Caligula | Page 8

ranked him amongst the Caesars. He
said that his mother was the fruit of an incestuous commerce,
maintained by Augustus with his daughter Julia. And not content with
this vile reflection upon the memory of Augustus, he forbad his
victories at Actium, and on the coast of Sicily, to be celebrated, as
usual; affirming that they had been most pernicious and fatal to the
Roman people. He called his grandmother Livia Augusta "Ulysses in a
woman's dress," and had the indecency to reflect upon her in a letter to

the senate, as of mean birth, and descended, by the mother's side, from
a grandfather who was only one of the municipal magistrates of Fondi;
whereas it is certain, from the public records, that Aufidius Lurco held
high offices at Rome. His grandmother Antonia desiring a private
conference with him, he refused to grant it, unless Macro, the prefect of
the pretorian guards, were present. Indignities of this kind, and ill usage,
were the cause of her death; but some think he also gave her poison.
Nor did he pay the smallest respect to her memory after her death, but
witnessed the burning from his private apartment. His brother Tiberius,
who had no expectation of any violence, was suddenly dispatched by a
military tribune sent by his order for that purpose. He forced Silanus,
his father-in-law, to kill himself, by cutting his throat with a razor. The
pretext he alleged for these murders was, that the latter had not
followed him upon his putting to sea in stormy weather, but stayed
behind with the view of seizing the city, if he should perish. The other,
he said, smelt of an antidote, which he had taken to prevent his being
poisoned by him; whereas Silanus was only afraid of being sea-sick,
and the disagreeableness of a voyage; and Tiberius had merely taken a
medicine for an habitual cough, (268) which was continually growing
worse. As for his successor Claudius, he only saved him for a laughing-
stock.
XXIV. He lived in the habit of incest with all his sisters; and at table,
when much company was present, he placed each of them in turns
below him, whilst his wife reclined above him. It is believed, that he
deflowered one of them, Drusilla, before he had assumed the robe of
manhood; and was even caught in her embraces by his grandmother
Antonia, with whom they were educated together. When she was
afterwards married to Cassius Longinus, a man of consular rank, he
took her from him, and kept her constantly as if she were his lawful
wife. In a fit of sickness, he by his will appointed her heiress both of
his estate and the empire. After her death, he ordered a public mourning
for her; during which it was capital for any person to laugh, use the
bath, or sup with his parents, wife, or children. Being inconsolable
under his affliction, he went hastily, and in the night-time, from the
City; going through Campania to Syracuse, and then suddenly returned
without shaving his beard, or trimming his hair. Nor did he ever
afterwards, in matters of the greatest importance, not even in the

assemblies of the people or before the soldiers, swear any otherwise,
than "By the divinity of Drusilla." The rest of his sisters he did not treat
with so much fondness or regard; but frequently prostituted them to his
catamites. He therefore the more readily condemned them in the case of
Aemilius Lepidus, as guilty of adultery, and privy to that conspiracy
against him. Nor did he only divulge their own hand-writing relative to
the affair, which he procured by base and lewd means, but likewise
consecrated to Mars the Avenger three swords which had been
prepared to stab him, with an inscription, setting forth the occasion of
their consecration.
XXV. Whether in the marriage of his wives, in repudiating them, or
retaining them, he acted with greater infamy, it is difficult to say. Being
at the wedding of Caius Piso with Livia Orestilla, he ordered the bride
to be carried to his own house, but within a few days divorced her, and
two years after banished her; because it was thought, that upon her
divorce she returned to the embraces of her former husband. (269)
Some say, that being invited to the wedding-supper, he sent a
messenger to Piso, who sat opposite to him, in these words: "Do not be
too fond with my wife," and that he immediately carried her off. Next
day he published a proclamation, importing, "That he had got a wife as
Romulus and Augustus had done." [424] Lollia Paulina, who was
married to a man of consular rank in command of an army, he suddenly
called from the province where she was with her husband, upon