when they appeared to have lost considerable.  They obtained nothing, however.  The lanes at this time were provided with certain supervisors from among the people, whom we call road commissioners[5] They were allowed to use official dress and two lictors just in the places where they had jurisdiction and on certain days, and they were given charge of the body of slaves which previously had accompanied the aediles to save buildings that were set afire,—­an arrangement still continued to the present day.  They, together with the tribunes and praetors, were by lot appointed to have charge of the entire city, which was divided into fourteen wards.—­These were all the events of that year, for nothing worthy of mention happened in Germany.

[B.C. 6 (a. u. 748)]

[-9-] The year following, which marked the consulship of Gaius Antistius and Laelius Balbus, Augustus was displeased to see that Gaius and Lucius, who were being brought up in the lap of sovereignty, did not carefully imitate his ways.  They not only lived too luxuriously, but showed unseemly audacity.  Lucius once entered the theatre by himself and became the center of attraction of the whole population; some merely let him engross their thoughts and others openly paid court to him.  This treatment made him more arrogant, and among his other doings he proposed for consul Gaius, who was not yet a iuvenis.  His father, however, expressed the earnest wish that no such complication of circumstances might arise as once occurred in his own case,—­that any one younger than twenty should be consul.  When the people still remained urgent he then said that a man ought to receive this office at time when he would not be liable to error himself and could resist the passions of the populace.  After that he gave Gaius a priesthood, with the right of attendance in the senate and of beholding spectacles