plundering his subjects by every mode of exaction. The estates of the
living and the dead were sequestered upon any accusation, by whomsoever
preferred. The unsupported allegation of any one person, relative to a
word or action construed to affect the dignity of the emperor, was
sufficient. Inheritances, to which he had not the slightest pretension,
were confiscated, if there was found so much as one person to say, he had
heard from the deceased when living, "that he had made the emperor his
heir." Besides the exactions from others, the poll-tax on the Jews was
levied with extreme rigour, both on those who lived after the manner of
Jews in the city, without publicly professing themselves to be such
[822], and on those who, by (490) concealing their origin, avoided paying
the tribute imposed upon that people. I remember, when I was a youth, to
have been present [823], when an old man, ninety years of age, had his
person exposed to view in a very crowded court, in order that, on
inspection, the procurator might satisfy himself whether he was
circumcised. [824]

From his earliest years Domitian was any thing but courteous, of a
forward, assuming disposition, and extravagant both in his words and
actions. When Caenis, his father's concubine, upon her return from
Istria, offered him a kiss, as she had been used to do, he presented her
his hand to kiss. Being indignant, that his brother's son-in-law should
be waited on by servants dressed in white [825], he exclaimed,

ouk agathon polykoiraniae. [826]
Too many princes are not good.

XIII. After he became emperor, he had the assurance to boast in the
senate, "that he had bestowed the empire on his father and brother, and
they had restored it to him." And upon taking his wife again, after the