ainst him. After he had been made proctor, being
arrested among the accomplices of Sejanus, and delivered into the hands
of his brother to be confined in his house, he opened a vein with a
penknife, intending to bleed himself to death. He suffered, however, the
wound to be bound up and cured, not so much from repenting the resolution
he had formed, as to comply with the importunity of his relations. He
died afterwards a natural death during his confinement. Lucius, after
his consulship [694], was made governor of Syria [695], and by his
politic management not only brought Artabanus, king of the Parthians, to
give him an interview, but to worship the standards of the Roman legions.
He afterwards filled two ordinary consulships [696], and also the
censorship [697] jointly with the emperor Claudius. Whilst that (429)
prince was absent upon his expedition into Britain [698], the care of the
empire was committed to him, being a man of great integrity and industry.
But he lessened his character not a little, by his passionate fondness
for an abandoned freedwoman, with whose spittle, mixed with honey, he
used to anoint his throat and jaws, by way of remedy for some complaint,
not privately nor seldom, but daily and publicly. Being extravagantly
prone to flattery, it was he who gave rise to the worship of Caius Caesar
as a god, when, upon his return from Syria, he would not presume to
accost him any otherwise than with his head covered, turning himself
round, and then prostrating himself upon the earth. And to leave no
artifice untried to secure the favour of Claudius, who was entirely
governed by his wives and freedmen, he requested as the greatest favour
from Messalina, that she would be pleased to let him take off her shoes;
which, when he had done, he took her right shoe, and wore it constantly
betwixt his toga and his tunic, and from time to time covered it with
kisses. He likewise worshipped golden images of Narcissus and Pallas
among his household gods. It was he, too, who, when Claudius exhibited
the secular games, in his compliments to him upon that occasion, used
this expression, "May you often do the same."

III. He died of palsy, the day after his seizure with it, leaving behind
him two sons, whom he had by a most excellent and respectable wife,
Sextilia. He had lived to see them both consuls, the same year and
during the whole year also; the younger succeeding the elder for the last
six months [699]. The