The amphitheatre was a magnificent spectacle. The fighting was not to begin for half an hour yet, but the rows of seats, particularly the higher and cheaper ones, were already crammed. Every part was as gay as a flower-garden with gorgeous dresses,[135] eager eyes, and faces flushed with expectation. Even the poorest had donned a newly-cleaned and bleached toga. The gentler sex, decorated with gold pins and diadems, was particularly strongly represented, from the matron of senatorial rank to the artisan's wife, and the gay Syrian of more than doubtful origin.
Now the gaudily-gilt _podium_, kept for the senators,[136] began to fill. They took their seats deliberately, with an air of affected dignity; the Fathers of the State, as they were called, who were now little more than tools in the hand of a despot. And there was many a gap in their ranks, for Caesar's suspected and proscribed foes still languished in prison, vainly awaiting a judicial trial, much less a verdict of acquittal.
Immediately after, the vestal maidens came in, in long white robes; for them too law and custom reserved a place of honor. Ah! and the boldness of Quintus Claudius in an audacious moment, in addressing one of these priestesses as his ladylove, was not so outrageous as his father had represented it, for those sacred robes were a cloak for more than one broken vow,[137] and the irony of Lycoris' remark was not altogether undeserved.
More and more crowds of spectators kept pouring up the stairs and corridors; a hum of voices, like the surges of the Tyrrhenian sea, rose from every part of the vast oval. At last the place was filled to the very last corner. Only the purple and gold pulvinar,[138] prepared for the Emperor, and the seats of honor immediately near to it now remained unoccupied. All eyes were fixed on the shining gates, through which the sovereign and his suite were to enter. The velarium too--the enormous canvas awning,[139] which was stretched across the whole oval of the amphitheatre and supported by fifty masts--bellied and flapped, as though it shared the impatience of the audience. Any one, seeing it for the first time, would have been tempted to think that the sky was about to fall in on the earth.