Chap. 1.] TEEES SOLD AT ENOEMOUS PRICES. 439 



trious families, after holding the consulship, 5 were appointed 

 jointly to the censorship, in the year from the building of the 

 City 662, a period of office that was fruitful in strife, the 

 natural result of their dissimilarity of character. On one oc- 

 casion, Cneius Domitius, naturally a man of hasty temper, and 

 inflamed besides by a hatred that rivalry only tends to stimu- 

 late, gravely rebuked Crassus for living, and he a Censor too, 

 in a stjde of such magnificence, and in a house for which, as 

 he said, he himself would be ready to pay down ten millions 

 of sesterces. Crassus, a man who united to singular presence 

 of mind great readiness of wit, made answer that, deducting 

 six trees only, he would accept the offer ; upon which Domi- 

 tius replied, that upon those terms he would not give so much 

 as a single denarius for the purchase. " Well then, Domi- 

 tius," was the rejoinder of Crassus, " which of the two is it 

 that sets a bad example, and deserves the reproof of the cen- 

 sorship ; I, who live like a plain man in a house that has 

 come to me by inheritance, or you, who estimate six trees 

 at a value of ten millions of sesterces r" 6 These trees were 

 of the lotus 7 kind, and by the exuberance of their branches 

 afforded a most delightful shade. Csecina Largus, one of the 

 grandees of Rome, and the owner of the house, used often to 

 point them out to me in my younger days ; and, as I have al- 

 ready made mention 8 of the remarkable longevity of trees, I 

 would here add, that they were in existence down to the pe- 

 riod when the Emperor Nero set fire to the City, one hundred 

 and eighty years after the time of Crassus : being still green 

 and with all the freshness of youth upon them, had not that 

 prince thought fit to hasten the death of the very trees even. 



Let no one, however, imagine that the house of Crassus was 

 of no value in other respects, or that, from the rebuke of Domi- 

 tius, there was nothing about it worthy of remark with the 

 exception of these trees. There were to be seen erected in the 

 atrium four columns of marble from Mount Hymettus, 8 -which 

 in his sedileship he had ordered to be brought over for the de- 

 coration of the stage ; 9 and this at a time, too, when no public 



5 A.u.c. 659. 



6 Valerius Maximus, B. ix. c. 1, relates this story somewhat differently. 



7 The Celtis Australis of Linnaeus. 



8 See B. xxxvi. cc. 3 and 24. 



9 When, in his capacity of aedile, he gave theatrical representations for 

 the henefit of the public. 



