In the year 16 A.D. Hortalus rose in his place in the Senate, having posted his four sons at the door, where they could be seen by all; he then spoke as follows, fixing his eyes alternately on the statue of Hortensius standing among the orators, and that of Augustus:--“It was not by my own will, but at the suggestion of the Prince, that I begot and acknowledged these children, whose number and tender years you behold; and indeed my ancestors had deserved that I should have successors. For I, who owing to the revolutionary times could neither inherit the ancestral property of my house, nor earn money, nor win the affections of the people, nor train myself in eloquence, should have had enough if my poverty had neither shamed nor burdened others. At the command of the Emperor I married a wife. Behold the stock and progeny of all those consuls and dictators. I do not say this to disparage anybody else, but to win your compassion. The offices that you confer, Cæsar, will be at your service while you reign; meanwhile defend the great-grandchildren of Quintus Hortensius, the children fostered by the sainted Augustus, from want.” In spite of the mendacity of this statement--for on the father’s side, at any rate, the family of Hortensius could only claim the credit of two consulships and no dictatorships--the appeal was heard with favour by the Senate, till Tiberius intervened with these words:--“If all the poverty-stricken begin to come here and demand money for their children, the applicants will never be satiated, and the public purse will run dry. And indeed it was certainly never contemplated by our ancestors when they allowed Senators to leave the matter in hand, and move amendments for the public benefit, that we should endeavour to increase our private fortunes in this place in such a manner as to render the Senate and the Princes unpopular, whether they granted or refused the largess. This is not a humble request; it is an impudent demand, unseasonable, and unprecedented, to rise when the Senate are assembled for the discussion of other matters, and do violence to the kindness of the Senate by urging the number and age of one’s children, and to pass on the same violence to me, and as it were break open the treasury, which we shall have to supplement by injustice, if we exhaust it in courting popularity. Money was given to you, Hortalus, by the sainted Augustus, but without previous application, and certainly not on the terms that once given it should be always given. Industry will slacken, indolence will gain strength, if men’s hopes and fears are not to depend on themselves, if all are confidently to look for resources from outside, useless to themselves and a burden to us.” Tiberius was clearly in the right, but the authorities whom Tacitus consulted evidently thought that Hortalus had been hardly used, for the narrative is continued:--“Although these and similar words were