3. r >0 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTOET. [Book XX 



made by the hands of man, oven when intended to be of ever- 

 lasting duration ; his Theatre, I mean. This building con- 

 sisted of three storeys, supported upon three hundred and 

 sixty columns ; and this, too, in a city which had not allowed 

 without some censure one of its greatest citizens* 9 to erect 

 six 90 pillars of Hyrnettian marble. The ground-storey was of 

 marble, the second of glass, a species of luxury which ever 

 since that time has been quite unheard of, and the highest of 

 gilded wood. The lowermost columns, as previously 01 stated, 

 were eight-and-thirty feet in height ; and, placed between 

 these columns, as already 92 mentioned, were brazen statues, 

 three thousand in number. The area 93 of this theatre afforded 

 accommodation for eighty thousand spectators ; and yet tho 

 Theatre of Pompeius, after the City had so greatly increased, 

 and the inhabitants had become so vastly more numerous, was 

 considered abundantly large, with its sittings for forty thou- 

 sand only. The rest of the fittings of it, what witli Attalic 94 

 vestments, pictures, and the other stage -properties, 95 were of 

 such enormous value that, after Scaurus had hud conveyed to 

 his Tusculan villa such parts thereof as were not required for 

 the enjoyment of his daily luxuries, tho loss was no less than 

 three hundred millions of sesterces, when the villa was burnt 

 by his servants in a spirit of revenge. 



The consideration of such prodigality as this quite distracts 

 my attention, and compels me to digress from my original pur- 

 pose, in order to mention a still greater instance ot* extrava- 

 gance, in reference to wood. C. Curio-, 96 who died during tho. 

 civil wars, fighting on the side of Caesar, found, to his dismay, 

 that he could not, when celebrating the funeral games in 

 honour of his father, surpass the riches and magniiicence of 

 Scaurus fur where, in fact, was to be found such a stepsirc 

 as Sylla, and such a mother as Metella, that bidder at all 

 auctions for the property of the proscribed ? AVhcrc, too, was 

 he to find for his father, M. Scaurus, so long the principal man 

 in the city, and one who had acted, in his alliance with Marius, 



89 See B. ivii. c. 1, and Chapter 3 of tbc present Book. L. Crassus is 

 the person alluded to. 



90 '* Four" is the number mentioned in B. xvii. c. 1. 



In Chapter 2 of this Book. In B. xxxiv. c. 17. 



93 * Cavea." The place where the spectators sat,- much like the " pit" 

 of our theatres. * See B. xxxiii. c. 19. 94 ' Choragio." 



** lie was defeated and slain in Africa by Juba and P. Attius Yarua. 



