[Sidenote: A.D. 80 (a.u. 833)] [Sidenote:--24--] Another fire, above ground, in the following year spread over a very large portion of Rome while Titus was absent on business connected with the catastrophe that had befallen in Campania. It consumed the temple of Serapis, the temple of Isis, the Saepta, the temple of Neptune, the Baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon, the Diribitorium, the theatre of Balbus, the stage-building of Pompey's theatre, the Octavian buildings together with their books, and the temple of Capitoline Jupiter with its surrounding temples. Hence the disaster seemed to be not of human but of divine contrivance. Any one can estimate from the list of buildings that I have given, how many more must have been destroyed. Titus, accordingly, sent two exconsuls to the Campanians to supervise the founding of settlements and bestowed upon the inhabitants money that came (besides various other sources) from those citizens that had died without heirs. As for himself, he took nothing from individual or city or king, although many kept offering and promising him large sums. In spite of this, he restored everything from funds already at hand. [Sidenote:--25--] Most of his deeds had no unusual quality to mark them, but in dedicating the hunting-theatre and the baths that bear his name he produced many remarkable spectacles. Cranes fought with one another, and four elephants, as well as other grazing animals and wild beasts, to the number of nine thousand, were slaughtered, and women (not of any prominence, however,) took part in despatching them. Of men several fought in single combat and several groups contended together in infantry and naval battles. For Titus filled the above mentioned theatre suddenly with water and introduced horses and bulls and some other tractable creatures that had been taught to behave in the liquid element precisely as upon land. He introduced also human beings on boats. These persons had a sea-fight there, impersonating two parties, Corcyreans and Corinthians: others gave the same performance outside in the grove of Gaius and Lucius, a spot which Augustus had formerly excavated for this very purpose. There, on the first day, a gladiatorial combat and slaughter of beasts took place; this was done by building a structure of planks over the lake that faced the images and placing benches round about it. On the second day there was a horse-race, and on the third a naval battle involving three thousand men. Afterwards there was also an infantry battle. The Athenians conquered the Syracusans (these were the names that were used in the naval battle), made a landing on the islet, and having assaulted a wall constructed around the monument took it. These were the sights offered to spectators, and they lasted for a hundred days.