I. GERMANICUS, father of Gaius Caesar, son of Drusus and the younger Antonia,
after being adopted by his paternal uncle Tiberius [4 A.D.], held the quaestorship [7
A.D.] five years before the legal age and passed directly to the consulship [12 A.D.] [i.e.,
without holding any of the intermediate offices of the cursus honorem]. When
the death of Augustus [14 A.D.] was announced, he was sent to the army in Germania, where
it is hard to say whether his filial piety or his courage was more conspicuous; for
although all the legions obstinately refused to accept Tiberius as emperor, and offered
him the rule of the state, he held them to their allegiance. And later he won a victory
over the enemy and celebrated a triumph [17 A.D.]. Then chosen consul for a second time
[18 A.D.], before he entered on his term he was hurried off to restore order in the
Orient, and after vanquishing the king of Armenia and reducing Cappadocia to the form of a
province, died of a lingering illness at Antioch, in the thirty-fourth year of his age.
There was some suspicion that he was poisoned; for besides the dark spots which appeared
all over his body and the froth which flowed from his mouth, after he had been reduced to
ashes his heart was found entire among his bones; and it is supposed to be a
characteristic of that organ that when steeped in poison it cannot be destroyed by fire.
II. Now the belief was that he met his death through the wiles of Tiberius,
aided and abetted by Gnaeus Piso. This man had been made governor of Syria at about that
time, and realizing that he must give offence either to the father or the son, as if there
were no alternative, he never ceased to show the bitterest enmity towards Germanicus in
word and deed, even after the latter fell ill. In consequence Piso narrowly escaped being
torn to pieces by the people on his return to Rome, and was condemned to death by the
senate.
III. It is the general opinion that Germanicus possessed all the highest
qualities of body and mind, to a degree never equalled by anyone; a handsome person,
unequalled valor, surpassing ability in the oratory and learning of Greece and Rome,
unexampled kindliness, and a remarkable desire and capacity for winning men's regard and
inspiring their affection. His legs were too slender for the rest of his figure, but he
gradually brought them to proper proportions by constant horseback riding after meals. He
often slew a foeman in hand-to-hand combat. He pleaded causes even after receiving the
triumphal regalia; and among other fruits of his studies he left some Greek comedies.
Unassuming at home and abroad, he always entered the free and federate towns without
lictors. Wherever he came upon the tombs of distinguished men, he always offered sacrifice
to their shades. Planning to bury in one mound the old and scattered relics of those who
fell in the overthrow of Varus, he was the first to attempt to collect and assemble them
with his own hand. Even towards his detractors, whosoever they were and whatever their
motives, he was so mild and lenient, that when Piso was annulling his decrees and
maltreating his dependents, he could not make up his mind to break with him, until he
found himself assailed also by potions and spells. Even then he went no farther than
formally to renounce Piso's friendship in the old-time fashion, and to bid his household
avenge him, in case anything should befall him.
IV. He reaped plentiful fruit from these virtues, for he was so respected and
beloved by his kindred that Augustus (to say nothing of the rest of his relatives) after
hesitating for a long time whether to appoint him his successor, had him adopted by
Tiberius. He was so popular with the masses, that, according to many writers, whenever he
came to any place or left one, he was sometimes in danger of his life from the crowds that
met him or saw him off; in fact, when he returned from Germania after quelling the
outbreak, all the cohorts of the praetorian guard went forth to meet him, although orders
had been given that only two should go, and the whole populace, regardless of age, sex, or
rank, poured out of Rome as far as the twentieth milestone.
V. Yet far greater and stronger tokens of regard were shown at the time of his
death and immediately afterwards. On the day when he passed away the temples were stoned
and the altars of the gods thrown down, while some flung their household gods into the
street and cast out their newly born children. Even barbarian peoples, so they say, who
were engaged in war with us or with one another, unanimously consented to a truce, as if
all in common had suffered a domestic tragedy. It is said that some princes put off their
beards and had their wives' heads shaved, as a token of the deepest mourning; that even
the king of kings [of Parthia] suspended his exercise at hunting and the banquets with his
grandees, which among the Parthians is a sign of public mourning.
VI. At Rome, when the community, in grief and consternation at the first report
of his illness, was awaiting further news, and suddenly after nightfall a report at last
spread abroad, on doubtful authority that he had recovered, a general rush was made from
every side to the Capitol with torches and victims, and the temple gates were all but torn
off, that nothing might hinder them in their eagerness to pay their vows. Tiberius was
roused from sleep by the cries of the rejoicing throng, who all united in singing:---
"Safe is Rome, safe too our country, for Germanicus is safe." But when it was at
last made known that he was no more, the public grief could be checked neither by any
consolation nor edict, and it continued even during the festal days of the month of
December [the Saturnalia]. The fame of the deceased and regret for his loss were increased
by the horror of the times which followed, since all believed, and with good reason, that
the cruelty of Tiberius, which soon burst forth, had been held in check through his
respect and awe for Germanicus.
VII. He had to wife Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa and Julia, who bore
him nine children. Two of these were taken off when they were still in infancy, and one
just as he was reaching the age of boyhood, a charming child, whose statue, in the guise
of Cupid, Livia dedicated in the temple of the Capitoline Venus, while Augustus had
another placed in his bed chamber and used to kiss it fondly whenever he entered the room.
The other children survived their father, three girls, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Livilla,
born in successive years, and three boys, Nero, Drusus, and Gaius Caesar. Nero and Drusus
were adjudged public enemies by the senate on the accusation of Tiberius.
VIII. Gaius Caesar was born the day before the Kalends of September in the
consulship of his father and Gaius Fonteius Capito [August 31, 12 A.D.]. Conflicting
testimony makes his birthplace uncertain. Gnaeus Lentulus Gaetulicus writes that he was
born at Tibur, Plinius Secundus among the Treveri, in a village called Ambitarvium above
the Confluence. Pliny adds as proof that altars are shown there, inscribed For the
Delivery of Agrippina. Verses which were in circulation soon after he became emperor
indicate that he was begotten in the winter-quarters of the legions: "He who was born
in the camp and reared mid the arms of his country, Gave at the outset a sign that he was
fated to rule." I myself find in the Acta Publica [the official publication of
important events] that he first saw the light at Antium. Gaetulicus is shown to be wrong
by Pliny, who says that he told a flattering lie, to add some luster to the fame of a
young and vain-glorious prince from the city sacred to Hercules; and that he lied with the
more assurance because Germanicus really did have a son born to him at Tibur, also called
Gaius Caesar, of whose lovable disposition and untimely death I have already spoken. Pliny
has erred in his chronology; for the historians of Augustus agree that Germanicus was not
sent to Germany until the close of his consulship, when Gaius was already born. Moreover,
the inscription on the altar adds no strength to Pliny's view, for Agrippina twice gave
birth to daughters in that region, and any childbirth, regardless of sex, is called puerperium,
since the men of old called girls puerae, just as they called boys puelli.
Furthermore, we have a letter written by Augustus to his granddaughter Agrippina, a few
months before he died, about the Gaius in question (for no other child of the name was
still alive at that time), reading as follows: "Yesterday I arranged with Talarius
and Asillius to bring your boy Gaius on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of June, if
it be the will of the gods. I send with him besides one of my slaves who is a physician,
and I have written Germanicus to keep him if he wishes. Farewell, my own Agrippina, and
take care to come in good health to your Germanicus." I think it is clear enough that
Gaius could not have been born in a place to which he was first taken from Rome when he
was nearly two years old. This letter also weakens our confidence in the verses, the more
so because they are anonymous. We must then accept the only remaining testimony, that of
the public record, particularly since Gaius loved Antium as if it were his native soil,
always preferring it to all other places of retreat, and even thinking, it is said, of
transferring thither the seat and abode of the empire through weariness of Rome.
IX. His surname Caligula ["Little Boots"] he derived from a joke of
the troops, because he was brought up in their midst in the dress of a common soldier. To
what extent besides he won their love and devotion by being reared in fellowship with them
is especially evident from the fact that when they threatened mutiny after the death of
Augustus and were ready for any act of madness, the mere sight of Gaius unquestionably
calmed them. For they did not become quiet until they saw that he was being spirited away
because of the danger from their outbreak and taken for protection to the nearest town.
Then at last they became contrite, and laying hold of the carriage and stopping it, begged
to be spared the disgrace which was being put upon them.
X. He attended his father also on his expedition to Syria. On his return from
there he first lived with his mother and after her banishment, with his great-grandmother
Livia; and when Livia died [29 A.D.], though he was not yet of age, he spoke her eulogy
from the rostra. Then he fell to the care of his grandmother Antonia and in the nineteenth
year of his age he was called to Capreae [the Isle of Capri] by Tiberius, on the same day
assuming the gown of manhood and shaving his first beard, but without any such ceremony as
had attended the coming of age of his brothers. Although at Capreae every kind of wile was
resorted to by those who tried to lure him or force him to utter complaints, he never gave
them any satisfaction, ignoring the ruin of his kindred as if nothing at all had happened,
passing over his own ill-treatment with an incredible pretence of indifference, and so
obsequious towards his grandfather and his household, that it was well said of him that no
one had ever been a better slave or a worse master.
XI. Yet even at that time he could not control his natural cruelty and
viciousness, but he was a most eager witness of the tortures and executions of those who
suffered punishment, revelling at night in gluttony and adultery, disguised in a wig and a
long robe, passionately devoted besides to the theatrical arts of dancing and singing, in
which Tiberius very willingly indulged him,in the hope that through these his savage
nature might be softened. This last was so clearly evident to the shrewd old man, that he
used to say now and then that to allow Gaius to live would prove the ruin of himself and
of all men, and that he was rearing a viper for the Roman people and a Phaethon for the
world.
XII. Not so very long afterward Gaius took to wife Junia Claudilla, daughter of
Marcus Silanus, a man of noble rank. Then appointed augur in place of his brother Drusus,
before he was invested with the office he was advanced to that of pontiff; with strong
commendation of his dutiful conduct and general character; for since the court was
deserted and deprived of its other supports, after Seianus had been suspected of hostile
designs and presently put out of the way, he was little by little encouraged to look
forward to the succession. To have a better chance of realizing this, after losing Junia
in childbirth, he seduced Ennia Naevia, wife of Macro, who at that time commanded the
praetorian guard, even promising to marry her if he became emperor, and guaranteeing this
promise by an oath and a written contract. Having through her wormed himself into Macro's
favor, he poisoned Tiberius, as some think, and ordered that his ring be taken from him
while he still breathed, and then suspecting that he was trying to hold fast to it, that a
pillow be put over his face; or even strangled the old man with his own hand, immediately
ordering the crucifixion of a freedman who cried out at the awful deed. And this is likely
enough; for some writers say that Caligula himself later admitted, not it is true that he
had committed parricide, but that he had at least meditated it at one time; for they say
that he constantly boasted, in speaking of his filial piety, that he had entered the
bedchamber of the sleeping Tiberius dagger in hand, to avenge the death of his mother and
brothers; but that, seized with pity, he threw down the dagger and went out again; and
that though Tiberius knew of this, he had never dared to make any inquiry or take any
action.
XIII. [37 A.D.] By thus gaining the throne he fulfilled the highest hopes of the
Roman people, or I may say of all mankind, since he was the prince most earnestly desired
by the great part of the provincials and soldiers, many of whom had known him in his
infancy, as well as by the whole body of the city populace, because of the memory of his
father Germanicus and pity for a family that was all but extinct. Accordingly, when he set
out from Misenum, though he was in mourning garb and escorting the body of Tiberius, yet
his progress was marked by altars, victims, and blazing torches, and he was met by a dense
and joyful throng, who called him besides other propitious names their "star,"
their "chick," their "babe," and their "nursling."
XIV. When he entered the city, full and absolute power was at once put into his
hands by the unanimous consent of the senate and of the mob, which forced its way into the
Senate, and no attention was paid to the wish of Tiberius, who in his will had named his
other grandson, still a boy, joint heir with Caligula. So great was the public rejoicing,
that within the next three months, or less than that, more than a hundred and sixty
thousand victims are said to have been slain in sacrifice.
A few days after this, when he crossed to the islands near Campania, vows were put up
for his safe return, while no one let slip even the slightest chance of giving testimony
to his anxiety and regard for his safety. But when he fell ill, they all spent the whole
night about the Palace; some even vowed to fight as gladiators, and others posted placards
offering their lives, if the ailing prince were spared. To this unbounded love of his
citizens was added marked devotion from foreigners. Artabanus, for example, king of the
Parthians, who was always outspoken in his hatred and contempt for Tiberius, voluntarily
sought Caligula's friendship and came to a conference with the consular governor; then
crossing the Euphrates, he paid homage to the Roman eagles and standards and to the
statues of the Caesars.
XV. Gaius himself tried to rouse men's devotion by courting popularity in every
way. After eulogizing Tiberius with many tears before the assembled people and giving him
a magnificent funeral, he at once posted off to Pandateria and the Pontian islands, to
remove the ashes of his mother and brother to Rome, and in stormy weather, too, to make
his filial piety the more conspicuous. He approached them with reverence and placed them
in the urns with his own hands. With no less theatrical effect he brought them to Ostia in
a bireme with a banner set in the stern, and from there up the Tiber to Rome, where he had
them carried to the Mausoleum [of Augustus] on two biers by the most distinguished men of
the order of equites, in the middle of the day, when the streets were crowded. He
appointed funeral sacrifices, too, to be offered each year with due ceremony, as well as
games in the Circus in honor of his mother, providing a carriage to carry her image in the
procession. But in memory of his father he gave to the month of September the name of
Germanicus. After this, by a single decree of the senate, he heaped upon his grandmother
Antonia whatever honors Livia Augusta had ever enjoyed; took his uncle Claudius, who up to
that time had been a Roman eques, as his colleague in the consulship [37 A.D.];
adopted his brother Tiberius on the day that he assumed the gown of manhood, and gave him
the title of Princeps Iuventutis ["First of the Youth"--originally the
title of the commander of the equites who were under forty-five and in active
service; conferred on Caius and Lucius Caesar by Augustus, the title became the
designation of the heir to the throne, and was later assumed by the emperors themselves].
He caused the names of his sisters to be included in all oaths: "And I will not hold
myself and my children dearer than I do Gaius and his sisters"; as well as in the
propositions of the consuls: " Favor and good fortune attend Gaius Caesar and his
sisters." With the same degree of popularity he recalled those who had been condemned
to banishment; took no cognizance of any charges that remained untried from an earlier
time; had all documents relating to the cases of his mother and brothers carried to the
Forum and burned, to give no informer or witness occasion for further fear, having first
loudly called the gods to witness that he had neither read nor touched any of them. He
refused a note which was offered him regarding his own safety, maintaining that he had
done nothing to make anyone hate him, and that he had no ears for informers.
XVI. He banished from the city the sexual monsters called spintriae,
barely persuaded not to sink them in the sea. The writings of Titus Labienus, Cremutius
Cordus, and Cassius Severus, which had been suppressed by decrees of the senate, he
allowed to be hunted up, circulated, and read, saying that it was wholly to his interest
that everything which happened be handed down to posterity. He published the accounts of
the empire, which had regularly been made public by Augustus, a practice discontinued by
Tiberius. He allowed the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to himself.
He revised the lists of the Roman equites strictly and scrupulously, yet with due
moderation, publicly taking their horses from those guilty of any wicked or scandalous
set, but merely omitting to read the names of men convicted of lesser offences. To lighten
the labor of the jurors, he added a fifth division to the previous four. He tried also to
restore the suffrage to the people by reviving the custom of elections. He at once paid
faithfully and without dispute the legacies named in the will of Tiberius, though this had
been set aside, as well as in that of Julia Augusta, which Tiberius had suppressed. He
remitted the tax of a two-hundredth on auction sales in Italy; made good to many their
losses from fires; and whenever he restored kings to their thrones, he allowed them all
the arrears of their taxes and their revenue for the meantime---for example, to Antiochus
of Commagene, a hundred million sesterces that had accrued to the Treasury. To make it
known that he encouraged every kind of noble action, he gave eight hundred thousand
sesterces to a freedwoman, because she had kept silence about the guilt of her patron,
though subjected to the utmost torture. Because of these acts, besides other honors, a
golden shield was voted him, which was to be borne every year to the Capitol on an
appointed day by the colleges of priests, escorted by the senate, while boys and girls of
noble birth sang the praises of his virtues in a choral ode. It was further decreed that
the day on which he began to reign should be called the Parilia, as a token that
the city had been founded a second time.
XVII. He held four consulships, one from the Kalends of July for two months [37
A.D.], a second from the Kalends of January for thirty days [39 A.D.], a third up to the
Ides of January [40 A.D.], and the fourth until the seventh day before the Ides of the
same month [41 A.D.]. Of all these only the last two were continuous. The third he assumed
at Lugdunum without a colleague, not as some think, through arrogance or disregard of
precedent, but because at that distance from Rome he had been unable to get news of the
death of the other consul just before the day of the Kalends. He twice gave the people a
largess of three hundred sesterces each, and twice a lavish banquet to the senate and the
equestrian order, together with their wives and children. At the former of these he also
distributed togas to the men, and to the women and children scarves of red and scarlet.
Furthermore, to make a permanent addition to the public gaiety, he added a day to the
Saturnalia, and called it Juvenalis.
XVIII. He gave several gladiatorial shows, some in the amphitheater of Taurus
and some in the Saepta, in which he introduced pairs of African and Campanian boxers, the
pick of both regions. He did not always preside at the games in person, but sometimes
assigned the honor to the magistrates or to friends. He exhibited stage-plays continually,
of various kinds and in many different places, sometimes even by night, lighting up the
whole city. He also threw about gift-tokens of various kinds, and gave each man a basket
of victuals. During the feasting he sent his share to a Roman eques opposite him,
who was eating with evident relish and appetite, while to a senator for the same reason he
gave a commission naming him praetor out of the regular order. He also gave many games in
the Circus, lasting from early morning until evening, introducing between the races now a
baiting of panthers and now the manoeuvres of the game called Troy; some, too, of
special splendor, in which the Circus was strewn with red and green, while the charioteers
were all men of senatorial rank. He also started some games off-hand, when a few people
called for them from the neighboring balconies as he was inspecting the outfit of the
Circus from the Gelotian house.
XIX. Besides this, he devised a novel and unheard of kind of pageant; for he
bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at Puteoli, a distance of about thirty-six
hundred paces, by bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchoring them in a
double line, after which a mound of earth was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner
of the Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for two successive days, the
first day on a caparisoned horse, himself resplendent in a crown of oak leaves, a buckler,
a sword, and a cloak of cloth of gold; on the second, in the dress of a charioteer in a
car drawn by a pair of famous horses, carrying before him a boy named Dareus, one of the
hostages from Parthia, and attended by the entire praetorian guard and a company of his
friends in Gallic chariots. I know that many have supposed that Gaius devised this kind of
bridge in rivalry of Xerxes, who excited no little admiration by bridging the much
narrower Hellespont; others, that it was to inspire fear in Germany and Britain, on which
he had designs, by the fame of some stupendous work. But when I was a boy, I used to hear
my grandfather say that the reason for the work, as revealed by the emperor's confidential
courtiers, was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to Tiberius, when he was
worried about his suceessor and inclined towards his natural grandson, that Gaius had no
more chance of becoming emperor than of riding about over the gulf of Baiae with horses.
XX. He also gave shows in foreign lands, Athenian games at Syracuse in Sicily,
and miscellaneous games at Lugdunum in Gallia; at the latter place also a contest in Greek
and Latin oratory, in which, they say, the losers gave prizes to the victors and were
forced to compose eulogies upon them, while those who were least successful were ordered
to erase their writings with a sponge or with their tongue unless they elected rather to
be beaten with rods or thrown into the neighboring river.
XXI. He completed the public works which had been half finished under Tiberius,
namely the temple of Augustus and the theater of Pompeius. He likewise began an aqueduct
in the region near Tibur and an amphitheater beside the Saepta, the former finished by his
successor Claudius, while the latter was abandoned. At Syracuse he repaired the city
walls, which had fallen into ruin through lapse of time, and the temples of the gods. He
had planned, besides, to rebuild the palace of Polycrates at Samos, to finish the temple
of Didymaean Apollo at Ephesus, to found a city high up in the Alps, but, above all, to
dig a canal through the Isthmus in Greece, and he had already sent a chief centurion to
survey the work.
XXII. So much for Caligula as emperor; we must now tell of his career as a
monster. After he had assumed various surnames (for he was called Pius ["Pious"], Castrorum Filius ["Child of the Camp"], Pater Exercituum ["Father
of the Armies"] and Optimus Maximus Caesar ["Greatest and Best of
Caesars"]), chancing to overhear some kings, who had come to Rome to pay their
respects to him, disputing at dinner about the nobility of their descent, he cried:
"Let there be one Lord, one King." And he came near assuming a crown at once and
changing the semblance of a principate into the form of a monarchy. But on being reminded
that he had risen above the elevation both of princes and kings, he began from that time
on to lay claim to divine majesty; for after giving orders that such statues of the gods
as were especially famous for their sanctity or their artistic merit, including that of
Jupiter of Olympia, should be brought from Greece, in order to remove their heads and put
his own in their place, he built out a part of the Palace as far as the Forum, and making
the temple of Castor and Pollux its vestibule, he often took his place between the divine
brethren, and exhibited himself there to be worshipped by those who presented themselves;
and some hailed him as Jupiter Latiaris. He also set up a special temple to his own
godhead, with priests and with victims of the choicest kind. In this temple was a
life-sized statue of the emperor in gold, which was dressed each day in clothing such as
he wore himsel, The richest citizens used all their influence to secure the priesthoods of
his cult and bid high for the honor. The victims were flamingoes, peacocks, black grouse,
guinea-hens a and pheasants, offered day by day each after its own kind. At night he used
constantly to invite the full and radiant moon to his embraces and his bed, while in the
daytime he would talk confidentially with Jupiter Capitolinus, now whispering and then in
turn putting his ear to the mouth of the god, now in louder and even angry language; for
he was heard to make the threat: "Lift me up, or I'll lift you." But finally won
by entreaties, as he reported, and even invited to live with the god, he built a bridge
over the temple of the Deified Augustus, and thus joined his Palace to the Capitol.
Presently, to be nearer yet, he laid the foundations of a new house in the court of the
Capitol.
XXIII. He did not wish to be thought the grandson of Agrippa, or called so,
because of the latter's humble origin; and he grew very angry if anyone in a speech or a
song included Agrippa among the ancestors of the Caesars. He even boasted that his own
mother was born in incest, which Augustus had committed with his daughter Julia; and not
content with this slur on the memory of Augustus, he forbade the celebration of his
victories at Actium and off Sicily by annual festivals, on the ground that they were
disastrous and ruinous to the Roman people. He often called his great-grandmother Livia
Augusta "a Ulysses in petticoats," and he had the audacity to accuse her of low
birth in a letter to the senate, alleging that her maternal grandfather had been nothing
but a decurion of Fundi; whereas it is proved by public records that Aufidius Lurco held
high offices at Rome. When his grandmother Antonia asked for a private interview, he
refused it except in the presence of the praefect Macro, and by such indignities and
annoyances he caused her death; although some think that he also gave her poison. After
she was dead, he paid her no honor, but viewed her burning pyre from his dining-room. He
had his brother Tiberius put to death without warning, suddenly sending a tribune of the
soldiers to do the deed; besides driving his father-in-law Silanus to end his life by
cutting his throat with a razor. His charge against the latter was that Silanus had not
followed him when he put to sea in stormy weather, but had remained behind in the hope of
taking possession of the city in case he should be lost in the storm; against Tiberius,
that his breath smelled of an antidote, which he had taken to guard against being poisoned
at his hand. Now as a matter of fact, Silanus was subject to sea-sickness and wished to
avoid the discomforts of the voyage, while Tiberius had taken medicine for a chronic
cough, which was growing worse. As for his uncle Claudius, he spared him merely as a
laughingstock.
XXIV. He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters, and at a large banquet
he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above. Of these he is
believed to have violated Drusilla when he was still a minor, and even to have been caught
lying with her by his grandmother Antonia, at whose house they were brought up in company.
Afterwards, when she was the wife of Lucius Cassius Longinus, an ex-consul, he took her
from him and openly treated her as his lawful wife; and when ill, he made her heir to his
property and the throne. When she died, he appointed a season of public mourning, during
which it was a capital offence to laugh, bathe, or dine in company with one's parents,
wife, or children. He was so beside himself with grief that suddenly fleeing the city by
night and traversing Campania, he went to Syracuse and hurriedly returned from there
without cutting his hair or shaving his beard. And he never afterwards took oath about
matters of the highest moment, even before the assembly of the people or in the presence
of the soldiers, except by the godhead of Drusilla. The rest of his sisters he did not
love with so great affection, nor honor so highly, but often prostituted them to his
favorites; so that he was the readier at the trial of Aemilius Lepidus to condemn them, as
adulteresses and privy to the conspiracies against him; and he not only made public
letters in the handwriting of all of them, procured by fraud and seduction, but also
dedicated to Mars the Avenger, with an explanatory inscription, three swords designed to
take his life.
XXV. It is not easy to decide whether he acted more basely in contracting his
marriages, in annulling them, or as a husband. At the marriage of Livia Orestilla to Gaius
Piso, he attended the ceremony himself, gave orders that the bride be taken to his own
house, and within a few days divorced her; two years later he banished her, because of a
suspicion that in the meantime she had gone back to her former husband. Others write that
being invited to the wedding banquet, he sent word to Piso, who reclined opposite to him:
"Don't take liberties with my wife," and at once carried her off with him from
the table, the next day issuing a proclamation that he had got himself a wife in the
manner of Romulus and Augustus. When the statement was made that the grandmother of Lollia
Paulina, who was married to Gaius Memmius, an ex-consul commanding armies, had once been a
remarkably beautiful woman, he suddenly called Lollia from the province, separated her
from her husband, and married her, then in a short time he put her away, with the command
never to have intercourse with anyone. Though Caesonia was neither beautiful nor young,
and was already mother of three daughters by another, besides being a woman of reckless
extravagance and wantonness, he loved her not only more passionately but more faithfully,
often exhibiting her to the soldiers riding by his side, decked with cloak, helmet and
shield, and to his friends even in a state of nudity. He did not honor her with the title
of wife until she had borne him a child, announcing on the selfsame day that he had
married her and that he was the father of her babe. This babe, whom he named Julia
Drusilla, he carried to the temples of all the goddesses, finally placing her in the lap
of Minerva and commending to her the child's nurture and training. And no evidence
convinced him so positively that she was sprung from his own loins as her savage temper,
which was even then so violent that she would try to scratch the faces and eyes of the
little children who played with her.
XXVI. It would be trivial and pointless to add to this an account of his
treatment of his relatives and friends, Ptolemy, son of king Juba, his cousin (for he was
the grandson of Marcus Antonius by Antonius' daughter Selene), and in particular Macro
himself and even Ennia, who helped him to the throne; all these were rewarded for their
kinship and their faithful services by a bloody death. He was no whit more respectful or
mild towards the senate, allowing some who had held the highest offices to run in their
togas for several miles beside his chariot and to wait on him at table, standing napkin in
hand a either at the head of his couch, or at his feet. Others he secretly put to death,
yet continued to send for them as if they were alive, after a few days falsely asserting
that they had committed suicide. When the consuls forgot to make proclamation of his
birthday, he deposed them, and left the state for three days without its highest
magistrates. He flogged his quaestor, who was charged with conspiracy, stripping off the
man's clothes and spreading them under the soldiers' feet, to give them a firm footing as
they beat him. He treated the other orders with like insolence and cruelty. Being
disturbed by the noise made by those who came in the middle of the night to secure the
free seats in the Circus, he drove them all out with cudgels; in the confusion more than
twenty Roman equites were crushed to death, with as many matrons and a countless
number of others. At the plays in the theater, sowing discord between the people and the
equites, he scattered the gift tickets ahead of time, to induce the rabble to take the
seats reserved for the equestrian order. At a gladiatorial show he would sometimes draw
back the awnings when the sun was hottest and give orders that no one be allowed to leave;
then removing the usual equipment, he would match worthless and decrepit gladiators
against mangy wild beasts, and have sham fights between householders who were of good
repute, but conspicuous for some bodily infirmity. Sometimes too he would shut up the
granaries and condemn the people to hunger.
XXVII. The following are special instances of his innate brutality. When cattle
to feed the wild beasts which he had provided for a gladiatorial show were rather costly,
he selected criminals to be devoured, and reviewing the line of prisoners without
examining the charges, but merely taking his place in the middle of a colonnade, he bade
them be led away "from baldhead to baldhead." A man who had made a vow to fight
in the arena if the emperor recovered, he compelled to keep his word, watched him as he
fought sword in hand, and would not let him go until he was victorious, and then only
after many entreaties. Another who had offered his life for the same reason, but delayed
to kill himself, he turned over to his slaves, with orders to drive him through the
streets decked with sacred boughs and fillets, calling for the fulfilment of his vow, and
finally hurl him from the embankment. Many men of honorable rank were first disfigured
with the marks of branding-irons and then condemned to the mines, to work at building
roads, or to be thrown to the wild beasts; or else he shut them up in cages on all fours,
like animals, or had them sawn asunder. Not all these punishments were for serious
offences, but merely for criticizing one of his shows, or for never having sworn by his Genius.
He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who
pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death,
and trying to rouse him to gaiety and jesting by a great show of affability. He had the
manager of his gladiatorial shows and beast-baitings beaten with chains in his presence
for several successive days, and would not kill him until he was disgusted at the stench
of his putrefied brain. He burned a writer of Atellan farces alive in the middle of the
arena of the amphitheatre, because of a humorous line of double meaning. When a Roman eques
on being thrown to the wild beasts loudly protested his innocence, he took him out, cut
off his tongue, and put him back again.
XXVIII. Having asked a man who had been recalled from an exile of long standing,
how in the world he spent his time there, the man replied by way of flattery: "I
constantly prayed the gods for what has come to pass, that Tiberius might die and you
become emperor." Thereupon Caligula, thinking that his exiles were likewise praying
for his death, sent emissaries from island to island to butcher them all. Wishing to have
one of the senators torn to pieces, he induced some of the members to assail him suddenly,
on his entrance into the Senate, with the charge of being a public enemy, to stab him with
their styluses, and turn him over to the rest to be mangled; and his cruelty was not sated
until he saw the man's limbs, members, and bowels dragged through the streets and heaped
up before him.
XXIX. He added to the enormity of his crimes by the brutality of his language.
He used to say that there was nothing in his own character which he admired and approved
more highly than what he called his "lasting power", that is, his shameless
impudence [a sexual innuendo]. When his grandmother Antonia gave him some advice, he was
not satisfied merely not to listen but replied: "Remember that I have the right to do
anything to anybody." When he was on the point of killing his brother, and suspected
that he had taken drugs as a precaution against poison, he cried: "What! an antidote
against Caesar?" After banishing his sisters, he made the threat that he not only had
islands, but swords as well. An ex-praetor who had retired to Anticyra for his health,
sent frequent requests for an extension of his leave, but Caligula had him put to death,
adding that a man who had not been helped by so long a course of hellebore needed to be
bled. On signing the list of prisoners who were to be put to death later, he said that he
was clearing his accounts. Having condemned several Gauls and Greeks to death in a body,
he boasted that he had subdued Gallograecia.
XXX. He seldom had anyone put to death except by numerous slight wounds, his
constant order, which soon became well-known, being: "Strike so that he may feel that
he is dying." When a different man than he had intended had been killed, through a
mistake in the names, he said that the victim too had deserved the same fate. He often
uttered the familiar line of the tragic poet [Accius, Trag., 203]: --- "Let
them hate me, so they but fear me." He often inveighed against all the senators
alike, as adherents of Seianus and informers against his mother and brothers, producing
the documents which he pretended to have burned, and upholding the cruelty of Tiberius as
forced upon him, since he could not but believe so many accusers. He constantly
tongue-lashed the equestrian order as devotees of the stage and the arena. Angered at the
rabble for applauding a faction which he opposed, he cried: "I wish the Roman people
had but a single neck," and when the brigand Tetrinius was demanded, he said that
those who asked for him were Tetriniuses also. Once a band of five retiarii in
tunics, matched against the same number of secutores, yielded without a struggle;
but when their death was ordered, one of them caught up his trident and slew all the
victors. Caligula bewailed this in a public proclamation as a most cruel murder, and
expressed his horror of those who had had the heart to witness it
XXXI. He even used openly to deplore the state of his times, because they had
been marked by no public disasters, saying that the rule of Augustus had been made famous
by the Varus massacre, and that of Tiberius by the collapse of the amphitheatre at
Fidenae, while his own was threatened with oblivion because of its prosperity, and every
now and then he wished for the destruction of his armies, for famine, pestilence, fires,
or a great earthquake.
XXXII. His acts and words were equally cruel, even when he was indulging in
relaxation and given up to amusement and feasting. While he was lunching or revelling
capital examinations by torture were often made in his presence, and a soldier who was an
adept at decapitation cut off the heads of those who were brought from prison. At Puteoli,
at the dedication of the bridge that he contrived, as has been said, after inviting a
number to come to him from the shore, on a sudden he had them all thrown overboard; and
when some caught hold of the rudders of the ships, he pushed them off into the sea with
boathooks and oars. At a public banquet in Rome he immediately handed a slave over to the
executioners for stealing a strip of silver from the couches, with orders that his hands
be cut off and hung from his neck upon his breast, and that he then be led about among the
guests, preceded by a placard giving the reason for his punishment. When a murmillo
from the gladiatorial school fought with him with wooden swords and fell on purpose, he
stabbed him with a real dagger and then ran about with a palm-branch, as victors do. Once
when he stood by the altar dressed as a popa and a victim was brought up, he raised
his mallet on high and slew the cultrarius. At one of his more sumptuous banquets
he suddenly burst into a fit of laughter, and when the consuls, who were reclining next
him, politely inquired at what he was laughing, he replied: "What do you suppose,
except that at a single nod of mine both of you could have your throats cut on the
spot?"
XXXIII. As a sample of his humor, he took his place beside a statue of Jupiter,
and asked the tragic actor Apelles which of the two seemed to him the greater, and when he
hesitated, Caligula had him flayed with whips, extolling his voice from time to time, when
the wretch begged for mercy, as passing sweet even in his groans. Whenever he kissed the
neck of his wife or sweetheart, he would say: "Off comes this beautiful head whenever
I give the word." He even used to threaten now and then that he would resort to
torture if necessary, to find out from his dear Caesonia why he loved her so passionately.
XXXIV. He assailed mankind of almost every epoch with no less envy and malice
than insolence and cruelty. He threw down the statues of famous men, which for lack of
room Augustus had moved from the court of the Capitol to the Campus Martius, and so
utterly demolished them that they could not be set up again with their inscriptions
entire; and thereafter he forbade the erection of the statue of any living man anywhere,
without his knowledge and consent. He even thought of destroying the poems of Homer,
asking why he should not have the same privilege as Plato, who excluded Homer from his
ideal commonwealth. More than that, he all but removed the writings and the busts of
Vergil and of Titus Livius from all the libraries, railing at the former as a man of no
talent and very little learning, and the latter as a verbose and careless historian. With
regard to lawyers too, as if intending to do away with any practice of their profession,
he often threatened that he would see to it, by Heaven, that they could give no advice
contrary to his wish.
XXXV. He took from all the noblest of the city the ancient devices of their
families, from Torquatus his collar, from Cincinnatus his lock of hair, from Gnaeus
Pompeius the surname Magnus belonging to his ancient race. After inviting Ptolemy, whom I
have mentioned before, to come from his kingdom, and receiving him with honor, he suddenly
had him executed for no other reason than that when giving a gladiatorial show, he noticed
that Ptolemy on entering the theatre attracted general attention by the splendor of his
purple cloak. Whenever he ran across handsome men with fine heads of hair [for he himself
was bald], he disfigured them by having the backs of their heads shaved. There was a
certain Aesius Proculus, son of a chief centurion, called Colosseros [ "Giant
Love"] because of his remarkable size and handsome appearance; this man Caligula
ordered to be suddenly dragged from his seat in the amphitheater and led into the arena,
where he matched him first against a Thracian and then against a heavy-armed gladiator;
when Proculus was victor in both contests, Caligula gave orders that he be bound at once,
clad in rags, and then put to death, after first being led about the streets and exhibited
to the women. In short, there was no one of such low condition or such abject fortune that
he did not envy him such advantages as he possessed. Since the king of Nemi [the priest of
Diana at Nemi, who must be a fugitive slave and obtain his office by slaying his
predecessor] had now held his priesthood for many years, he hired a stronger adversary to
attack him. When an essedarius[a gladiator who fought from a chariot] called Porius
was vigorously applauded on the day of one of the games for setting his slave free after a
victory, Caligula rushed from the amphitheater in such haste that he trod on the fringe of
his toga and went headlong down the steps, fuming and shouting: "The people that rule
the world give more honor to a gladiator for a trifling act than to their deified emperors
or to the one still present with them."
XXXVI. He respected neither his own chastity nor that of anyone else. He is said
to have had unnatural relations with Marcus Lepidus, the pantomimic actor Mnester, and
certain hostages. Valerius Catullus, a young man of a consular family, publicly proclaimed
that he had violated the emperor and worn himself out in commerce with him. To say nothing
of his incest with his sisters and his notorious passion for the concubine Pyrallis, there
was scarcely any woman of rank whom he did not approach. These as a rule he invited to
dinner with their husbands, and as they passed by the foot of his couch, he would inspect
them critically and deliberately, as if buying slaves, even putting out his hand and
lifting up the face of anyone who looked down in modesty; then as often as the fancy took
him he would leave the room, sending for the one who pleased him best, and returning soon
afterward with evident signs of what had occurred, he would openly commend or criticize
his partner, recounting her charms or defects and commenting on her conduct. To some he
personally sent a bill of divorce in the name of their absent husbands, and had it entered
in the public records.
XXXVII. In reckless extravagance he outdid the prodigals of all times in
ingenuity, inventing a new sort of baths and unnatural varieties of food and feasts; for
he would bathe in hot or cold perfumed oils, drink pearls of great price dissolved in
vinegar, and set before his guests loaves and meats of gold, declaring that a man ought
either to be frugal or Caesar. He even scattered large sums of money among the people from
the roof of the Basilica Julia for several days in succession. He also built Liburnian
galleys with ten banks of oars, with sterns set with gems, parti-colored sails, huge
spacious baths, colonnades, and banquet-halls, and even a great variety of vines and fiuit
trees; that on board of them he might recline at table from an early hour, and coast along
the shores of Campania amid songs and choruses. He built villas and country houses with
utter disregard of expense, caring for nothing so much as to do what men said was
impossible. So he built moles out into the deep and stormy sea, tunnelled rocks of hardest
flint, built up plains to the height of mountains and razed mountains to the level of the
plain; all with incredible dispatch, since the penalty for delay was death. To make a long
story short, vast sums of money, including the 2,700,000,000 sesterces which Tibelius
Caesar had amassed, were squandered by him in less than the revolution of a year.
XXXVIII. Having thus impoverished himself, from very need he turned his
attention to pillage through a complicated and cunningly devised system of false
accusations, auction sales, and imposts. He ruled that Roman citizenship could not
lawfully be enjoyed by those whose forefathers had obtained it for themselves and their
descendants, except in the case of sons, since "descendants" ought not to be
understood as going beyond that degree; and when certificates of the deified Julius and
Augustus were presented to him, he waved them aside as old and out of date. He also
charged that those estates had been falsely returned, to which any addition had later been
made from any cause whatever. If any chief centurions since the beginning of Tiberius'
reign had not named that emperor or himself among their heirs, he set aside their wills on
the ground of ingratitude; also the testaments of all others, as null and void, if anyone
said that they had intended to make Caesar their heir when they died. When he had roused
such fear in this way that he came to be named openly as heir by strangers among their
intimates and by parents among their children, he accused them of making game of him by
continuing to live after such a declaration, and to many of them he sent poisoned
dainties. He used further to conduct the trial of such cases in person, naming in advance
the sum which he proposed to raise at each sitting, and not rising until it was made up.
Impatient of the slightest delay, he once condemned in a single sentence more than forty
who were accused on different counts, boasting to Caesonia, when she woke after a nap, of
the great amount of business he had done while she was taking her afternoon sleep.
Appointing an auction, he put up and sold what was left from all the shows, personally
soliciting bids and running them up so high, that some who were forced to buy articles at
an enormous price and were thus stripped of their possessions, opened their veins. A
well-known incident is that of Aponius Saturninus; he fell asleep on one of the benches,
and as the auctioneer was warned by Gaius not to overlook the praetorian gentleman who
kept nodding to him, the bidding was not stopped until thirteen gladiators were knocked
down to the unconscious sleeper at nine million sesterces.
XXXIX. When he was in Gaul and had sold at immense figures the jewels,
furniture, slaves, and even the freedmen of his sisters who had been condemned to death,
finding the business so profitable, he sent to the city for all the paraphernalia of the
old palace, seizing for its transportation even public carriages and animals from the
bakeries; with the result that bread was often scarce at Rome and many who had cases in
court lost them from inability to appear and meet their bail. To get rid of this
furniture, he resorted to every kind of trickery and wheedling, now railing at the bidders
for avarice and because they were not ashamed to be richer than he, and now feigning
regret for allowing common men to acquire the property of princes. Having learned that a
rich provincial had paid those who issued the emperor's invitations two hundred thousand
sesterces, to be smuggled in among the guests at one of his dinner-parties, he was not in
the least displeased that the honor of dining with him was rated so high; but when next
day the man appeared at his auction, he sent a messenger to hand him some trifle or other
at the price of two hundred thousand sesterces and say that he should dine with Caesar on
his personal invitation.
XL. He levied new and unheard of taxes, at first through the publicans and then,
because their profit was so great, through the centurions and tribunes of the praetorian
guard; and there was no class of commodities or men on which he did not impose some form
of tariff. On all eatables sold in any part of the city he levied a fixed and definite
charge; on lawsuits and legal processes begun anywhere, a fortieth part of the sum
involved, providing a penalty in case anyone was found guilty of compromising or
abandoning a suit; on the daily wages of porters, an eighth; on the earnings of
prostitutes, as much as each received for one embrace; and a clause was added to this
chapter of the law, providing that those who had ever been prostitutes or acted as panders
should be liable to this public tax, and that even matrimony should not be exempt.
XLI. When taxes of this kind had been proclaimed, but not published in writing,
inasmuch as many offences were committed through ignorance of the letter of the law, he at
last, on the urgent demand of the people, had the law posted up, but in a very narrow
place and in excessively small letters, to prevent the making of a copy. To leave no kind
of plunder untried, he opened a brothel in his palace, setting apart a number of rooms and
furnishing them to suit the grandeur of the place, where matrons and freeborn youths
should stand exposed. Then he sent his pages about the fora and basilicas, to invite young
men and old to enjoy themselves, lending money on interest to those who came and having
clerks openly take down their names, as contributors to Caesar's revenues. He did not even
disdain to make money from play, and to increase his gains by falsehood and even by
perjury. Having on one occasion given up his place to the player next him and gone into
the courtyard, he spied two wealthy Roman knights passing by; he ordered them to be seized
at once and their property confiscated and came back exultant, boasting that he had never
played in better luck.
XLII. But when his daughter was born, complaining of his narrow means, and no
longer merely of the burdens of a ruler but of those of a father as well, he took up
contributions for the girl's maintenance and dowry. He also made proclamation that he
would receive New Year's gifts, and on the Kalends of January took his place in the
entrance to the Palace, to clutch the coins which a throng of people of all classes
showered on him by handfuls and lapfuls. Finally, seized with a mania for feeling the
touch of money, he would often pour out huge piles of gold pieces in some open place, walk
over them barefooted, and wallow in them for a long time with his whole body.
XLIII. He had but one experience with military affairs or war, and then on a
sudden impulse; for having gone to Mevania to visit the river Clitumnus and its grove, he
was reminded of the necessity of recruiting his body-guard of Batavians and was seized
with the idea of an expedition to Germania. So without delay he assembled legions and
auxiliaries from all quarters, holding levies everywhere with the utmost strictness, and
collecting provisions of every kind on an unheard of scale. Then he began his march and
made it now so hurriedly and rapidly, that the praetorian cohorts were forced, contrary to
all precedent, to lay their standards on the pack-animals and thus to follow him; again he
was so lazy and luxurious that he was carried in a litter by eight bearers, requiring the
inhabitants of the towns through which he passed to sweep the roads for him and sprinkle
them to lay the dust.
XLIV. On reaching his camp, to show his vigilance and strietness as a commander,
he dismissed in disgrace the generals who were late in bringing in the auxiliaries from
various places, and in reviewing his troops he deprived many of the chief centurions who
were well on in years of their rank, in some cases only a few days before they would have
served their time, giving as a reason their age and infirmity; then railing at the rest
for their avarice, he reduced the rewards given on completion of full military service to
six thousand sesterces. All that he accomplished was to receive the surrender of Adminius,
son of Cynobellinus king of the Britons, who had been banished by his father and had
deserted to the Romans with a small force; yet as if the entire island had submitted to
him, he sent a grandiloquent letter to Rome, commanding the couriers who carried it to
ride in their post-chaise all the way to the Forum and the Senate, and not to deliver it
to anyone except the consuls, in the temple of Mars the Avenger, before a full meeting of
the senate.
XLV. Presently, finding no one to fight with, he had a few Germans of his
body-guard taken across the river and concealed there, and word brought him after luncheon
with great bustle and confusion that the enemy were close at hand. Upon this he rushed out
with his friends and a part of the praetorian cavalry to the woods close by, and after
cutting the branches from some trees and adorning them like trophies, he returned by
torchlight, taunting those who had not followed him as timorous and cowardly, and
presenting his companions and the partners in his victory with crowns of a new kind and of
a new name, ornamented with figures of the sun, moon and stars, and called exploratoriae.
Another time some hostages were taken from a common school and secretly sent on ahead of
him, when he suddenly left a banquet and pursued them with the cavalry as if they were
runaways, caught them, and brought them back in fetters, in this farce too showing
immoderate extravagance. On coming back to the table, when some announced that the army
was assembled, he urged them to take their places just as they were, in their coats of
mail. He also admonished them in the familiar line of Vergil to "bear up and save
themselves for better days." Meanwhile he rebuked the absent senate and people in a
stern edict because "while Caesar was fighting and exposed to such dangers they were
indulging in revels and frequenting the theatres and their pleasant villas."
XLVI. Finally, as if he intended to bring the war to an end, he drew up a line
of battle on the shore of the Ocean, arranging his ballistas and other artillery; and when
no one knew or could imagine what he was going to do, he suddenly bade them gather shells
and fill their helmets and the folds of their gowns, calling them "spoils from the
Ocean, due to the Capitol and Palatine." As a monument
of his victory he erected a lofty tower, from which lights were to shine at night to
guide the course of ships, as from the Pharos [the lighthouse at Alexandria]. Then,
promising the soldiers a gratuity of a hundred denarii each, as if he had shown
unprecedented liberality, he said, "Go your way happy; go your way rich."
XLVII. Then turning his attention to his triumph, in addition to a few captives
and deserters from the barbarians he chose all the tallest of the Gauls, and as he
expressed it, those who were "worthy of a triumph," as well as some of the
chiefs. These he reserved for his parade, compelling them not only to dye their hair red
and to let it grow long, but also to learn the language of the Germans and assume
barbarian names. He also had the triremes in which he had entered the Ocean carried
overland to Rome for the greater part of the way. He wrote besides to his financial agents
to prepare for a triumph at the smallest possible cost, but on a grander scale than had
ever before been known, since the goods of all were at their disposal.
XLVIII. Before leaving the province he formed a design of unspeakable cruelty,
that of butchering the legions that had begun the mutiny years before just after the death
of Augustus, because they had beleagured his father Germanicus, their leader, and himself,
at the time an infant; and though he was with difficulty turned from this mad purpose, he
could by no means be prevented from persisting in his desire to decimate them. Accordingly
he summoned them to an assembly without their arms, not even wearing their swords, and
surrounded them with armed horsemen. But seeing that some of the legionaries, suspecting
his purpose, were stealing off to resume their arms, in case any violence should be
offered them, he fled from the assembly and set out for the city in a hurry, turning all
his ferocity upon the senate, against which he uttered open threats, in order to divert
the gossip about his own dishonor. He complained among other things that he had been
cheated of his fairly earned triumph; whereas a short time before he had himself given
orders that on pain of death no action should be taken about his honors.
XLIX. Therefore, when he was met on the road by envoys from that distinguished
body, begging him to hasten his return, he roared, "I will come, and this will be
with me," frequently smiting the hilt of the sword which he wore at his side. He also
made proclamation that he was returning, but only to those who desired his presence, the
equestrian order and the people, for to the senate he would never more be fellow-citizen
nor prince. He even forbade any of the senators to meet him. Then giving up or postponing
his triumph, he entered the city on his birthday in an ovation; and within four months he
perished, having dared great crimes and meditating still greater ones. For he had made up
his mind to move to Antium, and later to Alexandria, after first slaying the noblest
members of the two orders. That no one may doubt this, let me say that among his private
papers two books were found with different titles, one called The Sword and the
other The Dagger, and both containing the names and marks of identification of
those whom he had doomed to death. There was found besides a great chest full of divers
kinds of poisons, which they say were later thrown into the sea by Claudius and so
infected was it as to kill the fish, which were thrown up by the tide upon the neighboring
shores.
L. He was very tall and extremely pale, with an unshapely body, but very-thin
neck and legs. His eyes and temples were hollow, his forehead broad and grim, his hair
thin and entirely gone on the top of his head, though his body was hairy. Because of this
to look upon him from a higher place as he passed by, or for any reason whatever to
mention a goat, was treated as a capital offence. While his face was naturally forbidding
and ugly, he purposely made it even more savage, practicing all kinds of terrible and
fearsome expressions before a mirror. He was sound neither of body nor mind. As a boy he
was troubled with the falling sickness [presumably epilepsy], and while in his youth he
had some endarance, yet at times because of sudden faintness he was hardly able to walk,
to stand up, to collect his thoughts, or to hold up his head. He himself realized his
mental infirmity, and thought at times of going into retirement and clearing his brain. It
is thought that his wife Caesonia gave him a drug intended for a love potion, which,
however, had the effect of driving him mad. He was especially tormented with
sleeplessness; for he never rested more than three hours at night, and even for that
length of time he did not sleep quietly, but was terrified by strange apparitions, once,
for example, dreaming that the spirit of the Ocean talked with him. Therefore, weary of
lying in bed wide awake during the greater part of the night, he would now sit upon his
couch, and now wander through the long colonnades, crying out from time to time for
daylight and longing for its coming.
LI. I think I may fairly attribute to mental weakness the existence of two
exactly opposite faults in the same person, extreme assurance and, on the other hand,
excessive timorousness. For this man, who so utterly despised the gods, was wont at the
slightest thunder and lightning to shut his eyes, to muffle up his head, and if they
increased, to leap from his bed and hide under it. In his journey through Sicily, though
he made all manner of fun of the miracles in various places, he suddenly fled from Messana
by night, panic-stricken by the smoke and roaring from Aetna's crater. Full of threats as
he was also against the barbarians, when he was riding in a chariot through a narrow
defile on the far side of the Rhine, and someone said that there would be no slight panic
if the enemy should appear anywhere, he immediately mounted a horse and hastily returned
to the bridges. Finding them crowded with camp servants and baggage, in his impatience of
any delay he was passed along from hand to hand over the men's heads. Soon after, hearing
of an uprising in Germania, he made preparations to flee from the city and equipped fleets
for the purpose, finding comfort only in the thought that the provinces across the sea
would at any rate be left him, in case the enemy should be victorious and take possession
of the summits of the Alps, as the Cimbri, or even of the city, as the Senones had once
done. And it was this, I think, that later inspired his assassins with the idea of
pretending to the riotous soldiers that he had laid hands on himself in terror at the
report of a defeat.
LII. In his clothing, his shoes, and the rest of his attire he did not follow
the usage of his country and his fellow-citizens; not always even that of his sex; or in
fact, that of an ordinary mortal. He often appeared in public in embroidered cloaks
covered with precious stones, with a long-sleeved tunic and bracelets; sometimes in silk a
and in a woman's robe; now in slippers or buskins; again in boots, such as the emperor's
body-guard wear, and at times in the low shoes which are used by females. But oftentimes
he exhibited himself with a golden beard, holding in his hand a thunderbolt, a trident, or
a caduceus, emblems of the gods, and even in the garb of Venus. He frequently wore the
dress of a triumphing general, even before his campaign, and sometimes the breastplate of
Alexander the Great, which he had taken from his sarcophagus.
LIII. As regards liberal studies, he gave little attention to literature but a
great deal to oratory, and he was as ready of speech and eloquent as you please,
especially if he had occasion to make a charge against anyone. For when he was angry, he
had an abundant flow of words and thoughts, and his voice and delivery were such that for
very excitement he could not stand still and he was clearly heard by those at a distance.
When about to begin an harangue, he threatened to draw the sword of his nightly labors,
and he had such scorn of a polished and elegant style that he used to say that Seneca, who
was very popular just then, composed "mere school exercises," and that he was
"sand without lime." He had the habit, too, of writing replies to the successful
pleas of orators and composing accusations and defences of important personages who were
brought to trial before the senate; and according as his stylus had run most easily, he
brought ruin or relief to each of them by his speech, while he would also invite the
equestrian order by proclamation to come in and hear him.
LIV. Moreover, he devoted himself with much enthusiasm
to arts of other kinds and of great variety, appearing as a Thracian gladiator, as a
charioteer, and even as a singer and dancer, fighting with the weapons of actual warfare,
and driving in circuses built in various places; so carried away by his interest in
singing and dancing that even at the public performances he could not refrain from singing
with the tragic actor as he delivered his lines, or from openly imitating his gestures by
way of praise or correction. Indeed, on the day when he was slain he seems to have ordered
an all-night vigil for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the licence of the occasion
to make his first appearance on the stage. Sometimes he danced even at night, and once he
summoned three consulars to the Palace at the close of the second watch, and when they
arrived in great and deathly fear, he seated them on a stage and then on a sudden burst
out with a great din of flutes and clogs, dressed in a cloak and a tunic reaching to his
heels, and after dancing a number went off again. And yet varied as were his
accomplishments, the man could not swim.
LV. Toward those to whom he was devoted his partiality became madness. He used
to kiss Mnester, an actor of pantomimes, even in the theatre, and if anyone made even the
slightest sound while his favorite was dancing, he had him dragged from his seat and
scourged him with his own hand. When a Roman eques created a disturbance, he sent a
centurion to bid him go without delay to Ostia and carry a message for him to King Ptolemy
in Mauretania; and its purport was this: "Do neither good nor ill to the man whom I
have sent you." He gave some Thracian gladiators command of his German body-guard. He
reduced the amount of armor of the murmillones [a type of gladiator]. When one
Columbus had won a victory, but had suffered a slight wound, he had the place rubbed with
a poison which he henceforth called Columbinum; at least that name was found
included in his list of poisons. He was so passionately devoted to the green faction [in
the Circus races] that he constantly dined and spent the night in their stables, and in
one of his revels with them he gave the driver Eutychus two million sesterces in gifts. He
used to send his soldiers on the day before the games and order silence in the
neighborhood, to prevent the horse Incitatus from being disturbed. Besides a stall
of marble, a manger of ivory, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, he even
gave this horse a house, a troop of slaves and furniture, for the more elegant
entertainment of the guests invited in his name; and it is also said that he planned to
make him consul.
LVI. During this frantic and riotous career several thought of attempting his
life. But when one or two conspiracies had been detected and the rest were waiting for a
favorable opportunity, two men made common cause and succeeded, with the connivance of his
most influential freedmen and the officers of the praetorian guard; for although the
charge that these last were privy to one of the former conspiracies was false, they
realised that Caligula hated and feared them. In fact, he exposed them to great odium by
once taking them aside and declaring, drawn sword in hand, that he would kill himself, if
they too thought he deserved death; and from that time on he never ceased accusing them
one to the other and setting them all at odds. When they had decided to attempt his life
at the exhibition of the Palatine games, as he went out at noon, Cassius Chaerea, tribune
of a cohort of the praetorian guard, claimed for himself the principal part; for Gaius
used to taunt him, a man already well on in years, with voluptuousness and effeminacy by
every form of insult. When he asked for the watch word Gaius would give him
"Priapus" or "Venus," and when Chaerea had occasion to thank him for
anything, he would hold out his hand to kiss, forming and moving it in an obscene fashion.
LVII. His approaching murder was foretold by many prodigies. The statue of
Jupiter at Olympia, which he had ordered to be taken to pieces and moved to Rome, suddenly
uttered such a peal of laughter that the scaffoldings collapsed and the workmen took to
their heels; and at once a man called Cassius turned up, who declared that he had been
bidden in a dream to sacrifice a bull to Jupiter. The Capitol at Capua was struck by
lightning on the Ides of March, and also the room of the doorkeeper of the Palace at Rome.
Some inferred from the latter omen that danger was threatened to the owner at the hands of
his guards; and from the former, the murder of a second distinguished personage, such as
had taken place long before on that same day. The soothsayer Sulla, too, when Gaius
consulted him about his horoscope, declared that inevitable death was close at hand. The
lots of Fortune at Antium warned him to beware of Cassius, and he accordingly ordered the
death of Cassius Longinus, who was at the time proconsul of Asia, forgetting that the
family name of Chaerea was Cassius. The day before he was killed he dreamt that he stood
in heaven beside the throne of Jupiter and that the god struck him with the toe of his
right foot and hurled him to earth. Some things which had happened on that very day
shortly before he was killed were also regarded as portents. As he was sacrificing, he was
sprinkled with the blood of a flamingo, and the pantomimic actor Mnester danced a tragedy
which the tragedian Neoptolemus had acted years before during the games at which Philip
king of the Macedonians was assassinated. In a farce called Laureolus, in which the
chief actor falls as he is making his escape and vomits blood, several understudies so
vied with one another in giving evidence of their proficiency that the stage swam in
blood. A nocturnal performance besides was rehearsing, in which scenes from the lower
world were represented by Egyptians and Aethiopians.
LVIII. On the ninth day before the Kalends of February [January 24, 41 A.D.], at
about the seventh hour he hesitated whether or not to get up for luncheon, since his
stomach was still disordered from excess of food on the day before, but at length he came
out at the persuasion of his friends. In the covered passage through which he had to pass,
some boys of good birth, who had been summoned from Asia to appear on the stage, were
rehearsing their parts, and he stopped to watch and encourage them; and had not the leader
of the troop complained that he had a chill, he would have returned and had the
performance given at once. From this point there are two versions of the story: some say
that as he was talking with the boys, Chaerea came up behind, and gave him a deep cut in
the neck, having first cried, "Take that," and that then the tribune Cornelius
Sabinus, who was the other conspirator and faced Gaius, stabbed him in the breast [part of
the ritual at the sacrifice was that the slayer raised his axe with the question
"Shall I do it?" to which the priest replied "Take that"]. Others say
that Sabinus, after getting rid of the crowd through centurions who were in the plot,
asked for the watchword, as soldiers do; and that when Gaius gave him "Jupiter,"
he cried "So be it," [another formula at a sacrifice was "receive the
fulfillment of your omen", i.e., in naming Jupiter, the god of the thunderbolt
and sudden death], and as Gaius looked around, he split his jawbone with a blow of his
sword. As he lay upon the ground and with writhing limbs called out that he still lived,
the others dispatched him with thirty wounds; for the general signal was " Strike
again." Some even thrust their swords through his privates. At the beginning of the
disturbance his bearers ran to his aid with their poles [with which they carried his
litter], and presently the Germans of his body-guard, and they slew several of his
assassins, as well as some inoffensive senators.
LIX. He lived twenty-nine years and ruled three years, ten months and eight
days. His body was conveyed secretly to the gardens of the Lamian family, where it was
partly consumed on a hastily erected pyre and buried beneath a light covering of turf;
later his sisters on their return from exile dug it up, cremated it, and consigned it to
the tomb. Before this was done, it is well known that the caretakers of the gardens were
disturbed by ghosts, and that in the house where he was slain not a night passed without
some fearsome apparition, until at last the house itself was destroyed by fire. With him
died his wife Caesonia, stabbed with a sword by a centurion, while his daughter's brains
were dashed out against a wall.
LX. One may form an idea of the state of those times by what followed. Not even
after the murder was made known was it at once believed that he was dead, but it was
suspected that Gaius himself had made up and circulated the report, to find out by that
means how men felt towards him. The conspirators too had not agreed on a successor, and
the senate was so unanimously in favor of re-establishing the republic that the consuls
called the first meeting, not in the senate house, because it had the name Julia, but in
the Capitol; while some in expressing their views proposed that the memory of the Caesars
be done away with and their temples destroyed. Men further observed and commented on the
fact that all the Caesars whose forename was Gaius perished by the sword, beginning with
the one who was slain in the times of Cinna [Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo, slain in 87
B.C.---though the Dictator's father died a natural death, as did also Gaius Caesar,
grandson of Augustus].
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