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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.
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