BOOK XVII. I. 2-6 



Crassus his mansion was considered a reproach to him. 

 Crassus and Domitius both belonged to famiHes of high 

 distinction, and they were colleagues as consuls and 

 afterwards, in 92 b.c, as censors : owing to their 

 dissimilarity of oharacter their tenure of the censorship 

 was fiUed with quarrels between theni. On the oc- 

 casion referred to, Gnaeus Domitius, being a man of 

 hasty temper and moreover inflamed by that par- 

 ticularly sour kind of hatred which springs out of 

 rivalry, gave Crassus a severe rebuke for hving on so 

 expensive a scale when holding the ofKce of censor, 

 and repeatedly declared that he would give a milHon 

 sesterces for his mansion ; and Crassus, who ahvays had 

 a ready wit and was good at clever repartees, repHed 

 that he accepted the bid, with the reservation of half 

 a dozen trees. Domitius dccHned to buy the place 

 even for a shiUing without the timber. ' WeH then,' 

 said Crassus,' teH me pray,Domitius,am I the onewho 

 is setting a bad example and who deserves a mark of 

 censure from the very ofFice which I am m}'self 

 occupying — I, who Hve quite unpretentiously in the 

 house that came to me by inheritance, or is it you, 

 who price six trees at a miHion sesterces ? ' The trees 

 referred to were nettle-trees, with an exuberance of 

 spreading, shady branches ; Caecina Largus, one 

 of the great gentlemen of Rome, in our young days 

 used frequently to point them out in the mansion, of 

 which he was then the owner, and they lasted — as we 

 have already also spoken of the Hmits of longevity in xvi. 234 

 trees — down to the Emperor Nero's conflagration, '^-^ ^^ 

 thanks to careful tendance stiH verdant and vigorous, 

 had not the emperor mentioned hastened the death 

 even of trees. And let nobody suppose that Crassus's 

 inansion was in other respects a poo. affair, and that it 



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