[Loeb Translation, 1914]
XXIV He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters and at a large banquet he placed
each of them 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 offense 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 afterward 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 honour so highly, but so prostituted them to his
favourites; 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 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 himseIf, 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 hack 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 honour her with the title
of wife until she had borne him a child, announeing 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 so violent that she would try to scratch surfaces and eyes of the little
children who played with her.
****
XXXVI. He respected neither his own chastity nor that of anyone else. He is said to
have had unnatural relations [commercio stupri] 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 criticise 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.
Source.
Suetonius:
CALIGULA XXIV-XXV, XXXVI, See also full text of Suetonius: Life of Caligula [At Ancient History Sourcebook]
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