As if their effeminacy—­[Which Cotton translates:  “as if the insignificancy of coaches.” ]—­had not been sufficiently known by better proofs, the last kings of our first race travelled in a chariot drawn by four oxen.  Marc Antony was the first at Rome who caused himself to be drawn in a coach by lions, and a singing wench with him.

     [Cytheris, the Roman courtezan.—­Plutarch’s Life of Antony, c. 3. 
     This, was the same person who is introduced by Gallus under the name
     of Lycoris.  Gallus doubtless knew her personally.]

Heliogabalus did since as much, calling himself Cybele, the mother of the gods; and also drawn by tigers, taking upon him the person of the god Bacchus; he also sometimes harnessed two stags to his coach, another time four dogs, and another four naked wenches, causing himself to be drawn by them in pomp, stark naked too.  The Emperor Firmus caused his chariot to be drawn by ostriches of a prodigious size, so that it seemed rather to fly than roll.

The strangeness of these inventions puts this other fancy in my head:  that it is a kind of pusillanimity in monarchs, and a testimony that they do not sufficiently understand themselves what they are, when they study to make themselves honoured and to appear great by excessive expense:  it were indeed excusable in a foreign country, but amongst their own subjects, where they are in sovereign command, and may do what they please, it derogates from their dignity the most supreme degree of honour to which they can arrive:  just as, methinks, it is superfluous in a private gentleman to go finely dressed at home; his house, his attendants, and his kitchen sufficiently answer for him.  The advice that Isocrates gives his king seems to be grounded upon reason:  that he should be splendid in plate and furniture; forasmuch as it is an expense of duration that devolves on his successors; and that he should avoid all magnificences that will in a short time be forgotten.  I loved to go fine when I was a younger brother, for want of other ornament; and it became me well:  there are some upon whom their rich clothes weep:  We have strange stories of the frugality of our kings about their own persons and in their gifts:  kings who were great in reputation, valour, and fortune.  Demosthenes vehemently opposes the law of his city that assigned the public money for the pomp of their public plays and festivals:  he would that their greatness should be seen in numbers of ships well equipped, and good armies well provided for; and there is good reason to condemn Theophrastus, who, in his Book on Riches, establishes a contrary opinion, and maintains that sort of expense to be the true fruit of abundance.  They are delights, says Aristotle, that a only please the baser sort of the people, and that vanish from the memory as soon as the people are sated with them, and for which no serious and judicious man can have any esteem.  This money would, in my opinion,