I could say more on this matter. But you do not wish my autobiography and, indeed, in bitter exile I have no taste to write it.

Domitian then: as a child, he was silent, brooding, resentful. You know how in his time as Emperor he was said to amuse himself by stabbing flies with his pen, so that the joke went round that 'No one was with the Princeps, not even a fly.' The jest was not without substance; he was the kind of little boy who delights in pulling the wings off insects, legs off spiders, and so on. Once, I recall, he brought a live frog to our apartment and proceeded to dismember it. When I begged him to refrain from torturing the beast, and at least to kill it before he anatomised the wretched creature, he muttered, without lifting his shaggy head – you remember how he could never look one in the eye – that he learned more by dissecting what was still alive. He had, he said, a keen interest in the nervous system. I think he was ten at the time. His shaggy head was then sometimes infested with lice, for his aunt was short-sighted, and indifferent to such matters in any case. He went bald early, as you know; more cause for resentment.

In those days he didn't care for me. I put that wrongly. He disliked me. The reason was simple: my excellence rebuked his incapacity. I learned easily what he struggled to retain. For some years we attended the same schoolmaster, a Greek grammaticus, by name Democritos. He was a rough brutal man, fond of the rod. I believe his chief pleasure lay in chastising his unfortunate pupils. Domitian, being slow and of little account socially, was a choice victim. I have often seen his legs run with blood. Furthermore, the terror he displayed when condemned to a beating merely incited our master's ardour. The more Domitian howled for mercy, the harder the strokes fell. Once, at least, the wretched boy pissed himself in his abject fear.