Dio's Rome, Volume 4: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 4: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
[-21-] After this, when his consulship had expired, he came to Rome and
prevented the consuls from acting as advocates to certain persons by
saying: "If I were consul, I should not do this."
One of the prætors was accused of having uttered some impious word or
having committed some impious act against him, whereupon the man left the
senate and taking off his robe of office returned, demanding as a private
citizen to have the complaint lodged at once. At this the emperor showed
great grief and molested him no further.
[A.D. 23 (_a. u._ 776)]
The dancers he drove out of Rome and would allow them no place in which
to practice their profession, because they kept debauching the women and
stirring up tumults.
He honored many men, and numbers of those who died, with statues and
public funerals. A bronze statue of Sejanus was erected in the theatre
during the life of the model. As a result, numerous images of this
minister were made by many persons and many encomiuma were spoken both in
the assembly and in the senate. The consuls themselves, besides the other
prominent citizens, regularly had recourse to his house just at dawn, and
communicated to him both all the private requests that any of them wished
to make of Tiberius and the public business which had to be taken up.
In brief, henceforth nothing of the kind was considered without his
knowledge.
About this time one of the largest porticos in Rome began to lean to one
side and was set upright in a remarkable way by a certain architect
whose name no one knows, because Tiberius, jealous of his wonderful
achievement, would not permit it to be entered in the records. This
architect, accordingly, however he was called after strengthening the
foundations all about, so that they could not move out of position, and
surrounding all the rest of the arcade with thick fleeces and cloths,
ran ropes all over it and through it and by the pushing of many men and
machines brought it once more into its previous position. At the time
Tiberius both admired him and felt envious of him; for the former reason
he honored him with a present of money and for the latter he expelled
him from the city. Later, the exile approached him to make supplication
during the course of which he purposely let fall a crystal goblet, which
fell apart somehow or was broken, and then by passing his hands over
it showed it straightway intact; for this the suppliant hoped to have
obtained pardon, but instead the emperor put him to death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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