§ 1. Caius still cruel.
THE beginning of this year Caius was Consul, but held that place only for a month or thereabouts, and then resigned for six months more to his partner Apronius, and after those six months Sabinius Maximus took the place. A poli∣cy above his reach, howsoever he came to it, to shake the chief Magistracy by so often changes, that his own power might stand the surer. Both in his Consulship, and after it, he behaved himself after his wonted manner of barbarousness and cruelty, but that now he began to add one vice more to his cruelty in bloodiness, namely intolerable covetousness and oppression. Now, saith Dion, was nothing but slaughter: For many of the Nobles were condemned, many perished by the Sword-playes, and many imprisoned by the late Emperor Tiberius, were drawn to execution. Now did he bend him∣self to cross the people, and the people being thorowly incensed began to cross him. The main causes of this his displeasure (guess how weighty) were such as these: Because they came not to the Plays and Shews so constantly, and at such constant times as he had appointed: because sometimes when they came, they liked such sports as he liked not, & contra: And because they once extolling him, called him by the title of young Au∣gustus. For such occasions as these (behold the madness of a man self-willed) he brake out into all cruelty, slaying many at the Theater for the one fault, and many as they went home for the other, and many at their own homes, or otherwhere for a third. And now was his rage grown so high, that he wished that all the City had but one head, that he might strike it off at one blow; and bewailed his times, for that they had not been enfamoused with some notable misery of the Roman State, as was the reign of Au∣gustus with the overthrow of Varus and his Army in Germany; and the reign of Tiberius with the slaughter of above twenty thousand men by the fall of an Amphitheater at Fi∣denae. And that we may take a full view of his cruel words and actions here together, (the Reader I hope will not be punctual in expecting an exact order of time in this disorder of conditions) his common resolution against the people always was, Let them hate me and spare not, so that they fear me. But what was his anger think you, when his very feasts and imbraces of his minions were mixed with cruelty? he used to have men tortured in his presence as he sate at meat, mingling his sauce as it were with in∣nocents blood. At a great feast to which he had invited the two Consuls, he suddenly fell out into an extream laughter, and upon demand of his reason, his answer was, Be∣cause he had power to take away their two heads whensoever he pleased. And whensoever he was kissing the neck of his wife or paramour, he would constantly add these words, but cruelly amorous, This neck, as fair as it is, when I command shall be cut off. Such was his jesting; and as for his eranest, I suppose you will easily believe, that it was pro∣portionable. Whereas hitherto, he had been very free and lavish of his tongue in dis∣praising Tiberius, and not only had not checked, but also countenanced, and taken de∣light in those that spake ill of him, as well as he; he now turneth his tune, and breaketh out as fluently into his commendations: pleading that he himself had liberty to say what he list, but accusing those that had assumed the like liberty, when as no such thing belong∣ed to them. Then did he cause a list or catalogue to be read of those that had been ex∣ecuted and put to death under Tiberius; laying withall the death of the most of them to the charge of the Senate, and accused some for accusing them, others for witnessing against them, and all, for condemning them. These things he alledged out of those books which in the beginning of his reign and in the time of his seeming goodness, he professed that he had burnt: and after a most bitter and terrible speech now made among them in the Senate, and reviving an act of treason for speaking against the Prince, he suddainly departed out of the Senate and the City. In what case the Senate and the people were, that were guilty of either words or actions, that he had charged them with all, it is readily guessed, but how they shall come off, and what they shall do to escape, is not easily to be resolved. Their presentest help is to fawn and speak fair, and that course they take, praising him infinitely at their next meeting, for his justice and piousness, and giving him as infinite thanks that he suffered them to live, and decreeing that sacri∣fices