Piso "Do not touch my wife," carried her off, and next day he issued an edict saying "that he had purveyed him a wife after the fashion of Romulus and Augustus." Within a few days however he divorced her, and two years after he banished her for having resumed her intimacy with her first husband. Hearing the beauty of the grandmother of Lollia Paullina praised, he summoned that lady from the province where her husband Memmius Regulus was in the command of the troops, and having obliged Regulus to divorce her, he made her his wife.

The following year (39) witnessed the same scenes of cruelty and of reckless extravagance; it was distinguished by the novel caprice of bridging over the sea from Baiæ to Puteoli, a space of more than three miles and a half. All kinds of craft were collected, so that in consequence of the want of foreign corn a great scarcity prevailed throughout Italy, and these not proving sufficient, a large number were built for the purpose; they were anchored in two lines and timber laid across them, and a way thus formed similar to the Appian road. Places for rest and refreshment were erected at regular distances, and pipes laid for conveying fresh water. When all was completed, Caius, putting on the breastplate (as it was said to be) of Alexander the Great, a military cloak of purple silk adorned with gold and precious stones, and girding on a sword, and grasping a shield, his brows crowned with oak, and having previously sacrificed to Neptune and some other deities, (particularly to Envy, to escape her influence,) advanced on the bridge from Baiæ, mounted on a stately horse, and followed by horse and foot in warlike array, and passing along rapidly, entered Puteoli as a captured city. Having rested there as after a battle, he returned the next day along the bridge in a two-horsed chariot, drawn by the most famous winning horses of the circus. Spoils and captives (among whom was Darius, an Arsacid, one of the Parthian hostages then at Rome,) preceded the sham conqueror; his friends followed in chariots, and the troops brought up the rear. The glorious victor ascended a tribunal erected on a ship about the centre of the bridge, and harangued and extolled his triumphant warriors. He then caused a banquet to be spread on the bridge as if it were an island, and all who were to partake of it crowding round it in vessels of every kind the rest of the day and the whole of the night were spent in feasting and revelry. Lights shone from the bridge and the vessels; the

hills which inclose the bay were illumined with fires and torches; the whole seemed one vast theatre, and night converted into day, as sea was into land. But the monster, for whose gratification all these effects had been produced, could not refrain from indulging his innate ferocity. When his spirits were elevated with meat and wine, he caused several of those who were with him on the bridge to be flung into the sea, and then getting into a beaked ship he sailed to and fro, striking and sinking the vessels which lay about the bridge filled with revellers. Some were drowned; but owing to the calmness of the sea, the greater part, though they were drunk, escaped.

Various causes were assigned for this mad freak of bridging over the sea. Some ascribed it, and probably with reason, to the wish to surpass Xerxes; others said that his object was to strike with awe of his power the Germans and Britons, whose countries he meditated to invade. Suetonius says that when a boy he heard from his grandfather that the reason assigned by the people of the palace was a desire to give the lie to a declaration of the astrologer Trasyllus, who on being consulted by Tiberius about the succession, had said that "Caius would no more reign than he would drive horses through the bay of Baiæ."

Whatever was the cause, the effect was the destruction of an additional number of the Roman nobility for the sake of confiscating their properties, in order to replace the enormous sums which the bridge had absorbed. When Rome and Italy had been thus tolerably well exhausted of their wealth, the tyrant resolved to pillage in like manner the opulent provinces of Gaul and then those of Spain. Under the pretext of repelling the Germans he suddenly collected an army and set out for Gaul, going sometimes so rapidly that the Prætorian cohorts were obliged to put their standards on the beasts of burden, at other times having himself carried in a litter, and the people of the towns on the way being ordered to sweep and water the roads before him. He was attended by a large train of women, gladiators, dancers, running-horses, and the other instruments of his luxury. When he reached the camp of the legions he affected the character of a strict commander, dismissing with ignominy such of the legates as brought up the auxiliary contingents slowly. He then turned to robbing both officers and men by dismissing them a little before they were entitled to their discharge, and cutting down the pensions of the rest to 6000 sesterces.

The son of Cinobellinus, a British prince, who was banished by his father, having come and made his submission to him, he wrote most magniloquent letters to Rome as if the whole island had submitted. He crossed the Rhine as if in quest of the German foes; but some one happening to say, as the troops were engaged in a narrow way, that there would be no little consternation if the enemy should then appear, he sprang from his chariot in a fright, mounted his horse and galloped back to the bridge, and finding it filled with the men and beasts of the baggage-train, he scrambled over their heads to get beyond the river. On another occasion he ordered some of his German guards to conceal themselves on the other side of the Rhine, and intelligence to be brought to him as he sat at dinner that the enemy was at hand; he sprang up, mounted his horse, and followed by his friends and part of the guards rode into the adjoining wood, and cutting the trees and forming a trophy, returned with it to the camp by torch-light. He then reproached the cowardice of those who had not shared his toils and dangers, and rewarded with what he called exploratory crowns those who had accompanied him. Again, he took the young German hostages from their school, and having secretly sent them on, he jumped up from a banquet, pursued them, as if they were running away, with a body of cavalry, and brought them back in chains. In an edict he severely rebuked the senate and people of Rome for holding banquets, and frequenting theatres and delicious retreats while Cæsar was carrying on war and exposed to such dangers.

His invasion of Britain was if possible still more ridiculous. He marched his troops to the coast, and drew them up with all their artillery on the strand. He then got aboard of a galley, and going a little way out to sea returned, and ascending a lofty tribunal gave the signal for battle, and at the sound of trumpets ordered them to charge the ocean, and gather its shells as spoils due to the Capitol and Palatium. He bestowed a large donative on his victorious troops, and built a lighthouse to commemorate the conquest of Ocean.

Meantime he was not neglectful of the purpose for which he came. He pillaged indiscriminately, and put to death numbers whose only crime was their wealth. One day, when he was playing at dice, he discovered that his money was out; he retired, and calling for the census of the Gauls, selected the names of the richest men in it, and ordered them to be put to death: then returning to his company, he said, " You are play

ing for a few denars, but I have collected a hundred and fifty millions." He afterwards caused the most precious jewels and other possessions of the monarchy to be sent to him, and put them up to auction, saying, "This was my father's; this was my mother's; this Egyptian jewel belonged to Antonius; this to Augustus ;" and so on, at the same time declaring that distress alone caused him to sell them. The buyers were of course obliged to give far beyond the real value of the articles.

Among those put to death while he was in Gaul was M. Lepidus, the husband of his beloved Drusilla, and the sharer in all his vices and debaucheries. The pretext was a conspiracy of Lepidus with Livilla and Agrippina against his life. He wrote to the senate in the most opprobrious terms of his sisters, whom he banished to the Pontian isles. As he was sending them back to Italy for this purpose, he obliged Agrippina to carry the whole way in her bosom the urn which contained the ashes of Lepidus. To commemorate his escape he sent three daggers to be consecrated to Mars the Avenger.

At this time also he put away Lollia Paullina, under the pretext of her infecundity, and married Milonia Cæsonia, a woman neither handsome nor young, and of the most dissolute habits and the mother already of three daughters. She was at the time so far gone with child by him that she was delivered of a daughter immediately after her marriage. He loved her ardently as long as he lived; he used to exhibit her naked to his friends, and take her riding about with him through the ranks of the soldiery arrayed in a cloak, helmet, and light buckler. Yet he would at times in his fondness protest that he would put her to the rack to make her tell why he loved her so much.

Before he left Gaul (40) he proposed to massacre the legions which had mutinied against his father. He was dissuaded from this course, but nothing would withhold him from decimating them at the least. He therefore called them together unarmed, and surrounded them with his cavalry; but when he observed that they suspected his design, and were gradually slipping away to resume their arms, he lost courage, and flying from the camp hastened back to Rome breathing vengeance against the senate. To the deputies, sent to entreat him to hasten his return, his words were, "I will come-I will come; and this with me," striking the hilt of his sword; and he declared that the senate would find him in future neither a citi

E

zen nor a prince. He entered Rome in ovation instead of triumph on his birth-day (Aug. 31), the last he was to witness, for the measure of his guilt was full, and the patience of mankind nearly exhausted.

It may be worth while to notice some of the acts of which a madman possessed of absolute power was capable.

Caius declared himself to be a god, and had a temple erected to his deity, in which stood a golden statue of him habited each day as he was himself. Peacocks, pheasants, and other rare birds were offered in sacrifice every day his wife Casonia, his uncle Claudius, and some persons of great wealth (who had to purchase the office at a high rate) were the priests. He added himself and his horse Incitatus to the college. He appeared in the habit and with the insignia sometimes of one, sometimes of another god or goddess. He used to invite the moon when shining full and bright to descend to his embraces. He would enter the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter and engage in confidential discourse, as it were, with the god, sometimes even chiding or threatening him. Being invited, he said, to share the abode of that deity, he threw a bridge across for that purpose from the Palatium to the Capitol. It would be endless to relate all his freaks of this kind.

He devised new and extraordinary taxes. He laid an impost on all kinds of eatables; he demanded two and a half per cent. on all law-suits, and severely punished all those who compounded their actions. Porters were required to pay an eighth of their daily earnings: prostitutes were taxed in a similar manner. He even opened a brothel in his palace, which he filled with respectable women, and sent persons through the Forum inviting people to resort to it. When his daughter was born he complained bitterly of his poverty, and received presents for her support and dower. On new-year's day he used to stand at the porch to receive the gifts which were brought to him. He would often walk barefoot on heaps of gold coin, or lie down and roll himself on them.

His natural cruelty made him delight in the combats of gladiators; he was equally fond of chariot-races, and as he chose to favour the sea-coloured faction, he used to cause the best drivers and horses of the rivals (the green) to be poisoned. He was so fond of one of his own horses named Incitatus, that he used to invite him to dinner, give him gilded barley and wine out of golden cups, and swear by his safety