Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXXIII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF METALS., CHAP. 16.—AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER FIRST MADE ITS APPEARANCE UPON THE ARENA AND UPON THE STAGE.

We, too, have done things that posterity may probably look upon as fabulous. Cæsar, who was afterwards dictator, but at that time ædile, was the first person, on the occasion of the funeral games in honour of his father, to employ all the apparatus of the arena¹ in silver; and it was on the same occasion 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 of² silver; and the same was the case at those celebrated by L. Muræna. The Emperor Caius had a scaffold³ introduced 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, announced by the inscriptions that among the coronets of gold, there was one weighing seven thousand⁴ pounds' weight, contributed by Nearer Spain, and another of nine thousand pounds, presented by Gallia Comata.⁵ Nero, who succeeded him, covered the Theatre of Pompeius with gold for one day,⁶ the occasion on which he displayed it to Tiridates, king of Armenia. And yet how small was this theatre in comparison with that Golden Palace⁷ of his, with which he environed our city.

1 Of the amphitheatre.

2 Covered, probably, with plates of silver.

3 "Pegma." A scaffold with storeys, which were raised or depressed, to all appearance, spontaneously. Caligula is the emperor meant.

4 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.

5 See B. iv. c. 31, B. xi. c. 47, and B. xviii. c. 20.

6 Hence known as the "Golden Day," according to Dion Cassius, B. lxiii.

7 For further particulars as to the Golden Palace, see B. xxxvi. c. 24.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.

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CHAP. 16.—AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER FIRST MADE ITS APPEARANCE UPON THE ARENA AND UPON THE STAGE.

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.