16 AUGUST 1997, Page 25

Favourite quote

Sir: My erstwhile colleague James Young, who has saved me from many a howler in the past, is right to say that the words `Let them hate me as long as they fear me' were said by Tiberius (Letters, 9 August). But Tiberius was merely quoting the tragic poet Accius, and the saying was also a favourite of Caligula's (Suetonius, Caligula 30.1). The speech in which Caligula probably (as I said) used it appears in Dio's Roman History 59.16.1-7, where Caligula imagines the dead Tiberius returning to warn him about the hostility of the senate.

Peter Jones

Department of Classics, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne