Caius Caligula

Suetonius

De Vita Caesarum

Caius Caligula

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].

Source:

From: Suetonius, 2 vols., trans. J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp.
405-497.

Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton.
Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text.