the solea; so that Catullus only referred to it in a figurative but popular sense.
To show that the soleæ were probably fastened to the extremity in this manner, the example afforded by Suetonius (A.D. 120), may be quoted. In that historian's ‘Lives of the Twelve Emperors,’ when treating of Vespasian (A.D. 60), he casually intimates that this good Emperor was in the habit of preserving the feet of his mules when travelling. Suspecting once during a journey that his mule-driver had alighted to shoe his mules, in order to have an opportunity for allowing a person they met, and who was engaged in a law-suit, to speak to him, he (Vespasian) asked him how much he got for shoeing the mules, and insisted on having a share of the profits.[1]
The Commentator of Suetonius, under the Life of Vespasian, has made the same blunder in introducing words into the text which do not belong to it as Stephanus; and this, as Bracy Clark has pointed out, has induced Schœffer, the author of ‘De Re Vehiculari Veterum,’ to perpetuate the error. He writes: ‘Ut testatur Suetonius in Vespasiano, qui frequenter solebat lectica deferri in villam suam Catiliam, sed a mulis quoniam quadraginta milliarum intervallo abesset Roma: Hinc qui lecticam ejus deferebat, solicitatoris cujusdam donis corruptus, è mulis retentus fingeret se aptaturum soleam ferream pedi unius ex mulis, tempus dabat supplici ad porrigendum Imperatori libellum.’ It is seen that there is no authority for this ‘soleam ferream' in the text.
- ↑ Suetonius, Vita Imp. Vespasian de Facetis, Lib. xxiii. p. 120. ‘Mulionem in itinere quodam suspicalus ad calciandas mulas desilisse, ut adeunti litigatori spatium moramque praeberet: interrogavit, quanti calciasset: pactusque est lucri partem.’
