"You may live," said Augustus, "to be a hundred, but you will never be old; just as our Cneius Piso here never was young."
There was a laugh. The Haterius in question was he to whom Ben Jonson compared Shakespeare as a talker, and of whom, then past eighty, Augustus used, Seneca tells us, to say that his careering thoughts resembled a chariot whose rapidity threatened to set its own wheels on fire, and that he required to be held by a drag—"sufflaminandus."
Dion now bowed and was moving away, followed modestly by Paulus, who desired to draw no attention to himself, when the steward, or magister, glided quickly up the colonnade of the impluvium to the pillar against which Tiberius was leaning, whispered something, handed his tablets to the Cæsar, and, in answer to a glance of surprised inquiry, looked toward and indicated Paulus.
Tiberius immediately passed Paulus and Dion, saying in an under tone, "Follow me," and led the way into a small empty chamber, of which, when the two youths had entered it, he closed the door.
"You are going to break the horse called Sejanus?" said he, turning round and standing.
Paulus assented.
"Then you must do so on the fourth day from this, in the review-ground of the camp, an hour before sunset."
Paulus bowed.
"Have you any thing to inquire, to request, or to observe?" pursued Tiberius.
"Am I to ride the horse muzzled, sir?" asked the youth.