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VESPASIAN'S FARM 137
when he had to write to a young
anguish in his proud spirit,
patrician
You ' have committed an indiscretion in going to
visit my daughter at Baise ' ? or when on hearing that Phoebe,
Julia's i'reedwoman, had hanged herself, he cried Would '
that
I bad been the father of that Phoebe ' ? And, alas ! what multitudes
of his descendants had equalled Julia alike in misery
and shame ! Death and infamy had rioted in that deplorable
family. Well might Augustus exclaim, in the line of
Homer :
'
Would I had died unwed, uor been the father of children !
'
When the people demanded the recall of the two Julias, after
five or six years of exile, he exclaimed in a burst of indignation
and anguish, I wish you similar wives and similar
'
daughters.'
He described his wife Scribonia, his daughter
Julia, and his granddaughter Julia the younger as 'his three
cancers.' l
But while the boys were eagerly talking together, and discussing
those Caesars, and members of their family, who from
the time of Julius Caesar downward had been deified, Vespasian
suddenly grew afraid lest the same thought which struck
him should strike them. In those days he did not dream
that he too should wear the purple and die the apparent
founder of a dynasty. He was not, indeed, unaware of
various prognostics which were supposed to portend for him
a splendid fate. At Phalacrine, his native hamlet, was
an ancient oak sacred to Mars, which had put out a new
branch at the birth of each of the three children of his father,
Sabinus. The third, which represented himself, grew like a
great tree. Sabinus, after consulting an augur, told his
mother, Tertulla, that her grandson would become a Caesar.
But Vespasian shared the feelings of the old lady, who had
only laughed immoderately at the prophecy, and remarked,
'
How son has
odd it is that I am in my senses, while my
'
gone raving mad !
Seeing that the boys were fascinated by the grandeur of
Caesarism, he rolled up the sternma. '
Do not be ambitious,
lads,' he said. Could the name of Imperator or the sight of
'
your radiated heads upon a coin, give you more happiness
than you are enjoying here and now '
?
1
Note 23. The Stemma Ccesarum.