“Exeat, inquit,
                    Si pudor est, et de pulvino surgat equestri,
                    Cujus res legi non sufficit;”

["Let him go out, he said, if he has any sense of shame, and rise from the equestrian cushion, whose estate does not satisfy the law.”  —­Juvenal, iii. 153.  The Equites were required to possess a fortune of 400 sestertia, and they sat on the first fourteen rows behind the orchestra.]

where a hundred thousand men might sit at their ease:  and, the place below, where the games were played, to make it, by art, first open and cleave in chasms, representing caves that vomited out the beasts designed for the spectacle; and then, secondly, to be overflowed by a deep sea, full of sea monsters, and laden with ships of war, to represent a naval battle; and, thirdly, to make it dry and even again for the combat of the gladiators; and, for the fourth scene, to have it strown with vermilion grain and storax,—­[A resinous gum.]—­instead of sand, there to make a solemn feast for all that infinite number of people:  the last act of one only day: 

              “Quoties nos descendentis arenae
               Vidimus in partes, ruptaque voragine terrae
               Emersisse feras, et eisdem saepe latebris
               Aurea cum croceo creverunt arbuta libro!.... 
               Nec solum nobis silvestria cernere monstra
               Contigit; aequoreos ego cum certantibus ursis
               Spectavi vitulos, et equorum nomine dignum,
               Sen deforme pecus, quod in illo nascitur amni....”

["How often have we seen the stage of the theatre descend and part asunder, and from a chasm in the earth wild beasts emerge, and then presently give birth to a grove of gilded trees, that put forth blossoms of enamelled flowers.  Nor yet of sylvan marvels alone had we sight:  I saw sea-calves fight with bears, and a deformed sort of cattle, we might call sea-horses.”—­Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 64.]

Sometimes they made a high mountain advance itself, covered with fruit-trees and other leafy trees, sending down rivulets of water from the top, as from the mouth of a fountain:  otherwhiles, a great ship was seen to come rolling in, which opened and divided of itself, and after having disgorged from the hold four or five hundred beasts for fight, closed again, and vanished without help.  At other times, from the floor of this place, they made spouts of perfumed water dart their streams upward, and so high as to sprinkle all that infinite multitude.  To defend themselves from the injuries of the weather, they had that vast place one while covered over with purple curtains of needlework, and by-and-by with silk of one or another colour, which they drew off or on in a moment, as they had a mind: 

              “Quamvis non modico caleant spectacula sole,
               Vela reducuntur, cum venit Hermogenes.”