ury and cruelty. He
always made three meals a day, sometimes four: breakfast, dinner, and
supper, and a drunken revel after all. This load of victuals he could
well enough bear, from a custom to which he had enured himself, of
frequently vomiting. For these several meals he would make different
appointments at the houses of his friends on the same day. None ever
entertained him at less expense than four hundred thousand sesterces
[712]. The most famous was a set entertainment given him by his brother,
at which, it is said, there were served up no less than two thousand
choice fishes, and seven thousand birds. Yet even this supper he himself
outdid, at a feast which he gave upon the first use of a dish which had
been made for him, and which, for its extraordinary size, he called "The
Shield of Minerva." In this dish there were tossed up together the
livers of char-fish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, with the
tongues of flamingos, and the entrails of lampreys, which had been
brought in ships of war as far as (436) from the Carpathian Sea, and the
Spanish Straits. He was not only a man of an insatiable appetite, but
would gratify it likewise at unseasonable times, and with any garbage
that came in his way; so that, at a sacrifice, he would snatch from the
fire flesh and cakes, and eat them upon the spot. When he travelled, he
did the same at the inns upon the road, whether the meat was fresh
dressed and hot, or what had been left the day before, and was
half-eaten.

XIV. He delighted in the infliction of punishments, and even those which
were capital, without any distinction of persons or occasions. Several
noblemen, his school-fellows and companions, invited by him to court, he
treated with such flattering caresses, as seemed to indicate an affection
short only of admitting them to share the honours of the imperial
dignity; yet he put them all to death by some base means or other. To
one he gave poison with his own hand, in a cup of cold water which he
called for in a fever. He scarcely spared one of all the usurers,
notaries, and publicans, who had ever demanded a debt of him at Rome, or
any toll or custom upon the road. One of these, while in the very act of
saluting him, he ordered for execution, but immediately sent for him
back; upon which all about him applauding his clemency, he commanded him
to be slain in his own presence, saying, "I have a mind to feed my eyes."
Two sons who interceded for