[Note 23]. Page 137.
The Stemma Cæsarum.—For further facts and details about the Cæsarian family, See Champagny, Les Césars, ii. 77, and passim.
[Note 24]. Page 145.
Otho’s banquet.—The details here described are derived in every particular from Pliny, Suetonius, Seneca, and other ancient writers.
[Note 25]. Page 152.
Tossing in a blanket. Sagatio.—Suet. Otho, 2; Mart. i. 4. A case is mentioned in Ulpian of a boy who was killed by it. Greek, παλμός.
[Note 26]. Page 157.
Age of Britannicus.—There is some historic uncertainty about the age of Britannicus. The proper date for assuming the toga virilis was the end of the fifteenth year, but Nero had been allowed to assume it soon after his fourteenth birthday (Tac. Ann. xii. 41). In Ann. xii. 25 Tacitus says that Nero was two years older (biennio majorem) than Britannicus; but from xiii. 6 and 15, where we are told that Nero was barely seventeen at the beginning of his reign, and that Britannicus was nearly fifteen when he was murdered, it seems clear that triennio would be nearer the truth than biennio. Eckhel, in his Doctr. Num. vi. 260, comes to the conclusion that Nero was three years and two months older than Britannicus; and other circumstances seem to make this probable. Suetonius also (Claud. 27) makes some admitted blunders. It seems likely that Nero was born on Dec. 15, A.D. 37, and Britannicus on Feb. 12 or 13, A.D. 41, on the twentieth day of his father’s reign. On this subject I must refer to Nipperdey on Tac. Ann. xii. 25; Orelli on Tac. Ann. xii. 25, 41, xiii. 6, 15; H. Schiller, Gesch. d. Römischen Kaiserreichs, pp. 71, &c.
[Note 27]. Page 171.
Making gods.—Nero makes the remark in the text to Seneca in the tragedy of Octavia:—