f October [18th Sept.], in the forty-fifth
year of his age, and the fifteenth of his reign [837]. His corpse was
carried out upon a common bier by the public bearers, and buried by his
nurse Phyllis, at his suburban villa on the Latin Way. But she
afterwards privately conveyed his remains to the temple of the Flavian
family [838], and mingled them with the ashes of Julia, the daughter of
Titus, whom she had also nursed.

XVIII. He was tall in stature, his face modest, and very ruddy; he had
large eyes, but was dim-sighted; naturally graceful in his person,
particularly in his youth, excepting only that his toes were bent
somewhat inward, he was at last disfigured by baldness, corpulence, and
the slenderness of his legs, which were reduced by a long illness. He
was so sensible how much the modesty of his countenance recommended him,
that he once made this boast to the senate, "Thus far you have approved
both of my disposition and my countenance." His baldness so much annoyed
him, that he considered it an affront to himself, if any other person was
reproached with it, either in jest or in earnest; though in a small tract
he published, addressed to a friend, "concerning the preservation of the
hair," he uses for their mutual consolation the words following:

Ouch oraas oios kago kalos te megas te;
Seest thou my graceful mien, my stately form?

"and yet the fate of my hair awaits me; however, I bear with fortitude
this loss of my hair while I am still young. Remember that nothing is
more fascinating than beauty, but nothing of shorter duration."

XIX. He so shrunk from undergoing fatigue, that he scarcely ever walked
through the city on foot. In his (496) expeditions and on a march, he
seldom rode on horse-back; but was generally carried in a litter. He had
no inclination for the exercise of arms, but was very expert in the use
of the bow. Many persons have seen him often kill a hundred wild
animals, of various kinds, at his Alban retreat, and fix his arrows in
their heads with such dexterity, that he could, in two shots, plant them,
like a pair of horns, in each. He would sometimes direct his arrows
against the hand of a boy standing at a distance, and expanded as a mark,
with such precision, that they all passed between the boy's fingers,
without hurting him.

XX. In the beginning of his reign, he gave up the study of the liberal
sciences, though he took care to restore, at a vast expense, the
lib