of generosity, excepting Asia, where some cities had been destroyed by an
earthquake.

XLIX. In the course of a very short time, he turned his mind to sheer
robbery. It is certain that Cneius Lentulus, the augur, a man of vast
estate, was so terrified and worried by his threats and importunities,
that he was obliged to make him his heir; and that Lepida, a lady of a
very noble family, was condemned by him, in order to gratify Quirinus, a
man of consular rank, extremely rich, and childless, who had divorced her
twenty years before, and now charged her with an old design to poison
him. Several persons, likewise, of the first distinction in Gaul, Spain,
Syria, and Greece, had their estates confiscated upon such despicably
trifling and shameless pretences, that against some of them no other
charge was preferred, than that they held large sums of ready money as
part of their property. Old immunities, the rights of mining, and of
levying tolls, were taken from several cities and private persons. And
Vonones, king of the Parthians, who had been driven out of his dominions
by his own subjects, and fled to Antioch with a vast treasure, claiming
the protection of the Roman people, his allies, was treacherously robbed
of all his money, and afterwards murdered.

L. He first manifested hatred towards his own relations in the case of
his brother Drusus, betraying him by the production of a letter to
himself, in which Drusus proposed that Augustus should be forced to
restore the public liberty. In course of time, he shewed the same
disposition with regard to the rest of his family. So far was he from
performing any office of kindness or humanity to his wife, when she was
banished, and, by her father's order, confined to one town, that he
forbad her to stir out of the house, or converse with any men. He even
wronged her of the dowry given her by her father, and of her yearly