ChfTp. 1.] TREES SOLD AT ENOEMOUS PEICES. 439 
trious families, after holding the consulship,^ 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 style of such magnificence, and in a house for which, as 
he said, he himself would be ready to pay down ten milliona 
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?"^ These trees were 
of the lotus^ kind, and by the exuberance of their branches 
afforded a most delightful shade. Csecina Largus, one of the 
grandees of Eome, 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^ of the remarkable longevity of trees, I 
would here add, that they were in existence down to the pe- 
riod when the Emperor JSTero 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 Hymettas,^ which 
in his sedileship he had ordered to be brought over for the de- 
coration of the stage f and this at a time, too, when no public 
5 A.u.c. 659. 
^ Valerius Maximus, B. ix. c. 1, relates this story somewhat differently. 
The Celtis Austrahs of Linna3us. 
^ See B. xxxvi. cc. 3 and 24. 
9 When, in his capacity of aedile, he gave theatrical representations for 
the benefit of the public. 
