seized it. Livia gave orders to have the hen taken care of, and the
sprig of laurel set; and the hen reared such a numerous brood of
chickens, that the villa, to this day, is called the Villa of the Hens
[640]. The laurel groves flourished so much, that the Caesars procured
thence the boughs and crowns they bore at their triumphs. It was also
their constant custom to plant others on the same spot, immediately after
a triumph; and it was observed that, a little before the death of each
prince, the tree which had been set by him died away. But in the last
year of Nero, the whole plantation of laurels perished to the very roots,
and the hens all died. About the same time, the temple of the Caesars
[641] being struck with lightning, the heads of all the statues in it
fell off at once; and Augustus's sceptre was dashed from his hands.

II. Nero was succeeded by Galba [642], who was not in the remotest
degree allied to the family of the Caesars, but, without doubt, of very
noble extraction, being descended from a great and ancient family; for he
always used to put amongst his other titles, upon the bases of his
statues, his being great-grandson to Q. Catulus Capitolinus. And when he
came to (401) be emperor, he set up the images of his ancestors in the
hall [643] of the palace; according to the inscriptions on which, he
carried up his pedigree on the father's side to Jupiter; and by the
mother's to Pasiphae, the wife of Minos.

III. To give even a short account of the whole family, would be tedious.
I shall, therefore, only slightly notice that branch of it from which he
was descended. Why, or whence, the first of the Sulpicii who had the
cognomen of Galba, was so called, is uncertain. Some are of opinion,
that it was because he set fire to a city in Spain, after he had a long
time attacked it to no purpose, with torches dipped in the gum called
Galbanum: others said he was so named, because, in a lingering disease,