The Life of Tiberius, 48

Suetonius  translated by J. C. Rolfe

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48He showed generosity to the public in but two instances, once when he offered to lend a hundred million sesterces without interest for a period of three years, and again when he made good the losses of some owners of blocks of houses on the Caelian mount, which had burned down. The former was forced upon him by the clamour of the people for help in a time of great financial stress, after he had failed to relieve the situation by a decree of the senate, providing that the money-lenders should invest two-thirds of their property in land, and that the debtors should at once pay the same proportion of their indebtedness; and the latter also was to relieve a condition of great hardship. Yet he made so much of his liberality in the latter case, that he had the name of the Caelian changed to the Augustan Mount. 2After he had doubled the legacies provided for in the will of Augustus, he never gave largess to the soldiers, with the exception of a hundred denarii to each of the praetorians, for not taking sides with Sejanus, and some presents to the legions in Syria, because they alone had consecrated no image of Sejanus among their standards. He also very rarely allowed veteran soldiers their discharge, having an eye to their death from years, and a saving of money through their death. He did not relieve the provinces either by any act of liberality, except Asia, when some cities were destroyed by an earthquake.

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