« Dio 59.13 | Dio 59.14 | Dio 59.15 | About This Work »
14At the same time that he was perpetrating these murders, apparently because he was in urgent need of funds, he devised another scheme for getting money, as follows. He would sell the survivors in the gladiatorial combats at an excessive valuation to the consuls, praetors, and others, not only to willing purchasers, 2but also to others who were compelled very much against their will to give such exhibitions at the Circensian games, and in particular he sold them to the men specially chosen by lot to have charge of such contests (for he ordered that two praetors should be chosen by lot to have charge of the gladiatorial games, just as had formerly been the custom); and he himself would sit on the auctioneer’s platform and keep raising the bids. 3Many also came from outside to put in rival bids, the more so as he allowed any who so wished to employ a greater number of gladiators than the law permitted and because he frequently visited them himself. So people bought them for large sums, some because they really wanted them, 4others with the idea of gratifying Gaius, and the majority, consisting of those who had a reputation for wealth, from a desire to take advantage of this excuse to spend some of their substance and thus by becoming poorer save their lives. 5Yet after doing all this he later put the best and the most famous of these slaves out of the way by poison. He did the same also with the horses and charioteers of the rival factions; 6for he was strongly attached to the party that wore the frog-green, which from this colour was called also the Party of the Leek. Hence even to -day the place where he used to practise driving the chariots is called the Gaianum after him. 7One of the horses, which he named Incitatus, he used to invite to dinner, where he would offer him golden barley and drink his health in wine from golden goblets; he swore by the animal’s life and fortune and even promised to appoint him consul, a promise that he would certainly have carried out if he had lived longer.
« Dio 59.13 | Dio 59.14 | Dio 59.15 | About This Work »