others, lest any thing of that kind should be requested of him;
especially after he was obliged to give freedom to the comedian Actius.
Having relieved the poverty of a few senators, to avoid further demands,
he declared that he should for the future assist none, but those who gave
the senate full satisfaction as to the cause of their necessity. Upon
this, most of the needy senators, from modesty and shame, declined
troubling him. Amongst these was Hortalus, grandson to the celebrated
orator Quintus Hortensius, who [marrying], by the persuasion of Augustus,
had brought up four children upon a very small estate.

XLVIII. He displayed only two instances of public munificence. One was
an offer to lend gratis, for three years, a hundred millions of sesterces
to those who wanted to borrow; and the other, when, some large houses
being burnt down upon Mount Caelius, he indemnified the owners. To the
former of these he was compelled by the clamours of the people, in a
great scarcity of money, when he had ratified a decree of the senate
obliging all money-lenders to advance two-thirds of their capital on
land, and the debtors to pay off at once the same proportion of their
debts, and it was found insufficient to remedy the grievance. The other
he did to alleviate in some degree the pressure of the times. But his
benefaction to the sufferers by fire, he estimated at so high a rate,
that he ordered the Caelian Hill to be called, in future, the Augustan.
To the soldiery, after doubling the legacy left them by Augustus, he
never gave any thing, except a thousand denarii a man to the pretorian
guards, for not joining the party of Sejanus; and some presents to the
legions in Syria, because they alone had not paid reverence to the
effigies of Sejanus among their standards. He seldom gave discharges to
the veteran soldiers, calculating (222) on their deaths from advanced
age, and on what would be saved by thus getting rid of them, in the way
of rewards or pensions. Nor did he ever relieve the provinces by any act