His fatherly care of all classes, and the universal benignity with
which he attempted to raise the abject estimate and condition of even the
lowest _Pariars_ in his vast empire, appears in another little
anecdote, relating to a class of men equally with the gladiators given up
to the service of luxury in a haughty and cruel populace. Attending one
day at an exhibition of rope-dancing, one of the performers (a boy) fell
and hurt himself; from which time the paternal emperor would never allow
the rope-dancers to perform without mattrasses or feather-beds spread
below, to mitigate the violence of their falls.] In this he meditated no
reflection upon his father by adoption, the Emperor Pius, (who also, for
aught we know, might secretly revolt from a species of amusement which, as
the prescriptive test of munificence in the popular estimate, it was
necessary to support;) on the contrary, he obeyed him with the
punctiliousness of a Roman obedience; he watched the very motions of his
countenance; and he waited so continually upon his pleasure, that for
three-and-twenty years which they lived together, he is recorded to have
slept out of his father's palace only for two nights.
Pages:
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211