Reprehendenti filio Tito, quod etiam urinae vectigal commentus esset, pecuniam ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, sciscitans num odore offenderetur; et illo negante: “Atqui,” inquit, “e lotio est.”
Titus complained of the tax which Vespasian had imposed on the contents of the city urinals. Vespasian handed him a coin which had been part of the first day’s proceeds: “Does it smell bad?” he asked. And when Titus said “No” he went on: “Yet it comes from urine.”
Money doesn’t stink.
“Pecunia non olet” is a popular recasting of a famous conversation between Emperor Vespasian [Titus Flavius Vespasianus] to his son Titus Flavius Vespasianus [the future emperor Titus], upon the latter’s objection to a tax on Rome’s urinals — as quoted by Suetonius [above], in The Twelve Caesars, Robert Graves and Michael Grant, translators (Harmondsworth, 1979).