would put slippers upon his hands; as he lay snoring, that he might, upon
awaking, rub his face with them.

IX. He was not only exposed to contempt, but sometimes likewise to
considerable danger: first, in his consulship; for, having been too
remiss in providing and erecting the statues of Caius's brothers, Nero
and Drusus, he was very near being deprived of his office; and afterwards
he was continually harassed with informations against him by one or
other, sometimes even by his own domestics. When the conspiracy of
Lepidus and Gaetulicus was discovered, being sent with some other
deputies into Germany [474], to congratulate the emperor upon the
occasion, he was in danger of his life; Caius being greatly enraged, and
loudly complaining, that his uncle was sent to him, as if he was a boy
who wanted a governor. Some even say, that he was thrown into a river,
in his travelling dress. From this period, he voted in the senate always
the last of the members of consular rank; being called upon after the
rest, on purpose to disgrace him. A charge for the forgery of a will was
also allowed to be prosecuted, though he had only signed it as a witness.
At last, being obliged to pay eight millions of sesterces on entering
upon a new office of priesthood, he was reduced to such straits in his
private affairs, that in order to discharge his bond to the treasury, he
was under the necessity of exposing to sale his whole estate, by an order
of the prefects.

X. Having spent the greater part of his life under these and the like
circumstances, he came at last to the empire in the fiftieth year of his
age [475], by a very surprising turn of fortune. Being, as well as the
rest, prevented from approaching Caius by the conspirators, who dispersed
the crowd, under the pretext of his desiring to be private, he retired
into an apartment called the Hermaeum [476]; and soon afterwards,