POPPyEJ AND COMMODUS. 65 



plaining that the saucepans are made of sih^er ; but it has 

 been left for us to invent a plan of covering our very car- 

 riages with chased silver, and it was in our own age that 

 Poppaca, the wife of the Emperor Nero, ordered her 

 favourite mules to be shod even with gold.'' This refer- 

 ence to shoeing has troubled many commentators. Vos- 

 sius ^ notes from Xiphilinus, that Poppsca's mules were 

 many of them furnished in their feet with shoes made of 

 broom twisted and gilt. He calls their golden shoes 

 eTci-^^urrioL SHAPTIA. In Dion Cassius' History of 

 Rome, it is mentioned that this Sabina had her mules shod 

 with gold, and that the milk of 50 she-asses was devoted 

 to her lavatory.3 In the same work, we learn that the 

 barbarous Emperor Commodus (a.d. 190), caused his 

 horses' hoofs to be gilt or covered with gold. 'When 

 the horses became too old for the race-course, they were 

 sent away to the country, Commodus replacing them 

 by others, and introducing these into the circus with their 

 hoofs gilt, and their backs covered with a cloth of gold. 

 When they were suddenly brought before the people 



' Hist, Nat., Lib. xxxiii. cap. 49. ' Nostraque aetate Poppaea, con- 

 jux Neronis principis, delicatioribus jumentis suis soleas ex auro quoque 

 induere.' * Poppaea, the empresse, wife to Nero, the emperour, was 

 known to cause her ferrers ordinarily to shoe her coach-horses, and 

 other paltries for her saddle (such especially as shea set store by, and 

 counted more dainty than the rest), with cleane gold.' — Holland's 

 Plinie. 



== Ad Catullus. 



2 Historice Rumance, Lib. Ixii. ' Sabina vero haec adeo delicate 

 vixit (nam ex paucis quibusdam caetera intelligentur omnia) ut mulas, 

 quibus agebatur, haberet auresis soleis calceatas ; et ut quingentae asinae, 

 quae recens peperissent, quotidie mulgerentur, quo ipsa lacle earum 

 lavaretur.' 



