The Twelve Caesars

by Suetonius

If I have pleased you, kindly signify Appreciation with a warm goodbye.

‘Some people are slow to do what they promise; you are slow to promise what you have already done.’

‘If So-and-so challenges me, I shall lay before you a careful account of what I have said and done; if that does not satisfy him, I shall reciprocate his dislike of me.’

A few days after he came to Capri a fisherman suddenly intruded on his solitude by presenting him with an enormous mullet, which he had lugged up the trackless cliffs at the rear of the island. Tiberius was so scared that he ordered his guards to rub the fisherman’s face with the mullet. The scales skinned it raw, and the poor fellow shouted in his agony: ‘Thank Heaven, I did not bring Caesar that huge crab I also caught!’ Tiberius sent for the crab and had it used in the same way.

‘Should his bronze beard really surprise use After all, he has an iron face and a heart of lead.’

What? Have I then neither friends nor enemies left?’

When this murderer begged for justice, protesting that he was a Roman citizen, Galba recognized his status and ironically consoled him with: ‘Let this citizen hang higher than the rest, and have his cross whitewashed.’