Chapter X
1. To strangle lions or embrace statues.—Hercules did the former, and ostentatious philosophers sometimes did the latter in winter-time, by way of showing their power of endurance.
2. The stamp of Nero.—I believe there is no other record than this of any rejection of Nero’s coins, and those which have come down to us are of perfectly good quality. He was declared a public enemy by the Senate, and possibly it was decreed at the same time that his coins should be withdrawn from circulation. Dion, quoted by Wise (apud Schweighäuser), reports that this was done in the case of Caligula, after the death of that tyrant.
3. Lions at home, but in Ephesus foxes.—“A proverb about the Spartans, who were defeated in Asia,” notes the Scholiast on Aristoph. Pac., 1188-90.