Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/583

 hatred; it became a matter of pleasure and amusement with him. Once during a public fight of wild beasts in the Circus, when there were no more criminals to enter the arena, he ordered persons to be taken at random from among the spectators, and to be thrown before the wild bejists, but that they might not be able to cry out or curse their destroyer, he ordered their tongues to be cut out. Often when he was taking his meals, he would order men to be tortured to death before his eyes, that he might have the pleasure of witnessing their agony. Once when, during a horse-race, the people were more favourably disposed to one of his competitors than to himself, he is said to have exclaimed, "Would that the whole Roman people had only one head." But his cruelty was not greater than his voluptuousness and obscenit}% He carried on an incestuous intercourse with his own sisters, and when Drnsilla, the second of them, died, he raved like a madman with grief, and commanded her to be worshipped as a divinity. No Roman lady was safe from his attacks, and his marriages were as disgracefully contracted as they were ignominiously dissolved. The only woman that exercised a lasting influence over him was Caesonia. A point which still more shews the disordered state of his brain is, that in his oelf-veneration he went so far as to consider himself a god: he would appear in public sometimes in the attire of Bacchus, Apollo, or Jupiter, and even of Venus and Diana; he would frequently place himself in the temple of Castor and Pollux, between the statues of these divinities, and order the people who entered the temple to worship him. He even built a temple to himself as Jupiter Latiaris, and appointed priests to attend to his worship and otter sacrifices to him. This temple contained his statue in gold, of the size of life, and his statue was dressed precisely as he was. The wealthiest Romans were appointed his priests, but they had to purchase the honour with immense suras of money. He sometimes officiated as his own priest, making his horse Incitatus, which he afterwards raised to the consulship, his colleague. No one but a complete madman would have been guilty of things like these. The sums of money which he squandered almost surpass belief. During the first year of his reign he nearly drained the treasury, although Tiberius had left in it the sum of 720 millions of sesterces. One specimen may serve to shew in what senseless manner he spent the money. That he might be able to boast of having marched over the sea as over dry land, he ordered a bridge of boats to be constructed across the channel between Baiae and Puteoli, a distance of three Roman miles and six hundred paces. After it was covered with earth and houses built upon it, he rode across it in triumph, and gave a splendid banquet on the middle of the bridge. In order to amuse himself on this occasion in his usual way, he ordered numbers of the spectators whom he had invited to be thrown into the sea. As the regular revenues of the state were insufficient to supply him with the means of such mad extravagance, he had recourse to robberies, public sales of his estates, unheard-of taxes, and every species of extortion that could be devised. In order that no means of getting money might remain untried, he established a public brothel in his own palace, and sent out his servants to invite men of all classes to avail themselves of it. On the birth of his daughter by Caesonia, he regularly acted the part of a beggar in order to obtain money to rear her. He also made known that he would receive presents on new year's day, and on the first of January he posted himself in the vestibule of his palace, to accept the presents that were brought him by crowds of people. Things like these gradually engendered in him a love of money itself without any view to the ends it is to serve, and he is said to have sometimes taken a delight in rolling himself in heaps of gold. After Italy and Rome were exhausted by his extortions, his love of money and his avarice compelled him to seek other resources. He turned his eyes to Gaul, and under the pretence of a war against the Germans, he marched, in a. d. 40, with an anny to Gaul to extort money from the wealthy inhabitants of that country. Executions were as frequent here as they had been before in Italy, Lentulus Gaetulicus and Aemilius Lepidus were accused of having formed a conspiracy and were put to death, and the two sisters of Caligula were sent into exile as guilty of adultery and accomplices of the conspiracy, Ptolemaeus, the son of king Juba, was exiled merely on account of his riches, and was afterwards put to death. It would be endless and disgusting to record here all the acts of cruelty, insanity, and avarice, of which his whole reign, with the exception of the first few months, forms one uninterrupted succession. He concluded his predatory campaign in Gaul by leading his army to the coast of the ocean, as if he would cross over to Britain; he drew them up in battle array, and then gave them the signal—to collect shells, which he called the spoils of conquered Ocean. After this he returned to Rome, where he acted with still greater cruelty than before, because he thought the honours which the senate conferred upon him too insignificant and too human for a god like him. Several conspiracies were formed against him, but were discovered, until at length Cassius Chaerea, tribune of a praetorian cohort, Cornelius Sabinus, and others, entered into one which was crowned with success. Four months after his return from Gaul, on the 24th of Januarj'A. D. 41, Caligula was murdered by Chaerea near the theatre, or according to others, in his own palace while he was hearing some boj-s rehearse the part they were to perform in the theatre. His wife and daughter were likewise put to death. His body was secretly conveyed by his friends to the horti Lamiani, halt burnt, and covered over with a light turf. Subsequently, however, his sisters, after their return from exile, ordered the body to be taken out, and had it completely burnt and buried. (Siieton, Caligula; Dion Cass. lib. lix.; Joseph. A nt. xix, 1 j Aurel, Vict, De Cues. 3; Zonar, x, 6.) In the coin annexed the obverse represents the head of Caligula, with the inscription c. caesar avg, germ. p. m. tr. pot., and the reverse that of Augustus, with the inscription Divvs avu. pater patriae. [L. S.]