Lentulus outdid all his predecessors,
and was imitated by Scaurus in 58 B.C.[480] Cicero himself had to
undertake the Ludi Romani, Megalenses, and Florales in his aedileship;
how he managed it financially he does not tell us.[481] Caesar
undoubtedly borrowed largely, for his expenditure as aedile was
enormous,[482] and he had no private fortune of any considerable
amount.
Our friend Caelius Rufus was elected curule aedile while he was in
correspondence with Cicero, and his letters give us a good idea of the
condition of the mind of an ambitious young man who is bent on making
the most of himself. He is in a continual state of fidget about his
games; he has set his heart on getting panthers to exhibit and hunt,
and urges Cicero in letter after letter to procure them for him in
Cilicia. "It will be a disgrace to you," he writes in one of them,
"that Patiscus has sent ten panthers to Curio, and that you should not
send me ten times as many."[483] The provincial governor, he urges,
can do what he pleases; let Cicero send for some men of Cibyra, let
him write to Pamphylia, where they are most abundant, and he will get
what he wants, or rather what Caelius wants.
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