Certainly he was never so great again as he was that day. When with Caesar and Crassus he divided all the power of the State, he was only the second, and by far the second, of the three. His influence, his prestige, his popularity declined year by year. The good fortune which had followed him without ceasing from his earliest years now seemed to desert him. Even the shows, the most magnificent ever seen in the city, with which he entertained the people at the dedication of his theater (built at his own expense for the public benefit) were not wholly a success. Here is a letter of Cicero about them to his friend Marius; interesting as giving both a description of the scene and as an account of the writer's own feelings about it. "If it was some bodily pain or weakness of health that kept you from coming to the games, I must attribute your absence to fortune rather than to a judicious choice. But if you thought the things which most men admire contemptible, and so, though health permitted, would not come, then I am doubly glad; glad both that you were free from illness and that you were so vigorous in mind as to despise the sights which others so unreasonably admire.... Generally the shows were most splendid, but not to your taste, if I may judge of yours by my own. First, the veteran actors who for their own honor had retired from the stage, returned to it to do honor to Pompey. Your favorite, my dear friend Aesopus, acquitted himself so poorly as to make us all feel that he had best retire. When he came to the oath-- 'And if of purpose set I break my faith,'