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2At the same time, by paying all the bequests of Tiberius, as if they were his own, to every one else, he gained with the multitude a certain reputation for generosity. Thus, in company with the senate, he inspected the Pretorians at drill and distributed to them the money that had been bequeathed them, amounting to a thousand sesterces apiece; and he added as much more on his own account. 2To the people he paid over the forty-five millions bequeathed to them, and, in addition, the two hundred and forty sesterces apiece which they had failed to receive on the occasion of his assuming the toga virilis, together with interest amounting to sixty sesterces. 3He also paid the bequests to the city troops, to the night-watch, to those of the regular army outside of Italy, and to any other army of citizens that was in the smaller forts, the city guard receiving five hundred sesterces per man, and all the others three hundred. 4He behaved in this same way also in regard to Livia’s will, executing all its provisions. And if he had only spent the rest of the money in a fitting manner, he would have been regarded as a generous and munificent ruler. It was, to be sure, his fear of the people and the soldiers that in some instances led him to make these gifts, but in general they were made on principle; for he paid the bequests not only of Tiberius but also of his great-grandmother, as well those left to private citizens as the public ones. 5As it was, however, he lavished boundless sums upon actors (whose recall he at once brought about), upon horses, upon gladiators, and everything of the sort; and thus in the briefest space of time he exhausted the large sums of money that had accumulated in the treasury and at the same time convicted himself of having made the earlier gifts, also, as the result of an easy-going temper and lack of judgment. 6At all events he had found in the treasury 2,300,000,000 or, according to others, 3,300,000,000 sesterces, and yet did not make any part of it last into the third year, but in his very second year found himself in need of vast sums in addition.
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