office. The minister soon after renewing his application, "You must,"
said he, "find another brother; for the one you adopted is in truth
mine."

Suspecting once, during a journey, that his mule-driver had alighted to
shoe his mules, only in order to have an opportunity for allowing a
person they met, who was engaged in a law-suit, to speak to him, he asked
him, "how much he got for shoeing his mules?" and insisted on having a
share of the profit. When his son Titus blamed him for even laying a tax
upon urine, he applied to his nose a piece of the money he received in
the first instalment, and asked him, "if it stunk?" And he replying no,
"And yet," said he, "it is derived from urine."

Some deputies having come to acquaint him that a large statue, which
would cost a vast sum, was ordered to be erected for him at the public
expense, he told them to pay it down immediately, (461) holding out the
hollow of his hand, and saying, "there was a base ready for the statue."
Not even when he was under the immediate apprehension and peril of death,
could he forbear jesting. For when, among other prodigies, the mausoleum
of the Caesars suddenly flew open, and a blazing star appeared in the
heavens; one of the prodigies, he said, concerned Julia Calvina, who was
of the family of Augustus [771]; and the other, the king of the
Parthians, who wore his hair long. And when his distemper first seized
him, "I suppose," said he, "I shall soon be a god." [772]

XXIV. In his ninth consulship, being seized, while in Campania, with a
slight indisposition, and immediately returning to the city, he soon
afterwards went thence to Cutiliae [773], and his estates in the country
about Reate, where he used constantly to spend the summer. Here, though
his disorder much increased, and he injured his bowels by too free use of