had ordered to be slain, his own son had been killed, he said, "It is
better to be Herod's pig than his son." Being entertained on one
occasion with a very poor dinner, and without any ceremony, as he was
passing out he whispered in the ear of his host, "I did not know that I
was such a friend of yours." A Roman knight having died enormously in
debt, Augustus ordered them to buy him his bed-pillow at the auction,
observing: "The pillow of a man who could sleep when he owed so much
must be truly soporific." A man who had been removed from a cavalry
command and asked for an allowance, "not from any mercenary motive, but
that I may seem to have resigned upon obtaining the grant from you," he
dismissed with the words: "Tell everybody you have received it. I will
not deny it."

Augustus kept a jester, Gabba, and patronised mimes, and among other
diversions with which he amused himself and his friends, was that of
giving presents by lottery; each drew a ticket upon which something was
named, but on applying for the article a totally different thing was
received, answering to a second meaning of the name. This occasioned
great merriment, a man who thought he was to get a grand present was
given a little sponge, or rake, or a pair of pincers; another who seemed
to have no claim whatever, obtained something very valuable. The humour
was not great, but a little refreshing distraction was thus obtained
from the cares of state. There is no loss in light literature so much to
be deplored as that of the correspondence between Augustus and Mecaenas.
The latter prided himself upon his skill in poetry and humour, and we
may be sure that he sent some of his choicest productions to Augustus,
who in turn exerted himself to send something worthy of the eye of so
celebrated a critic. It is not impossible that the Emperor showed
himself equal, if not superior to the friend of Horace.

Those who succeeded to the imperial purple proved very different from
their illustrious predecessor, and in Persius the severity of Roman
satire re-appears. We could scarcely expect a man who lived under Nero,
and after the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius to write with
the mild placidity of the Augustan poet. Moreover, the satires of
Persius were written at an early age--twenty-eight, and youth always
feels acutely, and expresses strongly. Some of his attacks are evidently
aimed at Nero, but his principal object is to denounce the vices of the
times