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
divorce, he declared by proclamation, "that he had recalled her to his
pulvinar." [827] He was not a little pleased too, at hearing the
acclamations of the people in the amphitheatre on a day of festival, "All
happiness to our lord and lady." But when, during the celebration of the
Capitoline trial of skill, the whole concourse of people entreated him
with one voice to restore Palfurius Sura to his place in the senate, from
which he had been long before expelled--he having then carried away the
prize of eloquence from all the orators who had contended for it,--he did
not vouchsafe to give them any answer, but only commanded silence to be
proclaimed by the voice of the crier. With equal arrogance, when he
dictated the form of a letter to be used by his procurators, he began it
thus: "Our lord and god commands so and so;" whence it became a rule that
no one should (491) style him otherwise either in writing or speaking.
He suffered no statues to be erected for him in the Capitol, unless they
were of gold and silver, and of a certain weight. He erected so many
magnificent gates and arches, surmounted by representations of chariots
drawn by four horses, and other triumphal ornaments, in different
quarters of the city, that a wag inscribed on one of the arches the Greek
word Axkei, "It is enough." [828] He filled the office of consul
seventeen times, which no one had ever done before him, and for the seven
middle occasions in successive years; but in scarcely any of them had he
more than the title; for he never continued in office beyond the calends
of May [the 1st May], and for the most part only till the ides of January
[13th January]. After his two triumphs, when he as