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Title: Sergius Sulpicius Galba (Galba)
The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Volume 7.

Author: C. Suetonius Tranquillus

Release Date: December 13, 2004 [EBook #6392]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERGIUS SULPICIUS GALBA ***

Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger

THE LIVES
OF
THE TWELVE CAESARS

By
C. Suetonius Tranquillus;

To which are added,

HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, AND POETS.

The Translation of
Alexander Thomson, M.D.

revised and corrected by
T.Forester, Esq., A.M.

SERGIUS SULPICIUS GALBA.

(400)

I. The race of the Caesars became extinct in Nero; an event
prognosticated by various signs, two of which were particularly
significant. Formerly, when Livia, after her marriage with Augustus, was
making a visit to her villa at Veii [639], an eagle flying by, let drop
upon her lap a hen, with a sprig of laurel in her mouth, just as she had
seized it. Livia gave orders to have the hen taken care of, and the
sprig of laurel set; and the hen reared such a numerous brood of
chickens, that the villa, to this day, is called the Villa of the Hens
[640]. The laurel groves flourished so much, that the Caesars procured
thence the boughs and crowns they bore at their triumphs. It was also
their constant custom to plant others on the same spot, immediately after
a triumph; and it was observed that, a little before the death of each
prince, the tree which had been set by him died away. But in the last
year of Nero, the whole plantation of laurels perished to the very roots,
and the hens all died. About the same time, the temple of the Caesars
[641] being struck with lightning, the heads of all the statues in it
fell off at once; and Augustus's sceptre was dashed from his hands.

II.