Comitium; excepting only a man of praetorian rank, to whom, because he
confessed the fact, while the case was dubious, and it was not
established against him, though the witnesses had been put to the
torture, he granted the favour of banishment. And to preserve pure and
undefiled the reverence due to the gods, he ordered the soldiers to
demolish a tomb, which one of his freedmen had erected for his son out of
the stones designed for the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and to sink in
the sea the bones and relics buried in it.

IX. Upon his first succeeding to power, he felt such an abhorrence for
the shedding of blood, that, before his father's arrival in Rome, calling
to mind the verse of Virgil,

Impia quam caesis gens est epulata juvencis, [814]

Ere impious man, restrain'd from blood in vain,
Began to feast on flesh of bullocks slain,

he designed to have published a proclamation, "to forbid the sacrifice of
oxen." Before his accession to the imperial authority, and during some
time afterwards, he scarcely ever gave the least grounds for being
suspected of covetousness or avarice; but, on the contrary, he often
afforded proofs, not only of his justice, but his liberality. To all
about him he was generous even to profusion, and recommended nothing more
earnestly to them than to avoid doing anything mean. He would not accept
the property left him by those who had children. He also set aside a
legacy bequeathed by the will of Ruscus Caepio, who had ordered "his heir
to make a present yearly to each of the senators upon their first
assembling." He exonerated all those who had been under prosecution from
the treasury for above five years before; and would not suffer suits to