Book 31
4
The festival, including the gladiatorial shows and hunting, lasted thirty days, in the course of which there was continual round of spectacles. During the first five of these everybody in the gymnasium anointed himself with oil scented with saffron in gold vessels, of which there were fifteen, and the same number scented with cinnamon and nard. On the following days other vessels were brought in scented with fenugreek, marjoram, and lily, all of extraordinary fragrancy. Public banquets were also given, at which couches were prepared, sometimes for a thousand and sometimes for fifteen hundred, with the utmost splendour and costliness.
