I. The race of the Caesars became extinct in Nero

him, “And thou, child, too, wilt taste our imperial dignity.” Tiberius, likewise, being told that he would come to be emperor, but at an advanced age, exclaimed, “Let him live, then, since that does not concern me!” When his grandfather was offering sacrifice to (403) avert some ill omen from lightning, the entrails of the victim were snatched out of his hand by an eagle, and carried off into an oak-tree loaded with acorns. Upon this, the soothsayers said, that the family would come to be masters of the empire, but not until many years had elapsed: at which he, smiling, said, “Ay, when a mule comes to bear a foal.” When Galba first declared against Nero, nothing gave him so much confidence of success, as a mule’s happening at that time to have a foal. And whilst all others were shocked at the occurrence, as a most inauspicious prodigy, he alone regarded it as a most fortunate omen, calling to mind the sacrifice and saying of his grandfather. When he took upon him the manly habit, he dreamt that the goddess Fortune said to him, “I stand before your door weary; and unless I am speedily admitted, I shall fall into the hands of the first who comes to seize me.” On his awaking, when the door of the house was opened, he found a brazen statue of the goddess, above a cubit long, close to the threshold, which he carried with slim to Tusculum, where he used to pass the summer season; and having consecrated it in an apartment of his house, he ever after worshipped it with a monthly sacrifice, and an anniversary vigil. Though but a very young man, he kept up an ancient but obsolete custom, and now nowhere observed, except in his own family, which was, to have his freedmen and slaves appear in a body before him twice a day, morning and evening, to offer him their salutations.