Domitian | Page 8

all the world
over." About midnight, he was so terrified that he leaped out of bed.
That morning he tried and passed sentence on a soothsayer sent from
Germany, who being consulted about the lightning that had lately (494)
happened, predicted from it a change of government. The blood
running down his face as he scratched an ulcerous tumour on his
forehead, he said, "Would this were all that is to befall me!" Then,
upon his asking the time of the day, instead of five o'clock, which was
the hour he dreaded, they purposely told him it was six. Overjoyed at
this information; as if all danger were now passed, and hastening to the

bath, Parthenius, his chamberlain, stopped him, by saying that there
was a person come to wait upon him about a matter of great importance,
which would admit of no delay. Upon this, ordering all persons to
withdraw, he retired into his chamber, and was there slain.
XVII. Concerning the contrivance and mode of his death, the common
account is this. The conspirators being in some doubt when and where
they should attack him, whether while he was in the bath, or at supper,
Stephanus, a steward of Domitilla's [836], then under prosecution for
defrauding his mistress, offered them his advice and assistance; and
wrapping up his left arm, as if it was hurt, in wool and bandages for
some days, to prevent suspicion, at the hour appointed, he secreted a
dagger in them. Pretending then to make a discovery of a conspiracy,
and being for that reason admitted, he presented to the emperor a
memorial, and while he was reading it in great astonishment, stabbed
him in the groin. But Domitian, though wounded, making resistance,
Clodianus, one of his guards, Maximus, a freedman of Parthenius's,
Saturius, his principal chamberlain, with some gladiators, fell upon him,
and stabbed him in seven places. A boy who had the charge of the
Lares in his bed- chamber, and was then in attendance as usual, gave
these further particulars: that he was ordered by Domitian, upon
receiving his first wound, to reach him a dagger which lay under his
pillow, and call in his domestics; but that he found nothing at the head
of the bed, excepting the hilt of a (495) poniard, and that all the doors
were fastened: that the emperor in the mean time got hold of Stephanus,
and throwing him upon the ground, struggled a long time with him; one
while endeavouring to wrench the dagger from him, another while,
though his fingers were miserably mangled, to tear out his eyes. He was
slain upon the fourteenth of the calends of October [18th Sept.], in the
forty-fifth year of his age, and the fifteenth of his reign [837]. His
corpse was carried out upon a common bier by the public bearers, and
buried by his nurse Phyllis, at his suburban villa on the Latin Way. But
she afterwards privately conveyed his remains to the temple of the
Flavian family [838], and mingled them with the ashes of Julia, the
daughter of Titus, whom she had also nursed.
XVIII. He was tall in stature, his face modest, and very ruddy; he had

large eyes, but was dim-sighted; naturally graceful in his person,
particularly in his youth, excepting only that his toes were bent
somewhat inward, he was at last disfigured by baldness, corpulence,
and the slenderness of his legs, which were reduced by a long illness.
He was so sensible how much the modesty of his countenance
recommended him, that he once made this boast to the senate, "Thus far
you have approved both of my disposition and my countenance." His
baldness so much annoyed him, that he considered it an affront to
himself, if any other person was reproached with it, either in jest or in
earnest; though in a small tract he published, addressed to a friend,
"concerning the preservation of the hair," he uses for their mutual
consolation the words following:
Ouch oraas oios kago kalos te megas te; Seest thou my graceful mien,
my stately form?
"and yet the fate of my hair awaits me; however, I bear with fortitude
this loss of my hair while I am still young. Remember that nothing is
more fascinating than beauty, but nothing of shorter duration."
XIX. He so shrunk from undergoing fatigue, that he scarcely ever
walked through the city on foot. In his (496) expeditions and on a
march, he seldom rode on horse-back; but was generally carried in a
litter. He had no inclination for the exercise of arms, but was very
expert in the use of the bow. Many persons have seen him often kill a
hundred wild animals, of various kinds, at his Alban retreat, and fix his
arrows in their heads with