Domitian | Page 4

year.

VIII. In the administration of justice he was diligent and assiduous; and
frequently sat in the Forum out of course, to cancel the judgments of
the court of The One Hundred, which had been procured through
favour, or interest. He occasionally cautioned the judges of the court of
recovery to beware of being too ready to admit claims for freedom
brought before them. He set a mark of infamy upon judges who were
convicted of taking bribes, as well as upon their assessors. He likewise
instigated the tribunes of the people to prosecute a corrupt aedile for
extortion, and to desire the senate to appoint judges for his trial. He
likewise took such effectual care in punishing magistrates of the city,
and governors of provinces, guilty of malversation, that they never
were at any time more moderate or more just. Most of these, since his
reign, we have seen prosecuted for crimes of various kinds. Having
taken upon himself the reformation of the public manners, he restrained
the licence of the populace in sitting promiscuously with the knights in
the theatre. Scandalous libels, published to defame persons of rank, of
either sex, he suppressed, and inflicted upon their authors a mark of
infamy. He expelled a man of quaestorian rank from the senate, for
practising mimicry and dancing. He debarred infamous women the use
of litters; as also the right of receiving legacies, or inheriting estates. He
struck out of the list of judges a Roman knight for taking again his wife
whom he had divorced and prosecuted for adultery. He condemned
several men of the senatorian and equestrian orders, upon the
Scantinian law [813]. The lewdness of the Vestal Virgins, which had
been overlooked by his father and brother, he punished severely, but in
different ways; viz. offences committed before his reign, with death,
and those since its commencement, according to ancient custom. For to
the two sisters called Ocellatae, he gave liberty to choose the mode of
death which they preferred, and banished (486) their paramours. But
Cornelia, the president of the Vestals, who had formerly been acquitted
upon a charge of incontinence, being a long time after again prosecuted
and condemned, he ordered to be buried alive; and her gallants to be
whipped to death with rods in the Comitium; excepting only a man of
praetorian rank, to whom, because he confessed the fact, while the case
was dubious, and it was not established against him, though the
witnesses had been put to the torture, he granted the favour of
banishment. And to preserve pure and undefiled the reverence due to

the gods, he ordered the soldiers to demolish a tomb, which one of his
freedmen had erected for his son out of the stones designed for the
temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and to sink in the sea the bones and relics
buried in it.
IX. Upon his first succeeding to power, he felt such an abhorrence for
the shedding of blood, that, before his father's arrival in Rome, calling
to mind the verse of Virgil,
Impia quam caesis gens est epulata juvencis, [814]
Ere impious man, restrain'd from blood in vain, Began to feast on flesh
of bullocks slain,
he designed to have published a proclamation, "to forbid the sacrifice
of oxen." Before his accession to the imperial authority, and during
some time afterwards, he scarcely ever gave the least grounds for being
suspected of covetousness or avarice; but, on the contrary, he often
afforded proofs, not only of his justice, but his liberality. To all about
him he was generous even to profusion, and recommended nothing
more earnestly to them than to avoid doing anything mean. He would
not accept the property left him by those who had children. He also set
aside a legacy bequeathed by the will of Ruscus Caepio, who had
ordered "his heir to make a present yearly to each of the senators upon
their first assembling." He exonerated all those who had been under
prosecution from the treasury for above five years before; and would
not suffer suits to be renewed, unless it was done within a year, and on
condition, that the prosecutor should be banished, if he could not make
good his cause. The secretaries of the quaestors having engaged in
trade, according to custom, but contrary to (487) the Clodian law [815],
he pardoned them for what was past. Such portions of land as had been
left when it was divided amongst the veteran soldiers, he granted to the
ancient possessors, as belonging to then by prescription. He put a stop
to false prosecutions in the exchequer, by severely punishing the
prosecutors; and this saying of his was much taken notice of "that a
prince who does not punish informers, encourages them."
X. But he did not long