[138] Obliging persons to return thanks for an injury was a refinement in tyranny frequently practised by the worst of the Roman emperors. Thus Seneca informs us, that "Caligula was thanked by those whose children had been put to death, and whose property had been confiscated." (De Tranquil, xiv.) And again;--"The reply of a person who had grown old in his attendance on kings, when he was asked how he had attained a thing so uncommon in courts as old age? is well known. It was, said he, by receiving injuries, and returning thanks."--De Ira, ii. 33. [139] From a passage in Dio, lxxviii. p. 899, this sum appears to have been _decies sestertium_, about 9,000_l._ sterling. [140] Thus Seneca: "Little souls rendered insolent by prosperity have this worst property, that they hate those whom they have injured."--De Ira, ii. 33. [141] Several who suffered under Nero and Domitian erred, though nobly, in this respect. [142] A Greek epigram still extant of Antiphilus, a Byzantine, to the memory of a certain Agricola, is supposed by the learned to refer to the great man who is the subject of this work. It is in the Anthologia, lib. i. tit. 37. [143] Dio absolutely affirms it; but from the manner in which Tacitus, who had better means of information, speaks of it, the story was probably false. [144] It appears that the custom of making the emperor co-heir with the children of the testator was not by any means uncommon. It was done in order to secure the remainder to the family. Thus Prasutagus, king of the Iceni in Britain, made Nero co-heir with his two daughters. Thus when Lucius Vetus was put to death by Nero, his friends urged him to leave part of his property to the emperor, that his grandsons might enjoy the rest. (Ann. xvi. 11.) Suetonius (viii. 17) mentions that Domitian used to seize the estates of persons the most unknown to him, if any one could be found to assert that the deceased had expressed an intention to make the emperor his heir.--_White_. [145] Caligula. This was A.D. 40, when he was sole consul. [146] According to this account, the birth of Agricola was on June 13th, in the year of Rome 793, A.D. 40; and his death on August 23d, in the year of Rome 846 A.D. 93: for this appears by the Fasti Consulares to have been the year of the consulate of Collega and Priscus. He was therefore only in his fifty-fourth year when he died; so that the copyists must probably have written by mistake LVI. instead of LIV. [147] From this representation, Dio appears to have been mistaken in asserting that Agricola passed the latter part of his life in dishonor and penury. [148] Juvenal breaks out in a noble strain of indignation against this savage cruelty, which distinguished the latter part of Domitian's reign: