"If you fail in the execution of my commands, I swear by Him who liveth forever, that your skin shall be flayed from your body." [33] [Footnote 31: Her prisons, a labyrinth, a Tartarus, (Anecdot.c.

4,) were under the palace.

Darkness is propitious to cruelty, but it is likewise favorable to calumny and fiction.] [Footnote 32: A more jocular whipping was inflicted on Saturninus, for presuming to say that his wife, a favorite of the empress, had not been found.

(Anecdot.c.

17.)] [Footnote 33: Per viventem in saecula excoriari te faciam.