There were also stories about a quite private dinner of Augustus, which was commonly called “the dinner of the 12 gods.” At this dinner the guests reclined around the table in the dress of gods and goddesses, while Augustus himself was decked out like Apollo; this was reproachfully described not only in a letter of Marc Antony, who very nastily gave the names of all the guests, but also in these well-known anonymous verses:

As soon as the table of those people had hired a costumer, Mallia saw 6 gods and 6 goddesses, while Caesar blasphemously plays at being a counterfeit Apollo and portrays at the table new adulteries of the gods—at that point all the divinities turned away from the earth and Jupiter himself fled from his golden throne.

The great poverty and hunger in the state at that time increased the scandal of that dinner, and on the next day the people cried out that the gods had gobbled up all the grain and that Caesar was certainly Apollo, but Apollo the Torturer (for the god was worshipped under that name in a specific part of the city). It was noted that Augustus was exceedingly covetous of the very expensive goods of the Corinthians and addicted to gambling. At the time of the proscriptions, since it was thought that he had made sure that certain men were entered on the lists of the proscribed because of their Corinthian vases, someone wrote on his statue:

My father was a money-changer, but I deal in Corinthian goods.