20: See VESPASIAN, c. xiv.]

[Footnote 821: This cruel punishment is described in NERO, c. xlix.]

[Footnote 822: Gentiles who were proselytes to the Jewish religion; or,
perhaps, members of the Christian sect, who were confounded with them.
See the note to TIBERIUS, c. xxxvi. The tax levied on the Jews was two
drachmas per head. It was general throughout the empire.]

[Footnote 823: We have had Suetonius's reminiscences, derived through his
grandfather and father successively, CALIGULA, c. xix.; OTHO, c. x. We
now come to his own, commencing from an early age.]

[Footnote 824: This is what Martial calls, "Mentula tributis damnata."]

[Footnote 825: The imperial liveries were white and gold.]

[Footnote 826: See CALIGULA, c. xxi., where the rest of the line is
quoted; eis koiranos esto.]

[Footnote 827: An assumption of divinity, as the pulvinar was the
consecrated bed, on which the images of the gods reposed.]

[Footnote 828: The pun turns on the similar sound of the Greek word for
"enough," and the Latin word for "an arch."]

[Footnote 829: Domitia, who had been repudiated for an intrigue with
Paris, the actor, and afterwards taken back.]

[Footnote 830: The lines, with a slight accommodation, are borrowed from
the poet Evenus, Anthol. i. vi. i., who applies them to a goat, the great
enemy of vineyards. Ovid, Fasti, i. 357, thus paraphrases them:

Rode caper vitem, tamen hinc, cum staris ad aram,
In tua quod spargi cornua possit erit.]

[Footnote 831: Pliny describes this stone as being brought from
Cappadocia, and says that it was as hard as marble, white and translucent,
cxxiv. c. 22.]

[Footnote 832: See note to c. xvii.]

[Footnote 833: The guilt imputed to them was atheism and Jewish
(Christian?) manners. Dion, lxvii. 1112.]

[Footnote 834: See VESPASIAN, c. v.]

[Footnote 835: Columella (R. R. xi. 2.) enumerates dates among the
foreign fruits cultivated in Italy, cherries, dates, apricots, and
almonds; and Pliny, xv. 14, informs us that Sextus Papinius was the first
who introduced the date tree, having brought it from Africa, in the latter
days of Augustus.]

[Footnote 836: Some suppose that Domitilla was the wife of Flavius
Clemens (c. xv.), both of whom were condemned by Domitian for their
"impiety," by which it is probably meant that they were suspected of
favouring Christianity. Eusebius makes Flavia Domitilla the niece of
Flavius Clemens, and says that she