rary rest and retirement from the cares of government, he led the
same kind of plain, modest life, spending all his leisure hours in
arranging his collections of natural history, more especially the
palaeo-ethnological or prehistoric, for which the ossiferous caverns of
the Island of Capri supplied him with abundant materials.

It was only after the victory of Actium that, finding himself master of
the world, he thought it expedient to give up, in a certain measure, his
former habits, and live in better style. Having bought through his
agents some of the aristocratic palaces adjoining the old house of
Hortensius, among them the historical palace of Catiline, he built a
new and very handsome residence, but declared at the same time that he
considered it as public property, not as his own. The solemn dedication
of the palace took place on January 14th, of the year 26 before Christ.
Here he lived, sleeping always in the same small cubiculum, for
twenty-eight years; that is to say, until the third year after Christ,
when the palace was almost destroyed by fire.

As soon as the news of the disaster spread throughout the empire, an
almost incredible amount of money was subscribed at once, by all orders
of citizens, to provide him with a new residence; and altho, with his
usual moderation, he would consent to accept only one denarius from each
individual subscribed, it is easy to imagine how many millions he must
have realized in spite of his modesty. A new, magnificent palace rose
from the ruins of the old one, but it does not appear that the plan and
arrangement were changed; otherwise Augustus could not have continued to
sleep in the same room during the last ten years of his life, as we are
told positively that he did.

The work of Augustus was continued by his successor and kinsman,
Tiberius, who built a new wing near the northwest corner of the hill,
overlooking the Velabrum. Caligula filled with new structures the whole
space between the "domus Tiberiana" and the Roman forum. Nero, likewise,
occupied with a new palace the south-east corner of the hill,
overlooking the valley, where the Coliseum was afterward built. Domitian
rebuilt the "domus Augustana," injured by fire, adding to its
accommodations a stadium for gymnastic sports. The same emperor raised
an altogether new palace, in the space between the house of Augustus, on
one side, and those of Caligula and Tiberius on the other. Septimius
Severus and his son rest