Caligula | Page 9

mention being made that her grandmother was formerly very beautiful,
and married her; but he soon afterwards parted with her, interdicting
her from having ever afterwards any commerce with man. He loved
with a most passionate and constant affection Caesonia, who was
neither handsome nor young; and was besides the mother of three
daughters by another man; but a wanton of unbounded lasciviousness.
Her he would frequently exhibit to the soldiers, dressed in a military
cloak, with shield and helmet, and riding by his side. To his friends he
even showed her naked. After she had a child, he honoured her with the
title of wife; in one and the same day, declaring himself her husband,
and father of the child of which she was delivered. He named it Julia
Drusilla, and carrying it round the temples of all the goddesses, laid it
on the lap of Minerva; to whom he recommended the care of bringing
up and instructing her. He considered her as his own child for no better

reason than her savage temper, which was such even in her infancy,
that she would attack with her nails the face and eyes of the children at
play with her.
XXVI. It would be of little importance, as well as disgusting, to add to
all this an account of the manner in which he treated his relations and
friends; as Ptolemy, king Juba's son, his cousin (for he was the
grandson of Mark Antony by his daughter Selene) [425], and especially
Macro himself, and Ennia likewise [426], by whose assistance he had
obtained the empire; all of whom, for their alliance and eminent
services, he rewarded with violent deaths. Nor was he more mild or
respectful in his behaviour towards the senate. Some who had borne the
(270) highest offices in the government, he suffered to run by his litter
in their togas for several miles together, and to attend him at supper,
sometimes at the head of his couch, sometimes at his feet, with napkins.
Others of them, after he had privately put them to death, he
nevertheless continued to send for, as if they were still alive, and after a
few days pretended that they had laid violent hands upon themselves.
The consuls having forgotten to give public notice of his birth-day, he
displaced them; and the republic was three days without any one in that
high office. A quaestor who was said to be concerned in a conspiracy
against him, he scourged severely, having first stripped off his clothes,
and spread them under the feet of the soldiers employed in the work,
that they might stand the more firm. The other orders likewise he
treated with the same insolence and violence. Being disturbed by the
noise of people taking their places at midnight in the circus, as they
were to have free admission, he drove them all away with clubs. In this
tumult, above twenty Roman knights were squeezed to death, with as
many matrons, with a great crowd besides. When stage-plays were
acted, to occasion disputes between the people and the knights, he
distributed the money-tickets sooner than usual, that the seats assigned
to the knights might be all occupied by the mob. In the spectacles of
gladiators, sometimes, when the sun was violently hot, he would order
the curtains, which covered the amphitheatre, to be drawn aside [427],
and forbad any person to be let out; withdrawing at the same time the
usual apparatus for the entertainment, and presenting wild beasts
almost pined to death, the most sorry gladiators, decrepit with age, and
fit only to work the machinery, and decent house-keepers, who were

remarkable for some bodily infirmity. Sometimes shutting up the public
granaries, he would oblige the people to starve for a while.
XXVII. He evinced the savage barbarity of his temper chiefly by the
following indications. When flesh was only to be had at a high price for
feeding his wild beasts reserved for the spectacles, he ordered that
criminals should be given them (271) to be devoured; and upon
inspecting them in a row, while he stood in the middle of the portico,
without troubling himself to examine their cases he ordered them to be
dragged away, from "bald-pate to bald-pate." [428] Of one person who
had made a vow for his recovery to combat with a gladiator, he exacted
its performance; nor would he allow him to desist until he came off
conqueror, and after many entreaties. Another, who had vowed to give
his life for the same cause, having shrunk from the sacrifice, he
delivered, adorned as a victim, with garlands and fillets, to boys, who
were to drive him through the streets, calling on him to fulfil his vow,
until he was thrown headlong from the ramparts. After disfiguring
many