The elephants would not enter the
vessels when they were leaving Africa, till they received a promise
from their leaders that they should not he injured; the treacherous
treatment of them at the games was the cause of their loud
lamentations, in which they appealed to the deity against the
violation of the solemn promise. (Dion Cassius.) Cicero, who was not
fond of exhibitions of the kind, speaks with disgust of the whole
affair (_Ad Diversos_, vii. 1). The letter of Cicero, written at the
time, is valuable contemporary evidence. Various facts on the
exhibition of elephants at Rome are collected in the Library of
Entertaining Knowledge, _Menageries_, Elephant.
A rhinoceros was also exhibited at the games of Pompeius; and an
actress was brought on the stage, who had made her first appearance in
the consulship of C. Marius the younger, and Cn. Carbo B.C. 82, but
she made her appearance again in the time of Augustus, A.D. 9, in the
consulship of Poppaeus, when she was 103 years old, 91 years after her
first appearance. (Plinius, _H.N_. vii. 49.) Drumann says, when
speaking of the games of Pompeius, "a woman of unusually advanced age
was brought forward;" but the words of Plinius "anus pro miraculo
reducta," apply to her last appearance. A woman of one-and-forty was
no uncommon thing then, nor is it now. The pointing in the common
texts is simply the cause of the blunder.]
[Footnote 327: See the Life of Crassus, c.
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