One of the many great literary losses which the world has suffered is the loss of the letters of Augustus. Not only have we lost these letters, but we have also lost the private notes of Tiberius kept by him for the benefit of his successor, and burned by Caligula; the only fragments that we possess of the correspondence of Augustus certainly do not favour the view that there was any mistrust or want of sympathy between the two men. The fragments as they stand in Suetonius are as follows. The first was written in reply to a letter of Tiberius, complaining of the violence of language used by one Æmilius Ælianus, a native of Cordova, against the Emperor, and probably belongs to the period of the Cantabrian campaign, when Tiberius was still young. “Do not give way, my dear Tiberius, in this matter to the feelings natural to your time of life; do not be too ready to be indignant that there should be any one to speak evil of me; it is enough if we secure this, that nobody shall be able to do us any harm.” Then we have two purely domestic letters: “I dined, dear Tiberius, with the same party; Vinicius and the elder Silius were added to the company. During dinner we played a family game both yesterday and to-day, for we threw dice, and whoever threw ‘the dog,’ or six, paid a shilling into the pool for every dice thrown, which was taken by the player who threw ‘Venus.’” “We spent the holidays pleasantly enough, my dear Tiberius, for we played all day and every day, and made the dice market pretty hot. Your brother carried on with plenty of shouting; on the whole, however, he did not lose much, but recovered his losses contrary to all expectation. I lost about £170 on my own account, but because I had been prodigally liberal in my play, as I usually am; for if I had exacted all the winnings that I passed over, or had kept in my own pocket all that I gave anybody, I should have won nearly £420. However, I like it best as it is, for my charity will exalt me to eternal glory.” Again a familiar scrap: “Not even a Jew, my dear Tiberius, preserves his sabbath fast so carefully as I did to-day, for it was not till after the first hour of the night that I at last chewed a couple of mouthfuls in the bath, before I began to be perfumed.”