VESPASIAN AND HIS MULETEER. 63 



the solea ; so that Catullus only referred to it in a figur- 

 ative but popular sense. 



To show that the soleoD were probably fastened to the 

 extremity in this manner, the example afforded by Sue- 

 tonius (a.d. 120), may be quoted. In that historian\i 

 ' Lives of the Twelve Emperors,' when treating of Ves- 

 pasian (a.d. 60), he casually intimates that this good 

 Emperor was in the habit of preserving the feet of his 

 mules when travelling. Suspecting once during a journey 

 that his mule-driver had alighted to shoe his mules, in 

 order to have an opportunity for allowing a person they 

 met, and who was engaged in a law-suit, to speak to him, 

 he (Vespasian) asked him how much he got for shoeing 

 the mules, and insisted on having a share of the profits.' 



The Commentator of Suetonius, under the Life of 

 Vespasian, has made the same blunder in introducing 

 words into the text which do not belong to it as 

 Stephanus ; and this, as Bracy Clark has pointed out, has 

 induced Schoeffer, the author of ' De Re Vehiculari 

 Veterum,' to perpetuate the error. He writes : ' Ut testa- 

 tur Suetonius in Vespasiano, qui frequenter solebat lectica 

 deferri in villam suam Catiliam, sed a mulis quoniam 

 quadraginta milliarum intervallo abesset Roma : Hinc 

 qui lecticam ejus deferebat, solicitatoris cujusdam donis 

 corruptus, e mulis retentus fingeret se aptaturum soleam. 

 ferream pedi unius ex mulis, tempus dabat supplici ad 

 porrigendum Imperatori libellum.' It is seen that there 

 is no authority for this ' soleam ferream ' in the text. 



^ Suetonius, Vita Imp. Vespasian de Facetis, Lib. xxiii. p. 120. 

 ' Mulionem in itinere quodam suspicatns ad calciandas mulas desilisse, 

 ut adeunti litigator! spatium moranique praeberet : interrogavit, quanti 

 calciasset : pactusque tst lucri partem.' 



