still the time was too short for the display of the spoils of victory.  The names of no less than fifteen conquered nations were carried in procession.  A thousand forts, nine hundred cities, had been taken, and the chief of them were presented by means of pictures to the eyes of the people.  The revenue of the State had been almost doubled by these conquests.  Ninety thousand talents in gold and silver coin were paid into the treasury, nor was this at the expense of the soldiers, whose prize money was so large that the smallest share amounted to fifty pounds.  Never before was such a sight seen in the world, and if Pompey had died when it was finished, he would have been proclaimed the most fortunate of mankind.

[Footnote 6:  The Pro Lege Manilia.  The law was proposed by one Manilius, a tribune of the people.]

Certainly he was never so great again as he was that day.  When with Caesar and Crassus he divided all the power of the State, he was only the second, and by far the second, of the three.  His influence, his prestige, his popularity declined year by year.  The good fortune which had followed him without ceasing from his earliest years now seemed to desert him.  Even the shows, the most magnificent ever seen in the city, with which he entertained the people at the dedication of his theater (built at his own expense for the public benefit) were not wholly a success.  Here is a letter of Cicero about them to his friend Marius; interesting as giving both a description of the scene and as an account of the writer’s own feelings about it.  “If it was some bodily pain or weakness of health that kept you from coming to the games, I must attribute your absence to fortune rather than to a judicious choice.  But if you thought the things which most men admire contemptible, and so, though health permitted, would not come, then I am doubly glad; glad both that you were free from illness and that you were so vigorous in mind as to despise the sights which others so unreasonably admire....  Generally the shows were most splendid, but not to your taste, if I may judge of yours by my own.  First, the veteran actors who for their own honor had retired from the stage, returned to it to do honor to Pompey.  Your favorite, my dear friend Aesopus, acquitted himself so poorly as to make us all feel that he had best retire.  When he came to the oath—­

     ‘And if of purpose set I break my faith,’

his voice failed him.  What need to tell you more?  You know all about the other shows; they had not even the charm which moderate shows commonly have.  The ostentation with which they were furnished forth took away all their gayety.  What charm is there in having six hundred mules in the Clytemnestra or three thousand supernumeraries in the Trojan Horse, or cavalry and infantry in foreign equipment in some battle-piece.  The populace admired all this; but it would have given you no kind of pleasure.  After this came a sort of wild-beast fights, lasting