[33] WAXEN SHIP. Such votive offerings are commonly mentioned. They were generally painted pictures, but models in wax or metal were also given. [34] NILE-WATER. The worshippers of Isis ascribed a special power to the waters of the Nile. [35] SESTERCES. A Roman silver coin worth about 4 or 5 cents. [36] ROMAN KNIGHT. During the reign of the emperors the free population of Rome was divided into three orders: senators, knights, and people (third order). The order of senators was limited to Rome, and in its hands lay the real political power, which in the time of the republic had been exercised by the assembled populace. To the senate belonged the right of conferring and recalling sovereign power, that is, by appointing and deposing the emperors, a right rarely exercised, it is true, but which the emperors formally recognized by allowing themselves to be confirmed by the senate. In their relation to this body, the emperors were only first among their peers, the members of this order being really their equals; a relation which, with the exception of Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus, the emperors during the first two centuries, more or less earnestly endeavored to maintain. (Friedlander. _Rom. Sittengesch._ I, 3.) The number of the old senatorial families was comparatively small. The second order, the knights (_equites_), was scattered over the whole empire. A class specially designated for military service, it became in the time of the Gracchi, a body of rich men, each of whom possessed a fortune of 400,000 sesterces, and also fulfilled the conditions of being of free birth and descent, blameless reputation, and refraining from dishonorable or indecorous methods of making money. Loss of this fortune, whether by their own fault or otherwise, entailed loss of rank. In consequence of the confusion and dissolution of all legal regulations through the civil war, these conditions were largely abrogated. While many who had formerly been entitled to belong to the order of knights, lost their rank through loss of fortune, others, who though possessing the needful property, had none of the other requisites, assumed without opposition the external distinctions of the knights, especially the gold ring and the seat of honor in the theatre. (Friedlander.) There were various degrees of rank in the order of knights, and also great diversity of fortune. Besides the poor titular knights, there were bankers, wholesale merchants, and the directors and members of great commercial companies and societies for mercantile enterprises of every kind.