Domitian | Page 6

to prevail upon your affection for me, however extraordinary the
request may seem, as to grant the condemned criminals the favour of
dying in the manner they choose. For by so doing, ye will spare your
own eyes, and the world will understand that I interceded with the
senate on their behalf."

XII. Having exhausted the exchequer by the expense of his buildings
and public spectacles, with the augmentation of pay lately granted to
the troops, he made an attempt at the reduction of the army, in order to
lessen the military charges. But reflecting, that he should, by this
measure, expose himself to the insults of the barbarians, while it would
not suffice to extricate him from his embarrassments, he had recourse
to plundering his subjects by every mode of exaction. The estates of the
living and the dead were sequestered upon any accusation, by
whomsoever preferred. The unsupported allegation of any one person,
relative to a word or action construed to affect the dignity of the
emperor, was sufficient. Inheritances, to which he had not the slightest
pretension, were confiscated, if there was found so much as one person
to say, he had heard from the deceased when living, "that he had made
the emperor his heir." Besides the exactions from others, the poll-tax on
the Jews was levied with extreme rigour, both on those who lived after
the manner of Jews in the city, without publicly professing themselves
to be such [822], and on those who, by (490) concealing their origin,
avoided paying the tribute imposed upon that people. I remember,
when I was a youth, to have been present [823], when an old man,
ninety years of age, had his person exposed to view in a very crowded
court, in order that, on inspection, the procurator might satisfy himself
whether he was circumcised. [824]
From his earliest years Domitian was any thing but courteous, of a
forward, assuming disposition, and extravagant both in his words and
actions. When Caenis, his father's concubine, upon her return from
Istria, offered him a kiss, as she had been used to do, he presented her
his hand to kiss. Being indignant, that his brother's son-in-law should
be waited on by servants dressed in white [825], he exclaimed,
ouk agathon polykoiraniae. [826] Too many princes are not good.
XIII. After he became emperor, he had the assurance to boast in the
senate, "that he had bestowed the empire on his father and brother, and
they had restored it to him." And upon taking his wife again, after the
divorce, he declared by proclamation, "that he had recalled her to his
pulvinar." [827] He was not a little pleased too, at hearing the

acclamations of the people in the amphitheatre on a day of festival, "All
happiness to our lord and lady." But when, during the celebration of the
Capitoline trial of skill, the whole concourse of people entreated him
with one voice to restore Palfurius Sura to his place in the senate, from
which he had been long before expelled--he having then carried away
the prize of eloquence from all the orators who had contended for
it,--he did not vouchsafe to give them any answer, but only commanded
silence to be proclaimed by the voice of the crier. With equal arrogance,
when he dictated the form of a letter to be used by his procurators, he
began it thus: "Our lord and god commands so and so;" whence it
became a rule that no one should (491) style him otherwise either in
writing or speaking. He suffered no statues to be erected for him in the
Capitol, unless they were of gold and silver, and of a certain weight. He
erected so many magnificent gates and arches, surmounted by
representations of chariots drawn by four horses, and other triumphal
ornaments, in different quarters of the city, that a wag inscribed on one
of the arches the Greek word Axkei, "It is enough." [828] He filled the
office of consul seventeen times, which no one had ever done before
him, and for the seven middle occasions in successive years; but in
scarcely any of them had he more than the title; for he never continued
in office beyond the calends of May [the 1st May], and for the most
part only till the ides of January [13th January]. After his two triumphs,
when he assumed the cognomen of Germanicus, he called the months
of September and October, Germanicus and Domitian, after his own
names, because he commenced his reign in the one, and was born in the
other.
XIV. Becoming by these means universally feared and odious, he was
at last taken off by a conspiracy of his friends and favourite freedmen,
in concert with his wife [829]. He had long entertained a suspicion