in them." The terrible legend fits in
aptly with the appearance of this forbidding dizzy precipice, especially
on a dark stormy afternoon, when the dull roar of the waves dashing
against the cliffs below, mounts upward to the Villa Jovis like the angry
bellowing of some insatiable sea-monster.

It was whilst brooding here after the death of Sejanus in Rome, that the
Emperor, not daring to move beyond the walls of his palace, shunning the
society of all save his familiar friends and attendants, and with his face
disfigured by an eruption of the skin of which he was painfully sensitive,
that there took place an incident (which may or may not be true) mentioned
by Suetonius. In the privacy of this villa Tiberius was one day surprised
by an ingenious Capriote fisherman, who in ignorance or defiance of the
Emperor's wishes had managed to scale with his naked feet the steep cliffs
from the sea below, in order to present a fine mullet for the imperial
table, and of course to earn a high reward for his "gift." Terrified at
the mere notion of anybody being able thus to penetrate into his most
secret domain, the irate Emperor at once gave orders for the intruder's
face to be scrubbed with the mullet he had brought, a sentence that the
imperial minions performed without delay. The intrepid fisherman might
have congratulated himself on so mild a punishment for having disturbed a
tyrant's repose, had he not been possessed of an unusually strong sense of
humour. For at the close of the mullet-scrubbing episode, the foolish
fellow remarked by way of a jest to the officer on duty, that he was
thankful he had not also offered the emperor a large crab which he had
likewise brought in his basket. This imprudent speech was immediately
reported to Tiberius, who thereupon commanded the man's face to be
lacerated with the aforesaid crab's claws; but whether this pleasing
incident ended with a cold plunge from the Salto, the Roman historian does
not relate.

Other tales of Timberio's vices and cruelties have been handed down from
generation to generation, so that the dark deeds committed at the Salto
have almost passed into a local article of faith; and such being the case,
it would seem almost a pity to pronounce these picturesque horrors untrue
or exaggerated. Nevertheless, of recent years there has arisen amongst
scholars a certain degree of scepticism as regards these highly coloured
anecdotes of Roman historians known to be prejudiced. T