94 flint's katural history. [Book XXXIll 



a tract of virgin earth, in the country of the Suani,^*^ extracted 

 from it a large amount of gold and silver, it is said, and whose 

 kingdom besides, had been famed for the possession of the 

 Golden Fleece. The golden arches, too, of his palace, we find 

 spoken of, the silver supports and columns, and pilasters, all 

 of which he had come into possession of on the conquest of 

 Sesostris,®^ king of Egypt ; a monarch so haughty, that every 

 year, it is said, it was his practice to select one of his vassal 

 kings by lot, and yoking him to his car, celebrate his triumph 

 afresh. 



CHAP. 16. AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER FIRST MADE ITS APPEAR- 

 ANCE UPON THE ARENA AND UPON THE STAGE. 



"We, too, have done things that posterity may probably look 

 upon as fabulous. Ceesar, who was afterwards dictator, but 

 at that time asdile, was the first person, on the occasion of the 

 funeral games in honour of his father, to employ all the ap- 

 paratus of the arena®' in silver ; and it was on the same occa- 

 sion that for the first time criminals encountered wild beasts 

 with implements of silver, a practice imitated at the present 

 day in our municipal towns even. 



At the games celebrated by C. Antonius the stage was made 

 of ®^ silver; and the same was the case at those celebrated 

 by L. Murasna. The Emperor Caius had a scafibld®^ intro- 

 duced into the Circus, upon which there were one hundred and 

 twenty-four thousand pounds' weight of silver. His successor 

 Claudius, on the occasion of his triumph over Britain, an- 

 nounced by the inscriptions that among the coronets of gold, 

 there was one weighing seven thousand**' pounds' weight, contri- 

 buted by iN^earer Spain, and another of nine thousand pounds, 



8« See B. vi. c. 4. 



^1 This story of the defeat of the great Ramses-Sesostris by a petty king 

 of Colchis, would almost appear apocryphal. It is not improbable, how- 

 ever, that Sesostris, when on his Thracian expedition, may have received 

 a repulse on penetrating further north, accustomed as his troops must have 

 been, to a warmer climate. ^^ Qf the amphitheatre. 



^^ Covered, probably, with plates of silver. 



^ " Pegma." A scaffold with storeys, which were raised or depressed, 

 to all appearance, spontaneously, Caligula is the emperor meant. 



'*^ Another reading is "seven" pounds in weight, and "nine" pounds; 

 which would appear to be more probable than seven thousand, and nine 

 thousand, as given by the Bamberg MS. It is just possible, however, that 

 the latter may have been the united weights of all the coronets contributed 

 by Spain and Gaul respectively, the word "inter" being an interpolation. 



