Curiously enough the auction sales of the Urbs were provided with an employé whose function seems to have survived in the public sales of Paris. The Latin _præco_ is something like the French _crieur_ whose office it is at public auctions to extol and praise the objects offered for sale. It must be said that the _præco_, however, was not only a simple _crieur_ but at times a sort of director of the sale, thus combining the functions of _commissaire priseur_, _expert_ and _crieur_, but it was certainly in the latter function that his ability best contributed to the success of the sale. Some of these employés must have enriched themselves like regular _commissaires priseurs_. Horace (I. Ep., 7) describes one of these _crieurs_ as indulging in luxury, making money easily and scattering it like water, allowing himself every kind of pleasure and yielding tremendously to fashion. A curious description, suggesting that this Vulteius Menas of Horace must have had the lucky career of some of the Parisian auction employés and cannot have been indifferent to that form of gay self-indulgence that Parisians call: _Faire la bombe_. Speaking of auctions and the way Romans disposed of their goods to the highest bidder, it is worth while to refer to what Suetonius tells us happened at the sale held by Caligula, who being short of money thought fit one day to put up to auction everything in the royal palace that was either useless or considered out of fashion, _quidquid instrumenti veteris aulæ erat_. According to Suetonius not only was the Emperor himself present at the auction, but he put prices on the various objects, bidding on them as well. An old prætor, Aponius Saturninus, became sleepy during the sale, and in dozing kept on nodding his head. Caligula noticed it, and told the auctioneer not to lose sight of that buyer and to put up the price each time Saturninus nodded. When the old man finally awoke he realized that without knowing it he had bought at the Imperial auction about £80,000 worth of goods (Cal., 39). Pliny relates an amusing story, which shows that then, as now, the auctioneer was allowed to group objects. “At a sale,” he says, “Theonius, the _crieur_, made a single lot of a fine bronze candelabra, and a slave named Clesippus, humpbacked and extremely ugly. The courtesan Gegania bought the lot for 50,000 sesterces (about £400). The same night at supper she showed her acquisitions, exhibiting the naked slave to the gibes of the guests. Then yielding to a freakish passion, made of him her lover and heir. Clesippus thus became extremely wealthy and worshipped the candelabra with a devotion as though it were his god” (XXXIV, 6). As stated above, other sales generally took place in various parts of Rome where antiquaries and bric-à-brac dealers had assembled their shops. A great many of these merchants had gathered in the Via Sacra or the _Septa_ of the _Villa Publica_, or _Septa Julia_.