degree of jealousy and malignity equal to that of his cruelty and pride.
He so demolished and dispersed the statues of several illustrious
persons, which had been removed by Augustus, for want of room, from the
court of the Capitol into the Campus Martius, that it was impossible to
set them up again with their inscriptions entire. And, for the future,
he forbad any statue whatever to be erected without his knowledge and
leave. He had thoughts too of suppressing Homer's poems: "For why," said
he, "may not I do what Plato has done before me, who excluded him from
his commonwealth?" [440] He was likewise very near banishing the
writings and the busts of Virgil and Livy from all libraries; censuring
one of them as "a man of no genius and very little learning;" and the
other as "a verbose and careless historian." He often talked of the
lawyers as if he intended to abolish their profession. "By Hercules!"
he would say, "I shall put it out of their power to answer any questions
in law, otherwise than by referring to me!"
XXXV. He took from the noblest persons in the city the ancient marks of
distinction used by their families; as the collar from Torquatus [441];
from Cincinnatus the curl of (276) hair [442]; and from Cneius Pompey,
the surname of Great, belonging to that ancient family. Ptolemy,
mentioned before, whom he invited from his kingdom, and received with
great honours, he suddenly put to death, for no other reason, but because
he observed that upon entering the theatre, at a public exhibition, he
attracted the eyes of all the spectators, by the splendour of his purple
robe. As often as he met with handsome men, who had fine heads of hair,
he would order the back of their heads to be shaved, to make them appear
ridiculous. There was one Esius Proculus, the son of a centurion of the
first rank, who, for his great stature and fine proportions, was called
the Colossal. Him he ordered to be dragged from his seat in the arena,
and matched with a gladiator in light armour, and afterwards with another
completely armed; and upon his worsting them both, commanded him
forthwith to be bound, to be led clothed in rags up and down the streets
of the city, and, after being exhibited in that plight to the women, to
be then butchered. There was no man of so abject or mean condition,
whose excellency in any kind he did not envy. The Rex Nemorensis [443]
having many years enjoyed the honour of the priesthood, he procured a
still stronger antagonist to oppose him. One Porius, who fought in a
chariot [444], having been victorious in an exhibition, and in his joy
given freedom to a slave, was applauded so vehemently, that Caligula rose
in such haste from his seat, that, treading upon the hem of his toga, he
tumbled down the steps, full of indignation, (277) and crying out, "A
people who are masters of the world, pay greater respect to a gladiator
for a trifle, than to princes admitted amongst the gods, or to my own
majesty here present amongst them."
XXXVI. He never had the least regard either to the chastity of his own
person, or that of others. He is said to have been inflamed with an
unnatural passion for Marcus Lepidus Mnester, an actor in pantomimes, and
for certain hostages; and to have engaged with them in the practice of
mutual pollution. Valerius Catullus, a young man of a consular family,
bawled aloud in public that he had been exhausted by him in that
abominable act. Besides his incest with his sisters, and his notorious
passion for Pyrallis, the prostitute, there was hardly any lady of
distinction with whom he did not make free. He used commonly to invite
them with their husbands to supper, and as they passed by the couch on
which he reclined at table, examine them very closely, like those who
traffic in slaves; and if any one from modesty held down her face, he
raised it up with his hand. Afterwards, as often as he was in the
humour, he would quit the room, send for her he liked best, and in a
short time return with marks of recent disorder about them. He would
then commend or disparage her in the presence of the company, recounting
the charms or defects of her person and behaviour in private. To some he
sent a divorce in the name of their absent husbands, and ordered it to be
registered in the public acts.
XXXVII. In the devices of his profuse expenditure, he surpassed all the
prodigals that ever lived; inventing a new kind of bath, with strange
dishes and suppers, washing in precious unguents, both warm and cold,
drinking pearls of immense value dissolved in vinegar, and serving up for
his guests loaves and other victuals modelled in gold; often saying,
"that a man ought either to be a good economist or an emperor." Besides,
he scattered money to a prodigious amount among the people, from the top
of the Julian Basilica [445], during several days successively. He built
two ships with ten banks of oars, after the Liburnian fashion, the poops
of which blazed with jewels, and the sails were of various parti-colours.
They were fitted up with ample baths, galleries, and saloons, and
supplied with a great variety of vines and other fruit-trees. In these
he would sail in the day-time along the coast of Campania, feasting (278)
amidst dancing and concerts of music. In building his palaces and
villas, there was nothing he desired to effect so much, in defiance of
all reason, as what was considered impossible. Accordingly, moles were
formed in the deep and adverse sea [446], rocks of the hardest stone cut
away, plains raised to the height of mountains with a vast mass of earth,
and the tops of mountains levelled by digging; and all these were to be
executed with incredible speed, for the least remissness was a capital
offence. Not to mention particulars, he spent enormous sums, and the
whole treasures which had been amassed by Tiberius Caesar, amounting to
two thousand seven hundred millions of sesterces, within less than a
year.
XXXVIII. Having therefore quite exhausted these funds, and being in want
of money, he had recourse to plundering the people, by every mode of
false accusation, confiscation, and taxation, that could be invented. He
declared that no one had any right to the freedom of Rome, although their
ancestors had acquired it for themselves and their posterity, unless they
were sons; for that none beyond that degree ought to be considered as
posterity. When the grants of the Divine Julius and Augustus were
produced to him, he only said, that he was very sorry they were obsolete
and out of date. He also charged all those with making false returns,
who, after the taking of the census, had by any means whatever increased
their property. He annulled the wills of all who had been centurions of
the first rank, as testimonies of their base ingratitude, if from the
beginning of Tiberius's reign they had not left either that prince or
himself their heir. He also set aside the wills of all others, if any
person only pretended to say, that they designed at their death to leave
Caesar their heir. The public becoming terrified at this proceeding, he
was now appointed joint-heir with their friends, and in the case of
parents with their children, by persons unknown to him. Those who lived
any considerable time after making such a will, he said, were only making
game of him; and accordingly he sent many of them poisoned cakes. He
used to try such causes himself; fixing previously the sum he proposed to
raise during the sitting, and, after he had secured it, quitting the
tribunal. Impatient of the least delay, he condemned by a single
sentence forty (279) persons, against whom there were different charges;
boasting to Caesonia when she awoke, "how much business he had dispatched
while she was taking her mid-day sleep." He exposed to sale by auction,
the remains of the apparatus used in the public spectacles; and exacted
such biddings, and raised the prices so high, that some of the purchasers
were ruined, and bled themselves to death. There is a well-known story
told of Aponius Saturninus, who happening to fall asleep as he sat on a
bench at the sale, Caius called out to the auctioneer, not to overlook
the praetorian personage who nodded to him so often; and accordingly the
salesman went on, pretending to take the nods for tokens of assent, until
thirteen gladiators were knocked down to him at the sum of nine millions
of sesterces [447], he being in total ignorance of what was doing.
XXXIX. Having also sold in Gaul all the clothes, furniture, slaves, and
even freedmen belonging to his sisters, at prodigious prices, after their
condemnation, he was so much delighted with his gains, that he sent to
Rome for all the furniture of the old palace [448]; pressing for its
conveyance all the carriages let to hire in the city, with the horses and
mules belonging to the bakers, so that they often wanted bread at Rome;
and many who had suits at law in progress, lost their causes, because
they could not make their appearance in due time according to their
recognizances. In the sale of this furniture, every artifice of fraud
and imposition was employed. Sometimes he would rail at the bidders for
being niggardly, and ask them "if they were not ashamed to be richer than
he was?" at another, he would affect to be sorry that the property of
princes should be passing into the hands of private persons. He had
found out that a rich provincial had given two hundred thousand sesterces
to his chamberlains for an underhand invitation to his table, and he was
much pleased to find that honour valued at so high a rate. The day
following, as the same person was sitting at the sale, he sent him some
bauble, for which he told him he must pay two hundred thousand sesterces,
and "that he should sup with Caesar upon his own invitation."
(280) XL. He levied new taxes, and such as were never before known, at
first by the publicans, but afterwards, because their profit was
enormous, by centurions and tribunes of the pretorian guards; no
description of property or persons being exempted from some kind of tax
or other. For all eatables brought into the city, a certain excise was
exacted: for all law-suits or trials in whatever court, the fortieth part
of the sum in dispute; and such as were convicted of compromising
litigations, were made liable to a penalty. Out of the daily wages of
the porters, he received an eighth, and from the gains of common
prostitutes, what they received for one favour granted. There was a
clause in the law, that all bawds who kept women for prostitution or
sale, should be liable to pay, and that marriage itself should not be
exempted.
XLI. These taxes being imposed, but the act by which they were levied
never submitted to public inspection, great grievances were experienced
from the want of sufficient knowledge of the law. At length, on the
urgent demands of the Roman people, he published the law, but it was
written in a very small hand, and posted up in a corner, so that no one
could make a copy of it. To leave no sort of gain untried, he opened
brothels in the Palatium, with a number of cells, furnished suitably to
the dignity of the place; in which married women and free-born youths
were ready for the reception of visitors. He sent likewise his
nomenclators about the forums and courts, to invite people of all ages,
the old as well as the young, to his brothel, to come and satisfy their
lusts; and he was ready to lend his customers money upon interest; clerks
attending to take down their names in public, as persons who contributed
to the emperor's revenue. Another method of raising money, which he
thought not below his notice, was gaming; which, by the help of lying and
perjury, he turned to considerable account. Leaving once the management
of his play to his partner in the game, he stepped into the court, and
observing two rich Roman knights passing by, he ordered them immediately
to be seized, and their estates confiscated. Then returning, in great
glee, he boasted that he had never made a better throw in his life.
XLII. After the birth of his daughter, complaining of his (281) poverty,
and the burdens to which he was subjected, not only as an emperor, but a
father, he made a general collection for her maintenance and fortune. He
likewise gave public notice, that he would receive new-year's gifts on
the calends of January following; and accordingly stood in the vestibule
of his house, to clutch the presents which people of all ranks threw down
before him by handfuls and lapfuls. At last, being seized with an
invincible desire of feeling money, taking off his slippers, he
repeatedly walked over great heaps of gold coin spread upon the spacious
floor, and then laying himself down, rolled his whole body in gold over
and over again.
XLIII. Only once in his life did he take an active part in military
affairs, and then not from any set purpose, but during his journey to
Mevania, to see the grove and river of Clitumnus [449]. Being
recommended to recruit a body of Batavians, who attended him, he resolved
upon an expedition into Germany. Immediately he drew together several
legions, and auxiliary forces from all quarters, and made every where new
levies with the utmost rigour. Collecting supplies of all kinds, such as
never had been assembled upon the like occasion, he set forward on his
march, and pursued it sometimes with so much haste and precipitation,
that the pretorian cohorts were obliged, contrary to custom, to pack
their standards on horses or mules, and so follow him. At other times,
he would march so slow and luxuriously, that he was carried in a litter
by eight men; ordering the roads to be swept by the people of the
neighbouring towns, and sprinkled with water to lay the dust.
XLIV. On arriving at the camp, in order to show himself an active
general, and severe disciplinarian, he cashiered the lieutenants who came
up late with the auxiliary forces from different quarters. In reviewing
the army, he deprived of their companies most of the centurions of the
first rank, who had now served their legal time in the wars, and some
whose time would have expired in a few days; alleging against them their
age and infirmity; and railing at the covetous disposition (282) of the
rest of them, he reduced the bounty due to those who had served out their
time to the sum of six thousand sesterces. Though he only received the
submission of Adminius, the son of Cunobeline, a British king, who being
driven from his native country by his father, came over to him with a
small body of troops [450], yet, as if the whole island had been
surrendered to him, he dispatched magnificent letters to Rome, ordering
the bearers to proceed in their carriages directly up to the forum and
the senate-house, and not to deliver the letters but to the consuls in
the temple of Mars, and in the presence of a full assembly of the
senators.
XLV. Soon after this, there being no hostilities, he ordered a few
Germans of his guard to be carried over and placed in concealment on the
other side of the Rhine, and word to be brought him after dinner, that an
enemy was advancing with great impetuosity. This being accordingly done,
he immediately threw himself, with his friends, and a party of the
pretorian knights, into the adjoining wood, where lopping branches from
the trees, and forming trophies of them, he returned by torch-light,
upbraiding those who did not follow him, with timorousness and cowardice;
but he presented the companions, and sharers of his victory with crowns
of a new form, and under a new name, having the sun, moon, and stars
represented on them, and which he called Exploratoriae. Again, some
hostages were by his order taken from the school, and privately sent off;
upon notice of which he immediately rose from table, pursued them with
the cavalry, as if they had run away, and coming up with them, brought
them back in fetters; proceeding to an extravagant pitch of ostentation
likewise in this military comedy. Upon his again sitting down to table,
it being reported to him that the troops were all reassembled, he ordered
them to sit down as they were, in their armour, animating them in the
words of that well-known verse of Virgil:
(283) Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.--Aen. 1.
Bear up, and save yourselves for better days.
In the mean time, he reprimanded the senate and people of Rome in a very
severe proclamation, "For revelling and frequenting the diversions of the
circus and theatre, and enjoying themselves at their villas, whilst their
emperor was fighting, and exposing himself to the greatest dangers."
XLVI. At last, as if resolved to make war in earnest, he drew up his
army upon the shore of the ocean, with his balistae and other engines of
war, and while no one could imagine what he intended to do, on a sudden
commanded them to gather up the sea shells, and fill their helmets, and
the folds of their dress with them, calling them "the spoils of the ocean
due to the Capitol and the Palatium." As a monument of his success, he
raised a lofty tower, upon which, as at Pharos [451], he ordered lights
to be burnt in the night-time, for the direction of ships at sea; and
then promising the soldiers a donative of a hundred denarii [452] a man,
as if he had surpassed the most eminent examples of generosity, "Go your
ways," said he, "and be merry: go, ye are rich."
XLVII. In making preparations for his triumph, besides the prisoners and
deserters from the barbarian armies, he picked out the men of greatest
stature in all Gaul, such as he said were fittest to grace a triumph,
with some of the chiefs, and reserved them to appear in the procession;
obliging them not only to dye their hair yellow, and let it grow long,
but to learn the German language, and assume the names commonly used in
that country. He ordered likewise the gallies in which he had entered
the ocean, to be conveyed to Rome a great part of the way by land, and
wrote to his comptrollers in the city, "to make proper preparations for a
triumph against (284) his arrival, at as small expense as possible; but
on a scale such as had never been seen before, since they had full power
over the property of every one."
XLVIII. Before he left the province, he formed a design of the most
horrid cruelty--to massacre the legions which had mutinied upon the death
of Augustus, for seizing and detaining by force his father, Germanicus,
their commander, and himself, then an infant, in the camp. Though he was
with great difficulty dissuaded from this rash attempt, yet neither the
most urgent entreaties nor representations could prevent him from
persisting in the design of decimating these legions. Accordingly, he
ordered them to assemble unarmed, without so much as their swords; and
then surrounded them with armed horse. But finding that many of them,
suspecting that violence was intended, were making off, to arm in their
own defence, he quitted the assembly as fast as he could, and immediately
marched for Rome; bending now all his fury against the senate, whom he
publicly threatened, to divert the general attention from the clamour
excited by his disgraceful conduct. Amongst other pretexts of offence,
he complained that he was defrauded of a triumph, which was justly his
due, though he had just before forbidden, upon pain of death, any honour
to be decreed him.
XLIX. In his march he was waited upon by deputies from the senatorian
order, entreating him to hasten his return. He replied to them, "I will
come, I will come, and this with me," striking at the same time the hilt
of his sword. He issued likewise this proclamation: "I am coming, but
for those only who wish for me, the equestrian order and the people; for
I shall no longer treat the senate as their fellow-citizen or prince."
He forbad any of the senators to come to meet him; and either abandoning
or deferring his triumph, he entered the city in ovation on his
birthday. Within four months from this period he was slain, after he had
perpetrated enormous crimes, and while he was meditating the execution,
if possible, of still greater. He had entertained a design of removing
to Antium, and afterwards to Alexandria; having first cut off the flower
of the equestrian and senatorian orders. This is placed beyond all
question, by two books which were found in his cabinet (285) under
different titles; one being called the sword, and the other, the dagger.
They both contained private marks, and the names of those who were
devoted to death. There was also found a large chest, filled with a
variety of poisons which being afterwards thrown into the sea by order of
Claudius, are said to have so infected the waters, that the fish were
poisoned, and cast dead by the tide upon the neighbouring shores.
L. He was tall, of a pale complexion, ill-shaped, his neck and legs very
slender, his eyes and temples hollow, his brows broad and knit, his hair
thin, and the crown of the head bald. The other parts of his body were
much covered with hair. On this account, it was reckoned a capital crime
for any person to look down from above, as he was passing by, or so much
as to name a goat. His countenance, which was naturally hideous and
frightful, he purposely rendered more so, forming it before a mirror into
the most horrible contortions. He was crazy both in body and mind, being
subject, when a boy, to the falling sickness. When he arrived at the age
of manhood, he endured fatigue tolerably well; but still, occasionally,
he was liable to a faintness, during which he remained incapable of any
effort. He was not insensible of the disorder of his mind, and sometimes
had thoughts of retiring to clear his brain [453]. It is believed that
his wife Caesonia administered to him a love potion which threw him into
a frenzy. What most of all disordered him, was want of sleep, for he
seldom had more than three or four hours' rest in a night; and even then
his sleep was not sound, but disturbed by strange dreams; fancying, among
other things, that a form representing the ocean spoke to him. Being
therefore often weary with lying awake so long, sometimes he sat up in
his bed, at others, walked in the longest porticos about the house, and
from time to time, invoked and looked out for the approach of day.
LI. To this crazy constitution of his mind may, I think, very justly be
ascribed two faults which he had, of a nature directly repugnant one to
the other, namely, an excessive confidence and the most abject timidity.
For he, who affected so (286) much to despise the gods, was ready to shut
his eyes, and wrap up his head in his cloak at the slightest storm of
thunder and lightning; and if it was violent, he got up and hid himself
under his bed. In his visit to Sicily, after ridiculing many strange
objects which that country affords, he ran away suddenly in the night
from Messini, terrified by the smoke and rumbling at the summit of Mount
Aetna. And though in words he was very valiant against the barbarians,
yet upon passing a narrow defile in Germany in his light car, surrounded
by a strong body of his troops, some one happening to say, "There would
be no small consternation amongst us, if an enemy were to appear," he
immediately mounted his horse, and rode towards the bridges in great
haste; but finding them blocked up with camp-followers and
baggage-waggons, he was in such a hurry, that he caused himself to be
carried in men's hands over the heads of the crowd. Soon afterwards, upon
hearing that the Germans were again in rebellion, he prepared to quit
Rome, and equipped a fleet; comforting himself with this consideration,
that if the enemy should prove victorious, and possess themselves of the
heights of the Alps, as the Cimbri [454] had done, or of the city, as the
Senones [455] formerly did, he should still have in reserve the
transmarine provinces [456]. Hence it was, I suppose, that it occurred to
his assassins, to invent the story intended to pacify the troops who
mutinied at his death, that he had laid violent hands upon himself, in a
fit of terror occasioned by the news brought him of the defeat of his
army.
LII. In the fashion of his clothes, shoes, and all the rest of his
dress, he did not wear what was either national, or properly civic, or
peculiar to the male sex, or appropriate to mere mortals. He often
appeared abroad in a short coat of stout cloth, richly embroidered and
blazing with jewels, in a tunic with sleeves, and with bracelets upon his
arms; sometimes all in silks and (287) habited like a woman; at other
times in the crepidae or buskins; sometimes in the sort of shoes used by
the light-armed soldiers, or in the sock used by women, and commonly with
a golden beard fixed to his chin, holding in his hand a thunderbolt, a
trident, or a caduceus, marks of distinction belonging to the gods only.
Sometimes, too, he appeared in the habit of Venus. He wore very commonly
the triumphal ornaments, even before his expedition, and sometimes the
breast-plate of Alexander the Great, taken out of his coffin. [457]