As the fierceness of the hot Italian sun diminished, and the streets began to fill, the praises of the dead man passed from mouth to mouth; one would remember the humility with which he had pressed the claims of his chosen candidates for public office, and the courtesy with which he had asked for a vote; another would recall him studiously fulfilling the sacred duty of a patron, and pleading in the Forum on behalf of a humble client; yet another would describe him standing at his own door once a year dressed in white begging for alms to bestow on the needy; others would speak of the modesty of his household, the model of an ancient Roman family where Livia his consort herself superintended the weaving of her maids; nor would the gayer sort forget his interest in the shows of the circus, or fail to tell stories of his modest bets, and somewhat liberal jokes; the scholar would speak of his simple entertainments in which the poet and the historian shared in the conversation on terms of equality with their host; those of more serious mind would dwell on his scrupulous attention to the ordinances of religion, his restoration of temples and shrines and their various cults; while the tender-hearted would deplore his private sorrows, the premature deaths that had snatched away his grandsons, the scandals that had bereft his home of his daughter and granddaughter; nor would they fail to bewail the fact that the only possible successor to his heritage and his power was an alien in blood. As the days wore on the symptoms of the public sorrow increased, and the authorities began to fear that the order of the funeral might be marred by some such frantic outburst as had attended the obsequies of the first great Cæsar, whose body had been seized by an excited mob and burned in the public market place; regulations were issued to ensure such order as the Prince himself would have commanded, and to prevent the licences into which an orgy of sorrow might degenerate. Day by day was reported the slow progress of the procession from the small country house in Campania in which he had died to the gates of the city; here the body had been guarded and carried by soldiers, there by the knights, the second order in the State, and lastly the Senators themselves were waiting to receive it, and conduct it on the final stage of its journey into Rome.