Caius

“ I have met with but one in my career who has followed me for love—Caius, true friend, may the gods repay you, for Apicius cannot.’ He raised the goblet in his hand; it was partly filled with wine. Looking round the company, while he poised the flashing cup, he said: ‘Vultures, I have done. I have had my pleasure—I have spent my patrimony—what is left I give to thee, Caius—that casket will vouch for it. I want it not; it is not worth living on for. ”

“ His only hope was in Caius Antonius; who being in age the middle one between his two brothers, rivalled both of them in vices. He hastened away as if he were being driven away by the senate into Macedonia, not as if he were prohibited from proceeding thither. What a storm, O ye immortal gods! what a conflagration! what a devastation! what a pestilence to Greece would that man have been, if incredible and godlike virtue had not checked the enterprise and audacity of that frantic man. What promptness was there in Brutus's conduct! what prudence! what valour! ”

“ Alas, Caius, I do not now part with you to let you address the people, either as a tribune or a lawgiver, nor as if you were going to some honorable war, when though you might perhaps have encountered that fate which all must sometime or other submit to, yet you had left me this mitigation of my sorrow, that my mourning was respected and honored. You go now to expose your person to the murderers of Tiberius, unarmed, indeed, and rightly so, choosing rather to suffer the worst of injuries, than do the least yourself. ”

“ Caius was driven on by fate into the path in which he met with his ruin. Heart-broken by the death of his brother, he seemed as if he wished to keep away from the higher offices of the state: he rose indeed to [Pg 293] be a triumvir,—there he could not help himself,—but even then he would only act where it was possible for him to do so without shaking the existing state of things. ”

“ The good Caius had taken the tired boy and girl to his mother’s house, as he had promised, with their two attendants. The stately old Roman matron received her son with a smile of welcome; and as they stood in the little atrium, uncertain what to do, she advanced to Casca and Hyacintha, and bade them welcome to enter, and rest for a season. ”

“ He crouched his limbs together to screen himself from further blows, screaming aloud, "I live! I live!" The bearers of his litter rushed to his assistance, and fought with their poles, but Caius fell pierced with thirty wounds; and, leaving the body weltering in its blood, the conspirators rushed out of the palace, and took measures to concert with the Senate a restoration of the old Republic. On the very night after the murder the consuls gave to Chaereas the long-forgotten watchword of "Liberty." ”

“ Curio stood in the atrium a long time after the Vestal had left.
"The gods reward you!" he repeated. "So she believes in the gods, that there are gods, and that they care for us struggling men. Ah! Caius, Caius Curio; if the mob had murdered you that day you protected Cæsar after he spoke in the Senate in favour of the Catilinarians, where would you be to-day? Whence have you come? Whither do you go? What assurance have you that you can depend on anything, but your own hand and keen wits? What is to become of you, if you are knocked on the head in that adventure to-morrow? ”

“ Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, To cut the head off and then hack the limbs Like wrath in death and envy afterwards; For Antony is but a limb of Caesar. Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius. ”

“ Nay, Caius's madness came to this height, that when he had a daughter born, he carried her into the capitol, and put her upon the knees of the statue, and said that the child was common to him and to Jupiter, and determined that she had two fathers, but which of these fathers were the greatest he left undetermined; and yet mankind bore him in such his pranks. ”

“ The persecution is not represented as general, but as aimed at a few obnoxious devotees, and Caius does not appear as leading, accompanying, or inciting them, but only as exercising a fatherly supervision. Probably the persecution continued for some time under Diocletian. The early Pontifical, as well as Anastasius, makes Caius of Dalmatian origin and cousin to this emperor. The Acts of St. Susanna confirm this, but are untrustworthy (Till. iv. 760) . Caius is said in the early Pontifical to have avoided persecution by hiding in the crypts. ”

“ Then raising his voice, he added, "what I mean, Caius, is simply this, that I have no so very great faith in the promises of this Sergius Catiline, even if he should be elected. He was a sworn friend to Sylla, the people's worst enemy; and never had one associate of the old Marian party. Believe me, he only wants our aid to set himself up on the horse of state authority; and when he is firm in the saddle, he will ride us down under the hoofs of patrician tyranny, as hard as any Cato, or Pompey, of them all." ”

“ Caius's Latin writing is terse and lucid. It is evidently modelled on the style of Celsus, from whom he borrows many words, and sometimes whole phrases. His English is vigorous. He was a good naturalist, as well as an excellent physician and scholar. In every department of learning he seems to have been proficient. ”

“ Some day you will kill this boy, and some one else will murder you." There were some who believed that Tiberius deliberately cherished the intention of allowing Caius to succeed him, in order that the Roman world might relent towards his own memory under the tyranny of a worse monster than himself. Even the Romans, who looked up to the family of Germanicus with extraordinary affection, seem early to have lost all hopes about Caius. ”

“ Thus did Caius come to his end, and lay dead, by the many wounds which had been given him. Now Cherea and his associates, upon Caius's slaughter, saw that it was impossible for them to save themselves, if they should all go the same way, partly on account of the astonishment they were under; for it was no small danger they had incurred by killing an emperor, who was honored and loved by the madness of the people, especially when the soldiers were likely to make a bloody inquiry after his murderers. ”

“ Caius was born in 1510, and studied at Gonville Hall, Cambridge, which was ultimately to be better known by his own name. He went to Padua in 1539, and lived in the same house with the celebrated anatomist, Vesalius. He became professor of Greek at Padua, and took the M.D. there in 1541. He became F.R.C.P. in 1547, and settled in London in 1552. He was president of the College in 1555. He was physician to Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, but he is said to have been removed from the latter position because of his Romish tendencies. ”

“ Caius Gracchus, tribune, 123 B. C. The return of Caius Gracchus from his quaestorship in Sardinia in 124 B. C. and his immediate election to the tribunate for the ensuing year heralded the opening of a new phase in the conflict between the Optimates and the Populares. Caius was a passionate orator, and a man of greater energy and more violent temperament than his brother. He entered office pledged to support the agrarian policy of Tiberius, but likewise determined to avenge the latter’s death and to wrest from the Senate its control of the government. ”

“ Hereupon Caius was angry at her, and sent her with Herod into banishment, and gave her estate to Agrippa. And thus did God punish Herodias for her envy at her brother, and Herod also for giving ear to the vain discourses of a woman. Now Caius managed public affairs with great magnanimity during the first and second year of his reign, and behaved himself with such moderation, that he gained the good-will of the Romans themselves, and of his other subjects. ”

“ So they got away from the insults of the multitude, and then were for the present out of danger, that is, so long as the misfortune which had overtaken the emperor was not known. The Germans were the first who perceived that Caius was slain. These Germans were Caius's guard, and carried the name of the country whence they were chosen, and composed the Celtic legion. The men of that country are naturally passionate, which is commonly the temper of some other of the barbarous nations also, as being not used to consider much about what they do ”

“ And Caius Julius Cæsar Caligula, the father of his armies, the best and greatest of Cæsars, showed himself at all these pageants more crazed than ever; he hardly ever spoke now to the people. 'Twas averred that Cæsonia, his wife, had given him a potion to cure him of his infatuation for Dea Flavia, his kinswoman, whom he had exalted above all the other Augustas, and whose absence from Rome and from all festivities had rendered him half distracted with wrath. ”

“ Livius Drusus was fellow-tribune with Caius, a person of as good a family and as well educated as any amongst the Romans, and noways inferior to those who for their eloquence and riches were the most honored and most powerful men of that time. To him, therefore, the chief senators made their application, exhorting him to attack Caius, and join in their confederacy against him ”

“ And he spoke of filial ingratitude, and said it was all one as if the mouth should tear the hand for lifting food to it; for parents were hands and food and everything to children.
But the good Caius still persisting in his intreaties that the king would not stay out in the open air, at last persuaded him to enter a little wretched hovel which stood upon the heath, where the fool first entering, suddenly ran back terrified, saying that he had seen a spirit. ”

“ Caius's own list above referred to contains seventy-two titles, including sixteen original works, seven versions from Greek into Latin, and ten commentaries, besides texts, discovered, edited, and amended, but all the rest appear to have perished. Some, he says, were lost through the dilatoriness of Oporinus, the printer of Basel.
Caius's medical writings have a high value. Living in an age when book-learning was the mark of the skilled physician, and himself a profound scholar, he was still notable for his power of observation. ”

“ CHAPTER VII. THE WILD WAVES WHIST.
Next morning, when Caius walked forth into the glory of the April sunshine, he felt himself to be a poor, wretched man. There was not a fisherman upon the island, lazy, selfish as they were, and despised in his eyes, that did not appear to him to be a better man than he. All the force of training and habit made the thing that he was going to do appear despicable ”

“ Caius therefore could not suffer under him at Rome, where his elder Brother Carinus governed. But the Vulgar have a particular Veneration for Martyrs, and, what turns to a very good Account, are glad to purchase their Reliques at any rate. ”

“ So Lupus made haste to inform Cherea of what he had done.
5. This was the end of Caius, after he had reigned four years, within four months. He was, even before he came to be emperor, ill-natured, and one that had arrived at the utmost pitch of wickedness; a slave to his pleasures, and a lover of calumny; greatly affected by every terrible accident, and on that account of a very murderous disposition where he durst show it. He enjoyed his exorbitant power to this only purpose, to injure those who least deserved it, with unreasonable insolence and got his wealth by murder and injustice. ”

“ He afterwards won many more crowns in battle, and became one of the most famous of Roman soldiers.
One of his memorable exploits took place during a war with the Volscians, in which the Romans attacked the city of Corioli. The citizens made a sally, and drove the Romans back to their camp. But Caius, with a few followers, stopped them and turned the tide of battle, driving the Volscians back. As they fled into the city through the open gates, he cried, "Those gates are set open for us rather than for the Volscians. Why are we afraid to rush in?" ”

“ Caius was brought up chiefly in the royal court and was, as we have seen, in company with Tiberius in much of the luxurious dissipation of that monarch’s later days in the island of Capri. Pampered and flattered, it is not strange that he grew up conceited and arbitrary,—a spoiled child. ”

“ For, when the vote had been taken, every man not having a vote had been expelled from the city, and forbidden to come within five miles of it till the voting was over. Caius had come to live in the Forum instead of on the Palatine when he returned to Rome, among his friends as he thought; and still even in little matters he stood forward as the champion of the poor against the rich. There was going to be a show of gladiators in the Forum, and the magistrates had enclosed the arena with benches, which they meant to hire out. ”

“ Not many years ago (O best of patrons) a man most advised in every branch of life; one who has deserved well of the company of the learned; bound by the ties of family to yourself; a most shining light of the University of Cambridge; its jewel and glory, John Caius, wrote not without elegance to Conrad Gesner, a man exceedingly skilled and sagacious in the investigation of recondite matters; a man armed with everything that relates to natural history; the same man wrote an epitome concerning British dogs, not so concise as elegant and useful ”

“ And this was the business that Petronius was now engaged in.
7. But king Agrippa, who now lived at Rome, was more and more in the favor of Caius; and when he had once made him a supper, and was careful to exceed all others, both in expenses and in such preparations as might contribute most to his pleasure; nay, it was so far from the ability of others, that Caius himself could never equal, much less exceed it (such care had he taken beforehand to exceed all men, and particularly. to make all agreeable to Caesar) ”