private stadium, where he amused himself with driving, and invited his friends to join him. He surrounded himself with poets, musicians, singers; enormously increased the budget of popular festivals; planned and started immense constructions; introduced into all parts of the administration a new spirit of carelessness and ease. Not only the sumptuary laws, but all laws commanding the fulfilment of human duties toward the species, such as the great laws of Augustus on marriage and adultery, were no longer applied; the surveillance of the Senate over the governors, that of the governors over the cities, slackened. In Rome, in all Italy, in the provinces, the treasuries of the Republic, the possessions and the funds of the cities, were robbed. In the midst of this unbridled plundering, which appeared to make every man rich quickly, and without work, a delirium of luxury and pleasure reigned: in Rome especially, people lived in a continuous orgy; the nobility answered in crowds the invitations of Nero; the Senate, the great houses, where the conquerors of the world had been born, swarmed with young athletes and drivers, who had no other ambition but that of adding the prize of a race to the war trophies of their ancestors; the imperial palace was invaded by a noisy horde of zitherists, actors,
