s small a number as possible, for the dispatch of
which, otherwise, the lives of the litigants could scarcely allow
sufficient time.

XI. Lust and luxury, from the licence which had long prevailed, had also
grown to an enormous height. He, therefore, obtained a decree of the
senate, that a woman who formed an union with the slave of another
person, should be considered (454) a bondwoman herself; and that usurers
should not be allowed to take proceedings at law for the recovery of
money lent to young men whilst they lived in their father's family, not
even after their fathers were dead.

XII. In other affairs, from the beginning to the end of his government,
he conducted himself with great moderation and clemency. He was so far
from dissembling the obscurity of his extraction, that he frequently made
mention of it himself. When some affected to trace his pedigree to the
founders of Reate, and a companion of Hercules [753], whose monument is
still to be seen on the Salarian road, he laughed at them for it. And he
was so little fond of external and adventitious ornaments, that, on the
day of his triumph [754], being quite tired of the length and tediousness
of the procession, he could not forbear saying, "he was rightly served,
for having in his old age been so silly as to desire a triumph; as if it
was either due to his ancestors, or had ever been expected by himself."
Nor would he for a long time accept of the tribunitian authority, or the
title of Father of his Country. And in regard to the custom of searching
those who came to salute him, he dropped it even in the time of the civil
war.

XIII. He bore with great mildness the freedom used by his friends, the
satirical allusions of advocates, and the petulance of philosophers.
Licinius Mucianus, who had been guilty of notorious acts of lewdness,
but, presuming upon his great services, treated him very rudely, he
reproved only in private; and when complaining of his conduct to a common
friend of theirs, he concluded with these words, "However, I am a man."
Salvius Liberalis, in pleading the cause of a rich man under prosecution,
presuming to say, "What is it to Caesar, if Hipparchus possesses a
hundred millions of sesterces?" he commended him for it. Demetrius, the
Cynic philosopher [755], (455) who had been sentenced to banishment,
meeting him on the road, and refusing to rise up or salute him, nay,
snarling at him in scurrilous language, he only called him a