Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/472

 464 GALEA. horses or carriages are changed, look at and on that certificate hasten the couriers forward with all their means, he was highly displeased that his seal had not been used, and none of his soldiers employed on the errand. Nay, he even deliberated what course to take with the consuls themselves, but upon their submission and apology he was at last pacified. To gratify the people, he did not interfere with their beating to death any that fell into their hands of Nero's party. Amongst others, Spiclus,* the gladiator, was killed in the forum by being thrown under Nero's statues, which they dragged about the place over his body. Aponius, one of those who had been concerned in accusations, they knocked to the ground, and drove carts loaded with stones over him. And many others they tore in pieces, some of them no way guilty, insomuch that Mauriscus, a person of great account and character, told the senate that he feared, in a short time, they might wish for Nero again. Nymphidius, now advancing towards the consumma- tion of his hopes, did not refuse to let it be said that he was the son of Caius Caesar,-]" Tiberius's successor ; who, it is told, was well acquainted with his mother in his early youth, a woman indeed handsome enough, the ofi- spring of Callistus, one of Ccesar's freedmen, and a cer- tain sempstress. But it is plain that Caius's familiarity with his mother was of too late date to give him any pretensions, and it was suspected he might, if he pleased, claim a fiither in Martianus, the gladiator, whom his mother, Nymphidia, took a passion for, being a famous man in his way, whom also he much more resembled. However, though he certainly owned Nymphidia for his mother, he ascribed meantime the downfall of Nero to himself alone, and thought he was not sufiiciently t The emperor Caligula, always is not always Caligula.
 * Spicillus. called Cains ; though Caius CiEsar