At the games celebrated by C. Antonius the stage was made of[831] silver; and the same was the case at those celebrated by L. Muræna. The Emperor Caius had a scaffold[832] introduced into the Circus, upon which there were one hundred and twenty-four thousand pounds’ weight of silver. His successor Claudius, on the occasion of his triumph over Britain, announced by the inscriptions that among the coronets of gold, there was one weighing seven thousand[833] pounds’ weight, contributed by Nearer Spain, and another of nine thousand pounds, presented by Gallia Comata.[834] Nero, who succeeded him, covered the Theatre of Pompeius with gold for one day,[835] the occasion on which he displayed it to Tiridates, king of Armenia. And yet how small was this theatre in comparison with that Golden Palace[836] of his, with which he environed our city. CHAP. 17.—AT WHAT PERIODS THERE WAS THE GREATEST QUANTITY OF GOLD AND SILVER IN THE TREASURY OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE. In the consulship of Sextus Julius and Lucius Aurelius,[837] seven years before the commencement of the Third Punic War, there was in the treasury of the Roman people seventeen thousand four hundred and ten pounds’ weight of uncoined gold, twenty-two thousand and seventy pounds’ weight of silver, and in specie, six million one hundred and thirty-five thousand four hundred sesterces. In the consulship of Sextus Julius and Lucius Marcius, that is to say, at the commencement of the Social War,[838] there was in the public treasury one million[839] six hundred and twenty thousand eight hundred and thirty-one pounds’ weight of gold. Caius Cæsar, at his first entry into Rome, during the civil war which bears his name, withdrew from the treasury fifteen thousand pounds’ weight in gold ingots, thirty thousand pounds’ weight in uncoined silver, and in specie, three hundred thousand sesterces: indeed, at no[840] period was the republic more wealthy. Æmilius Paulus, too, after the defeat of King Perseus, paid into the public treasury, from the spoil obtained in Macedonia, three hundred millions[841] of sesterces, and from this period the Roman people ceased to pay tribute. CHAP. 18.—AT WHAT PERIOD CEILINGS WERE FIRST GILDED. The ceilings which, at the present day, in private houses even, we see covered with gold, were first gilded in the Capitol, after the destruction of Carthage, and during the censorship of Lucius Mummius.[842] From the ceilings this luxuriousness has been since transferred to the arched roofs of buildings, and the party-walls even, which at the present day are gilded like so many articles of plate: very different from the times when Catulus[843] was far from being unanimously approved of for having gilded the brazen tiles of the Capitol! CHAP. 19.—FOR WHAT REASONS THE HIGHEST VALUE IS SET UPON GOLD.