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“Baltheus en! gemmis, en illita porticus auro:”

[“A belt glittering with jewels, and a portico overlaid
with gold.”
–Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 47. A baltheus was a
shoulder-belt or baldric.]

all the sides of this vast space filled and environed, from the bottom to the top, with three or four score rows of seats, all of marble also, and covered with cushions:

“Exeat, inquit,
Si pudor est, et de pulvino surgat equestri,
Cujus res legi non sufficit;”

[“Let him go out, he said, if he has any sense of shame, and
rise from the equestrian cushion, whose estate does not satisfy
the law.”
–Juvenal, iii. 153. The Equites were required to possess
a fortune of 400 sestertia, and they sat on the first fourteen
rows behind the orchestra.]

where a hundred thousand men might sit at their ease: and, the place below, where the games were played, to make it, by art, first open and cleave in chasms, representing caves that vomited out the beasts designed for the spectacle; and then, secondly, to be overflowed by a deep sea, full of sea monsters, and laden with ships of war, to represent a naval battle; and, thirdly, to make it dry and even again for the combat of the gladiators; and, for the fourth scene, to have it strown with vermilion grain and storax,–[A resinous gum.]–instead of sand, there to make a solemn feast for all that infinite number of people: the last act of one only day:

“Quoties nos descendentis arenae
Vidimus in partes, ruptaque voragine terrae
Emersisse feras, et eisdem saepe latebris
Aurea cum croceo creverunt arbuta libro!….
Nec solum nobis silvestria cernere monstra
Contigit; aequoreos ego cum certantibus ursis
Spectavi vitulos, et equorum nomine dignum,
Sen deforme pecus, quod in illo nascitur amni….”

[“How often have we seen the stage of the theatre descend
and part asunder, and from a chasm in the earth wild
beasts emerge, and then presently give birth to a grove
of gilded trees, that put forth blossoms of enamelled
flowers. Nor yet of sylvan marvels alone had we sight:
I saw sea-calves fight with bears, and a deformed sort of
cattle, we might call sea-horses.”–Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 64.]

Sometimes they made a high mountain advance itself, covered with fruit-trees and other leafy trees, sending down rivulets of water from the top, as from the mouth of a fountain: otherwhiles, a great ship was seen to come rolling in, which opened and divided of itself, and after having disgorged from the hold four or five hundred beasts for fight, closed again, and vanished without help. At other times, from the floor of this place, they made spouts of perfumed water dart their streams upward, and so high as to sprinkle all that infinite multitude. To defend themselves from the injuries of the weather, they had that vast place one while covered over with purple curtains of needlework, and by-and-by with silk of one or another colour, which they drew off or on in a moment, as they had a mind:

“Quamvis non modico caleant spectacula sole,
Vela reducuntur, cum venit Hermogenes.”

[“The curtains, though the sun should scorch the spectators,
are drawn in, when Hermogenes appears.”-Martial, xii. 29, 15.
Tigellius Hermogenes, whom Horace and others have satirised.
One editor calls him “a noted thief,” another: “He was a
literary amateur of no ability, who expressed his critical
opinions with too great a freedom to please the poets of his day.” D.W.]

The network also that was set before the people to defend them from the violence of these turned-out beasts was woven of gold:

“Auro quoque torts refulgent
Retia.”

[“The woven nets are refulgent with gold.”
–Calpurnius, ubi supra.]