Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

“ He himself too made a remarkable pretence of modesty and especially of an interest in poetry, an art which had previously been as unfamiliar to him as it was later despised and rejected, and he even gave readings in public. Yet in spite of all this, when Vologaesus, king of the Parthians, had asked for auxiliaries against the Alani and for one of Vespasian's sons as their leader, Domitian used every effort to have himself sent rather than Titus ”

“ Meanwhile the emperor grappled with Stephanus and bore him to the ground, where they struggled for a long time, Domitian trying now to wrest the dagger from his assailant's hands and now to gouge out his eyes with his lacerated fingers.
He was slain on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of October in the forty-fifth year of his age and the fifteenth of his reign. His corpse was carried out on a common bier by those who bury the poor, and his nurse Phyllis cremated it at her suburban estate on the Via Latina ”

“ For he did not possess a single piece of plate and it is a well known fact that Claudius Pollio, a man of praetorian rank, against whom Nero's poem entitled "The One-eyed Man" is directed, preserved a letter in Domitian's handwriting and sometimes exhibited it, in which the future emperor promised him an assignation; and there have not been wanting those who declared that Domitian was also debauched by Nerva, who succeeded him. In the war with Vitellius he took refuge in the Capitol with his paternal uncle Sabinus and a part of the forces under him. ”

“ For eight successive months so many strokes of lightning occurred and were reported, that at last he cried: "Well, let him now strike whom he will." The temple of Jupiter of the Capitol was struck and that of the Flavian family, as well as the Palace and the emperor's own bedroom. The inscription too on the base of a triumphal statue of his was torn off in a violent tempest and fell upon a neighbouring tomb. [61] The tree which had been overthrown when Vespasian was still a private citizen but had sprung up anew, [62] then on a sudden fell down again. ”

“ But he exercised all the tyranny of his high position [4] so lawlessly, that it was even then apparent what sort of a man he was going to be. Not to mention all details, after making free with the wives of many men, he went so far as to marry Domitia Longina, who was the wife of Aelius Lamia, and in a single day he assigned more than twenty positions in the city and abroad, [5] which led Vespasian to say more than once that he was surprised that he did not appoint the emperor's successor with the rest. ”

“ Junius Rusticus, because he had published eulogies of Paetus Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus and called them the most upright of men; and on the occasion of this charge he banished all the philosophers from the city and from Italy. He also executed the younger Helvidius, alleging that in a farce composed for the stage he had under the characters of Paris and Oenone censured Domitian's divorce from his wife; Flavius Sabinus too, one of his cousins, because on the day of the consular elections the crier had inadvertently announced him to the people as emperor elect, instead of consul. ”

“ He suffered no statues to be set up in his honour in the Capitol, except of gold and silver and of a fixed weight. He erected so many and such huge vaulted passage-ways and arches in the various regions of the city, adorned with chariots and triumphal emblems, that on one of them someone wrote in Greek: "It is enough." [54] He held the consulship seventeen times, more often than any of his predecessors. ”

“ He put to death many senators, among them several ex-consuls, including Civica Cerealis, at the very time when he was proconsul in Asia, Salvidienus Orfitus, Acilius Glabrio while he was in exile--these on the ground of plotting revolution, the rest on any charge, which were reflections on him, it is true, but made long before and harmless. For when Domitian had taken away Lamia's wife, [44] the latter replied to someone who praised his voice: "I practise continence"; [45] and when Titus urged him to marry again, he replied: "Are you too looking for a wife?" ”

“ And yet the same fate awaits my hair, and I bear with resignation the ageing of my locks in youth. Be assured that nothing is more pleasing than beauty, but nothing shorter-lived."
19 He was incapable of exertion and seldom went about the city on foot, while on his campaigns and journeys he rarely rode on horseback, but was regularly carried in a litter. ”

“ He celebrated the Quinquatria [17] too every year in honour of Minerva at his Alban villa, and established for her a college of priests, from which men were chosen by lot to act as officers and give splendid shows of wild beasts and stage plays, besides holding contests in oratory and poetry.
He made a present to the people of three hundred sesterces each on three occasions, and in the course of one of his shows in celebration of the feast of the Seven Hills gave a plentiful banquet, [18] distributing large baskets of victuals to the senate and knights, and smaller one to the commons ”

“ From his youth he was far from being of an affable disposition, but was on the contrary presumptuous and unbridled both in act and in word. When his father's concubine Caenis [49] returned from Histria and offered to kiss him as usual, he held out his hand to her. He was vexed that his brother's son-in-law had attendants clad in white, as well as he, and uttered the words
"Not good is a number of rulers." [50]
13 When he became emperor, he did not hesitate to boast in the senate that he had conferred their power on both his father and his brother, and that they had but returned him his own ”

“ The senators on the contrary were so overjoyed, that they raced to fill the House, where they did not refrain from assailing the dead emperor with the most insulting and stinging kind of outcries. They even had ladders brought and his shields [74] and images torn down before their eyes and dashed upon the ground ”

“ Once upon the occasion of a plentiful wine crop, attended with a scarcity of grain, thinking that the fields were neglected through too much attention to the vineyards, he made an edict forbidding anyone to plant more vines in Italy and ordering that the vineyards in the provinces be cut down, or but half of them at most be left standing; but he did not persist in carrying out the measure. [28] He opened some of the most important offices of the court [29] to freedmen and Roman knights. ”

“ There are many who have more than once seen him slay a hundred wild beasts of different kinds on his Alban estate, and purposely kill some of them with two successive shots in such a way that the arrows gave the effect of horns. Sometimes he would have a slave stand at a distance and hold out the palm of his right hand for a mark, with the fingers spread ”

“ He added two factions of drivers in the Circus, with gold and purple as their colours, to the four former ones. [27] He forbade the appearance of actors on the stage, but allowed the practice of their art in private houses. He prohibited the castration of males, and kept down the price of the eunuchs that remained in the hands of the slave dealers. ”

“ Tac. Ann.; Val. Max. 3.2.9.↑ According to Plin. N. H. xxxvi. 163, a hard, white, translucent stone discovered in Cappadocia in the reign of Nero. According to Tzetzes, Lyc. 98, φεγγίτης = σεληνίτης, "moonstone." Pliny also mentions similar mirrors of black obsidian; N. H. xxxvi. 96.↑ Cf. Nero, xl. 2.↑ Cf. Nero, xlix. 4.↑ It was evidently on a metal plate, attached to the marble base.↑ See Vesp. v. 4.↑ Fortuna Primigenia; cf. Tib. xliii. 1.↑ Including the burning of the body, to prevent the fulfilment of the prophecy.↑ Niece of Domitian.↑ See Aug. vii. ”