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Notes Display Latin text | Vespasian, Chapter 22: His use of language[AD 69-79] | Next chapter Return to index Previous chapter |
| Not only at dinner but on all other occasions he was most affable, and he turned off many matters with a jest; for he was very ready with sharp sayings, albeit of a low and buffoonish kind, so that he did not even refrain from obscene expressions. Yet many of his remarks are still remembered which are full of fine wit, and among them the following. When an ex-consul called Mestrius Florus called his attention to the fact that the proper pronunciation was plaustra ["Plaustra" was the original form of the word for wagons," but there was also a plebeian form plostra"; see Hor. Serm. 1.6.42, and cf., Claudius, Clodius] rather than plostra, he greeted him next day as Flaurus. When he was importuned by a woman, who said that she was dying with love for him, he took her to his bed and gave her four hundred thousand sesterces for her favors. Being asked by his steward how he would have the sum entered in his accounts, he replied: "To a passion for Vespasian." |