=243. Miscellaneous Entries and Gossip in the Gazette.=--The entries go on to give the doings in the petty police courts, the copies of important wills with especial mention of any bequests that were left the Emperor, the statement that a certain eques had caught his wife in gross misconduct and divorced her; that a procurator for a large trading house was being prosecuted for embezzlement, and a summary of the evidence in a great violation of contract case between two marble importers now on trial in the Basilica Æmilia. Then follow magisterial edicts, lists of judicial appointments, and careful entries about all the doings of the Emperor and of his progress back toward Rome. Next is given a rather elaborate summary (evidently made by shorthand reporters) of the latest debate in the Senate, with careful entry of the applause and interruptions which the orators received. All this is more or less “official”; but the newsmongers are really more interested in “human interest stories” added by the publishers’ private authority. Thus it makes good reading to tell how a frantic admirer of a certain “Red” charioteer who was killed in the last races, cast himself on the funeral pyre of the beloved jockey, in order not to survive his idol; or to relate how a citizen of Fæsule has just visited Rome and sacrificed to Jupiter along with “eight children, thirty-six grandchildren, and nineteen great grandchildren.”[148] Furthermore, the report of love affairs among the noble and mighty is never omitted--how a senator’s wife has eloped with a gladiator, and how a certain oft-mentioned lady is about to wed an eighth husband. Finally (perhaps the most copied of all) there are, of course, the announcements for the coming exhibitions in the theater, amphitheater, and circus, with lists of the actors, gladiators, and charioteers, and other data, which can enable all Rome to arrange its wagers and its holidays. The Acta Diurna therefore goes about as far as is possible to create a real newspaper in the days of mere penmanship. Its vogue is immense. Many a fine lady sends her slave or freedman to the Forum every day to bring home a special copy. Its items will focus the conversation at a thousand dinner tables. Finally this publication will enjoy a certain degree of historic importance. After each issue has served its daily purpose, fair copies are deposited in the Public Record Office, and here they can be consulted many years later by the learned. It is from the files of the Acta Diurna that Tacitus and Suetonius have apparently drawn a great many of their anecdotes about the days of the early Emperors. CHAPTER XV THE PALATINE AND THE PALACE OF THE CÆSARS. THE GOVERNMENT OFFICES, AND THE POLICE AND CITY GOVERNMENT OF ROME =244. History of the Palatine: its Purchase by Augustus.=--There is one other great quarter of Rome, from the political standpoint the most important of all, the Palatine.