Since also at this time many parts of the City fell a prey to fire, he formed a company of freedmen in seven divisions to render assistance on such occasions, and appointed a knight as their leader, thinking soon to disband them.  He did not do this, however.  Having ascertained by experience that the aid they gave was most valuable and necessary, he kept them.  The night-watchmen exist to the present day, subject to special regulations, and those in the service are selected not from the freedmen only any longer but from on the rest of the classes as well.  They have barracks in the city and draw pay from the public treasury.

[-27-] The multitude, under the burden of the famine and the tax and the losses sustained by fire, were ill at ease.  They discussed openly many schemes of insurrection and by night scattered pamphlets more still:  this move was said to be traceable to a certain Publius Rufus, but others were suspected of it.  Rufus could not have originated or have taken an active part in it; therefore it was thought that others who aimed at a revolution were making an illicit use of his name.  An investigation of the affair was resolved upon and rewards for information offered.  Information accordingly came in and the city as a result was stirred up.  This lasted till the scarcity of grain subsided, when gladiatorial games in honor of Drusus were given by Germanicus Caesar and Tiberius Claudius Nero, his sons. [In the course of them an elephant vanquished a rhinoceros and a knight distinguished for his wealth fought as a gladiator.] The people were encouraged by this honor shown to the memory of Drusus and by Tiberius’s dedication of the temple of the Dioscuri, upon which he inscribed not only his name but also that of Drusus.  Himself he called Claudianus instead of Claudius, because of his adoption into the family of Augustus.  He continued to direct operations against the enemy and visited the City constantly whenever opportunity offered; this was partly on account of various kinds of business but chiefly owing to fear that Augustus might promote somebody else during his absence.  These were the events in the City that year.

In Achaea the governor died in the middle of his term and directions were given to his quaestor and to his assessor (whom, as I have said,[16] we call legatus) that the latter should administer the government as far as the isthmus, and the former the rest of it.  Herod [17] of Palestine, who was accused by his brothers of some wrongdoing, was banished beyond the Alps and his portion of the Palestinian domain reverted to the State. [Augustus suffered from old age and infirmity, so that he could not transact business for all that needed his aid:  some cases he reviewed and tried with his counselors, sitting upon the tribunal on the Palatine; the embassies which came from the various nations and princes he put in charge of three ex-consuls, under the arrangement that any one of them individually might listen to such an embassy and return an answer, except in cases where it was necessary for himself and the senate to render a decision besides.]