To return to the Caesars.  The humorous vein which we have traced in the family descended to Augustus—­the great nephew of Julius.  Some of his sayings, which have survived, show him to have been as pleasant in his wit as he was proverbially happy in his fortunes.

When the inhabitants of Tarraco made him a fulsome speech, telling him that they had raised an altar to him as their presiding deity, and that, marvellous to relate, a splendid palm tree had grown up on it:  “That shows,” replied the Emperor, “how often you kindle a fire there.”  To Galba, a hunchback orator, who was pleading before him, and frequently saying, “Set me right, if I am wrong,” he replied, “I can easily correct you, but I cannot set you right.”

The following will give a slight idea of the variety of his humour.

When he heard that, among the children under two years old whom Herod had ordered to be slain, his own son had been killed, he said, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.”  Being entertained on one occasion with a very poor dinner, and without any ceremony, as he was passing out he whispered in the ear of his host, “I did not know that I was such a friend of yours.”  A Roman knight having died enormously in debt, Augustus ordered them to buy him his bed-pillow at the auction, observing:  “The pillow of a man who could sleep when he owed so much must be truly soporific.”  A man who had been removed from a cavalry command and asked for an allowance, “not from any mercenary motive, but that I may seem to have resigned upon obtaining the grant from you,” he dismissed with the words:  “Tell everybody you have received it.  I will not deny it.”

Augustus kept a jester, Gabba, and patronised mimes, and among other diversions with which he amused himself and his friends, was that of giving presents by lottery; each drew a ticket upon which something was named, but on applying for the article a totally different thing was received, answering to a second meaning of the name.  This occasioned great merriment, a man who thought he was to get a grand present was given a little sponge, or rake, or a pair of pincers; another who seemed to have no claim whatever, obtained something very valuable.  The humour was not great, but a little refreshing distraction was thus obtained from the cares of state.  There is no loss in light literature so much to be deplored as that of the correspondence between Augustus and Mecaenas.  The latter prided himself upon his skill in poetry and humour, and we may be sure that he sent some of his choicest productions to Augustus, who in turn exerted himself to send something worthy of the eye of so celebrated a critic.  It is not impossible that the Emperor showed himself equal, if not superior to the friend of Horace.