Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

“ Being besides a man of an appetite that was not only boundless, but also regardless of time or decency, he could never refrain, even when he was sacrificing or making a journey, from snatching bits of meat and cakes amid the altars, almost from the very fire, and devouring them on the spot ”

“ He had also a wonderful gift for flattery and was the first to begin to worship Gaius Caesar as a god; for on his return from Syria he did not presume to approach the emperor except with veiled head, turning himself about and then prostrating himself. To neglect no means of gaining the favour of Claudius, who was a slave to his wives and freedmen, [3] he begged of Messalina as the highest possible favour that she would allow him to take off her shoes ”

“ Moreover, he had himself invited to each of these meals by different men on the same day, and the materials for any one of them never cost less than four hundred thousand sesterces. Most notorious of all was the dinner given by his brother to celebrate the emperor's arrival in Rome, at which two thousand of the choicest fishes and seven thousand birds are said to have been starved. ”

“ For not content with the banquets which were furnished them everywhere at public expense, they set free whatever slaves they pleased, promptly paying those who remonstrated with blows and stripes, often with wounds, and sometimes with death. ”

“ A Roman knight also, who cried as he was being taken off to execution, "You are my heir," he compelled to show his will; and reading the one of the man's freedmen was put down as joint-heir with himself, he ordered the death both of the knight and the freedman. He even killed some of the common people, merely because they had openly spoke ill of the Blue faction, [22] handing that they had ventured to do this from contempt of himself and the anticipation of a change of rulers. ”

“ Others say that through weariness of present evils and fear of those which threatened, she asked poison of her son, and obtained it with no great difficulty.
15 In the eighth month of his reign the armies of the Moesian provinces and Pannonia revolted from him, and also in the provinces beyond the seas those of Judaea and Syria, the former swearing allegiance to Vespasian in his absence and the latter in his presence. Therefore, to retain the devotion and favour of the rest of the people, there was nothing that he did not lavish publicly and privately, without any limit whatever. ”

“ He was an honest and active man, but of very ill repute because of his passion for a freedwoman, which went so far that he used her spittle mixed with honey to rub on his throat and jaws as a medicine, not secretly nor seldom, but openly and every day. ”

“ I should believe that these came respectively from the flatterers and detractors of the emperor, were it not for a difference of opinion about the standing of the family at a considerably earlier date. We have a book of Quintus Elgoius addressed to Quintus Vitellius, quaestor of the Deified Augustus, in which it was written that the Vitellii were sprung from Faunus, king of the Aborigines, and Vitellia, who was worshipped as a goddess in many places ”

“ Vitellius made a banquet out of it.↑ Probably referring to the colossal statue of Athena Promachos on the Acropolis at Athens. Plin. N. H. xxxv. 163 ff., says that the platter cost a million sesterces, and that to make it a special furnace was built in the open fields.↑ That is, from the eastern to the western limits of the Roman world.↑ See Calig. liv. ”

“ An. 1.5, placet . . . non ex arcula prolata vestis . . . sed domestica et vilis, nec servata nec sumenda sollicite.↑ Vienne, on the Rhone.↑ See chap. xviii below.↑ In deserting Galba for Otho.↑ Modern Cologne.↑ The connection suggests an orgy in celebration of his victory.↑ A day of special ill omen because of the defeat by the Gauls in 390 B.C.↑ Dominicus (liber) was the name applied to a collection of Nero's compositions.↑ A drink made of sour wine or vinegar mixed with water.↑ The ientaculum was ordinarily a very light breakfast ”