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27Meanwhile Agrippa beautified the city at his own expense. First, in honour of the naval victories he completed the building called the Basilica of Neptune and lent it added brilliance by the painting representing the Argonauts. Next he constructed the Laconian sudatorium. He gave the name “Laconian” to the gymnasium because the Lacedaemonians had a greater reputation at that time than anybody else for stripping and exercising after anointing themselves with oil. 2Also he completed the building called the Pantheon. It has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens. 3Agrippa, for his part, wished to place a statue of Augustus there also and to bestow upon him the honour of having the structure named after him; but when the emperor would not accept either honour, he placed in the temple itself a statue of the former Caesar and in the ante-room statues of Augustus and himself. 4This was done, not out of any rivalry or ambition on Agrippa’s part to make himself equal to Augustus, but from his hearty loyalty to him and his constant zeal for the public good; hence Augustus, so far from censuring him for it, honoured him the more. 5For example, when he himself was prevented by illness from being in Rome at that time and celebrating there the marriage of his daughter Julia and his nephew Marcellus, he commissioned Agrippa to hold the festival in his absence; and when the house on the Palatine Mount which had formerly belonged to Antony but had later been given to Agrippa and Messalla was burned down, he presented money to Messalla, but made Agrippa share his own house. 6Agrippa not unnaturally took great pride in these honours. And one Gaius Toranius also acquired a good reputation because while tribune he brought his father, although a freedman of somebody or other, into the theatre and made him sit beside him upon the tribunes’ bench. Publius Servilius, too, made a name for himself because while praetor he caused to be slain at a festival three hundred bears and other African wild beasts equal in number.
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