The works of the Reverend and learned John Lightfoot D. D., late Master of Katherine Hall in Cambridge such as were, and such as never before were printed : in two volumes : with the authors life and large and useful tables to each volume : also three maps : one of the temple drawn by the author himself, the others of Jervsalem and the Holy Land drawn according to the author's chorography, with a description collected out of his writings.

§ Caius the new God, little better than a Devil.

AFTER the sight of the goodly Godship of the Emperour shewed in little a little before, let us take him now as he is indeed, little better than a Devil. A man, the shame and confusion of men, if he may be called a man, and so far beyond the vices of any that had gone before, that he seemed to live to no other purpose than to shew, what the utmost extent of vitiousness could do in the ut∣most height of power and liberty. You would wonder, but that his defiance of the Gods doth lessen that wonder, how scornfully and despitefully he used the memory and persons of his ancestors, sisters, kindred and best friends: He charged Augustus with in∣cest, Livia with base birth, Tiberius but with what he deserved, his own mother with bastardize, and whosoever was most near and most honour to him, with some ignominy and reproach or other. But such words were curtesies in comparison of his actions. All his sisters he first deflowred, and then prostituted them to others being so deslowred. But his darling sister Drusilla, sped somewhat better, if that better were not as bad. To her he continued his affection, of love or lust whether you will, while she continued in life, and when she was dead, he made her the means of his profit as he had done be∣fore of his pleasure; she was the wife of M. Lepidus, but still the whore of her brother Cains, and after her death he made her a Goddess, whom all her life long he had made his harlot. Altars, Statues, Vowes, Festivals were ordained for her, and Livius Gemi∣nius played the knight o'th post, and swore devoutly that he saw her ascend to heaven, and conversing with the Gods. Such a Deity had the Romans never known before, but only her brother, and she troubled them as much in her heaven, as he did on the earth. For now was it impossible for any man so to behave himself, but he was intrapped on the one hand or the other, about this new found Goddess. To mourn for her death, it was criminal, because she was a Deity; and to rejoyce for her Deity was capital, because she was dead, so that betwixt this Dilemma, of piety, tears and devotion, that man was very wary indeed that suffered not inhumanity and violence. For to laugh, feast, bath, sing or dance was mortal, because the Emperours sister and darling was dead, and yet to mourn, or sorrow for her death was as deadly, because she was immortal. This last stale did he make of this his deceased sister, when she would now serve him for no other use, that both sorrow for her mortality, and joy for her being immortal did alike bring in mony to his treasures, (which were now almost drained of his many millions) either by bribes for the saving of the life of some, or by consiscation upon the death of others.

But how must he do now for another Paramor after his dear Drusilla? Why, that needeth not to breed any great difficulty, when his unbridled lust is not very curious of

his choice, and his as unbridled power might choose as it list. He first married Lollia Paullina the wife of C. Memmius, sending for her from another country where her hus∣band was General of the Army, and all the reason of this his choice was, because he was told that her grandmother was an exceeding great beauty; but he soon put her away again, and forbad that any should touch her for ever after him. Next came Caesonia into his affections, and there contined; a mother of three children, and of more age than beauty, but of a lasciviousness and beastiality so well befitting his, that now he had met with his match, and it was pity they should have missed meeting: He would sometimes shew her to the Souldiers, in armour, and sometimes to his friends stark naked, transforming her by these vicissitudes into two extreams equally unbefitting her sex, to a man and to a beast. By her he had a Daughter whom he named Julia Drusilla, and whom he brought to the shrines of all the Goddesses in Rome, and at last committed to the lap of Minerva for her tutorage and education. But this his behaviour is nothing in comparison of that which followed. He slew divers of the Senate, and yet afterward cited them to appear as if they had been alive, and in the end pretended that they had died by their own hands, others came off with a scourging, and so they escaped with life, but he caused the Soul∣diers to tread on them as they lay, and as they whipped them that they might have them at the more command: And thus he used some of all ranks and degrees. Being disturbed at midnight one night by the noise of some that were getting places in the Circus against the next day, he fell upon them with Clubs and slew twenty Knights, as many matrons, and an infinite company of the common people. He threw a great multitude of old men and decrepit housholders to the wild beasts, that he might rid such unserviceable men, as he thought them, out of the way, and he caused the granaries to be often shut up, that they that had escaped the wild beasts, might perish with famine: He used to fatten the beasts that he desired to have fed with the inhumane diet of humane bodies yet alive, that thereby he might save other charges: Many men he first mangled and maimed, and then condemned to the mines, or to the wild beasts, or to little-••ase-prisons, and some he caused to be sawed in sunder. He forced parents to be present at the execution of their children: and for one that could not come to such a miserable spectacle he sent a letter; and another he invited to a feast, after he had caused him to be a spectator of the execution of his own Son. One of the masters of his games that had offended him, he kept in chains, and caused him to be beaten every day before his face, till the offensive∣ness and stench of his wounded brain obtained his death: A Roman Knight being cast by him to the wild beasts, and crying out of the injustice done to him, he caused to be taken out again, and his tongue to be cut out, and then he cast him to them again. He caused all the banished men that were in the Islands about Italy to be slain at once, because having asked one that was banished in the time of Tiberius, what he did all the time of his exile, and he answered, that he prayed continually for the death of Tiberius and the succession of Caius, he thought that all the present exiles prayed for his death likewise. Every tenth day he caused an execution to be had of those that were condemned, boast∣ing and vanting that he scoured the prisons: And ever as any one came to suffer, he com∣manded the executioners to end him with such deliberate tortures, as that he should be sure to feel himself to die: involving many deaths in one, and causing men that were to die, to live even in death, that they might die with more pain.