C. Caligula (39)

Having also sold in Gaul all the clothes, furniture, slaves, and even freedmen belonging to his sisters, at prodigious prices, after their condemnation, he was so much delighted with his pains that he sent to Rome for all the furniture of the old palace;[*] pressing for its conveyance all the carriages let to hire in the city, with the horses and mules belonging to the bakers, so that they often wanted bread at Rome; and many who had suits at law in progress lost their causes, because they could not make their appearance in due time according to their recognizances. In the sale of this furniture every artifice of fraud and imposition was employed. Sometimes he would rail at the bidders for being niggardly, and ask them " if they were not ashamed to be richer than he was ?" at another he would affect to be sorry that the property of princes should be passing into the hands of private persons. He had found out that a rich provincial had given two hundred thousand sesterces to his chamberlains for an underhand invitation to his table, and he was much pleased to find that honour valued at so high a rate. The day following, as the same person was sitting at the sale, he sent him some bauble, for which he told him he must pay two hundred thousand sesterces, and " that he should sup with Caesar upon his own invitation."