XIX. During a scarcity of provisions, occasioned by bad crops for
several successive years, he was stopped in the middle of the Forum by
the mob, who so abused him, at the same time pelting him with fragments
of bread, that he had some (311) difficulty in escaping into the palace
by a back door. He therefore used all possible means to bring provisions
to the city, even in the winter. He proposed to the merchants a sure
profit, by indemnifying them against any loss that might befall them by
storms at sea; and granted great privileges to those who built ships for
that traffic. To a citizen of Rome he gave an exemption from the penalty
of the Papia-Poppaean law [506]; to one who had only the privilege of
Latium, the freedom of the city; and to women the rights which by law
belonged to those who had four children: which enactments are in force to
this day.

XX. He completed some important public works, which, though not
numerous, were very useful. The principal were an aqueduct, which had
been begun by Caius; an emissary for the discharge of the waters of the
Fucine lake [507], and the harbour of Ostia; although he knew that
Augustus had refused to comply with the repeated application of the
Marsians for one of these; and that the other had been several times
intended by Julius Caesar, but as often abandoned on account of the
difficulty of its execution. He brought to the city the cool and
plentiful springs of the Claudian water, one of which is called
Caeruleus, and the other Curtius and Albudinus, as likewise the river of
the New Anio, in a stone canal; and distributed them into many
magnificent reservoirs. The canal from the Fucine lake was undertaken as
much for the sake of profit, as for the honour of the enterprise; for
there were parties who offered to drain it at their own expense, on
condition of their having a grant of the land laid dry. With great
difficulty he completed a canal three miles in length, partly by cutting