Equally horrifying to me was the contemplation of Caesar's extravagance. I knew that the Republic's income from all sources was insufficient to keep up the court establishment and ceremonials at their normal cost; to defray the expenses of the state festivals with befitting magnificence of games in the circuses, amphitheatres and theatres; to maintain the Praetorian guards, city police, road constabulary and frontier garrisons. I knew that all these branches of the necessary structure of the state were constantly in want of more funds than could be supplied to them. I knew that this want of supplies crippled our commanders along the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine and the Wall, as well as far up the Nile and in the Euxine and made possible the insolence of the Ethiopians and Caledonians as well as the greater insolence of the Parthians, Goths and Germans. Yet, when conditions so urgently called for greater expenditures along our frontiers and for close economy at home, I beheld our Prince stinting his commanders and their heroic legions and lavishing upon his own pleasure and the gratification of his amazing vanity sums which would have enabled our eagles not only to defy all assailants of our frontiers but to humble and subdue every threatening foe, even to penetrate and subjugate Nubia, Parthia and inner Germany. I sickened at the thought of our shame along the frontiers as at the thought of the energies of thousands upon thousands of hard-muscled, bold-hearted young men wasted on capturing beasts and the like energies of thousands upon thousands of hardy peasants who ought to have been busy at productive labor on farms or in forests or mines, wasted on caring for and transporting swarms of beasts for Commodus to kill. Those thoughts were depressing. I could not banish them.