He required the strictest discipline, reviving bygone methods of punishment and ignominy, and even degrading the commander of a legion for sending a few soldiers across the river to accompany one of his freedmen on a hunting expedition. Although he left very little to fortune and chance, he entered battles with considerably greater confidence whenever it happened that, as he was working at night, his lamp suddenly and without human agency died down and went out; trusting, as he used to say, to an omen in which he had great confidence, since both he and his ancestors had found it trustworthy in all of their campaigns. Yet in the very hour of victory he narrowly escaped assassination by one of the Bructeri, who got access to him among his attendants, but was detected through his nervousness; whereupon a confession of his intended crime was wrung from him by torture.
The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.
Tiberius, Suetonius — translated by J. C. Rolfe, 1913
Apparatus shelf — Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (J. C. Rolfe translation; Dover republication) · J. C. Rolfe, 1913 (preface dated Philadelphia, April 1913); Dover Publications republication, 2018
license: public-domain (US: the served text is Rolfe's 1913 translation, pre-1930 — verified from the scan's own copyright and preface pages; Dover-era apparatus [2018 arrangement, introductions, endnotes, index, the Lives of Illustrious Men part] is not extracted and not served)