C. Caligula (46-50)

At last, as if resolved to make war in earnest, he drew up his army on the shore of the ocean, with his balistk 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,[*] he ordered lights to be burned in the night-time for the direction of ships at sea; and then promising the soldiers a donative of a hundred denarii[*] 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."

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 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."

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 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.

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'birth-day. 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 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.

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 man hood 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.[*] 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.