Gaius Curio

“ Indeed it is almost typical for the class to which he belonged, and in studying it we shall come to know something more of that group of brilliant young men, made up of Cælius, Antony, Dolabella, and others, who were drawn to Cæsar's cause and played so large a part in bringing him success. The life of Curio not only illuminates social conditions in the first century before our era, but it epitomizes and personifies the political history of his time and the last struggles of the Republic. ”

“ Then, however, at the stern voice of Fronto, warning them of the hour, they ceased—embraced each other, and received the fatal blow; the others signified their pleasure at dying so, rather than to be thrown to wild beasts, or left to die by slow degrees within their dungeon's walls. Two rejoiced that it was their fate to pour out their blood upon the altar of a god, and knelt devoutly before the uplifted knife of Fronto. Never, said Curio, was there a more fortunate offering. Aurelian heard the report of it with lively joy, and said that 'now all would go well.' Curio is a good friend of mine ”

“ Your loyal and excellent fellow citizens, the only nation of men upon the whole face of the earth by whom Gaius is not esteemed to be a god, appear now to be even desiring to plot my death in their obstinate disobedience, for when I commanded my statue in the character of Jupiter to be erected in their temple, they raised the whole of their people, and quitted the city and the whole country in a body, under pretence of addressing a petition to me, but in reality being determined to act in a manner contrary to the commands which I had imposed upon them. ”

“ He had also a wonderful gift for flattery and was the first to begin to worship Gaius Caesar as a god; for on his return from Syria he did not presume to approach the emperor except with veiled head, turning himself about and then prostrating himself. To neglect no means of gaining the favour of Claudius, who was a slave to his wives and freedmen, [3] he begged of Messalina as the highest possible favour that she would allow him to take off her shoes ”

“ But when Tiberius was dead, and Gaius succeeded to the empire, he then, following a new master, who invited him to every description of relaxation and luxury, such as could delight every one of his outward senses, said to himself: "Rise up, O Helicon! now is your opportunity. You have now an auditor, and a spectator, who is of all men in the world the best calculated to receive the exhibition of your talents favourably. You are a man of very attractive natural talents. You are able to joke graceful, and to say witty, things beyond any one else. ”

“ Slowly the mournful procession moved on, and a stranger would have supposed that a corpse was being borne to the funeral pile; but those who watched at a distance knew well—from the direction it was taking, to the Campus Sceleratus—that there was a terrible fate prepared for the occupant of the litter. Such a spectacle had not been for a long time seen in Rome, and did not fail to attract a large number of the population.
Gaius, who was looking about him, remarked amongst the crowd a considerable number of persons whom he knew to be Christians, who walked along with sad and averted looks. ”

“ Gaius is my work; the work of Macro. I am more truly, or at all events not less truly, his father than his own parents. He would have been destroyed, over and over again, by Tiberius, who thirsted for his blood, if it had not been for me and for my powers of persuasion. And moreover, when Tiberius was dead, I, who had under my command the whole force of the army, immediately placed him in the position which Tiberius had occupied, teaching him that the state had indeed sustained a loss of one man, but that the imperial authority continued unaltered, as entire as ever. ”

“ His interest in the antiquities of Roman law is apparent, and for this reason his work is most valuable to the historian of early institutions. In the disputes between the two schools of Roman jurists he generally attached himself to that of the Sabinians, who were said to be followers of Ateius Capito, of whose life we have some account in the Annals of Tacitus, and to advocate a strict adherence as far as possible to ancient rules, and to resist innovation. Many quotations from the works of Gaius occur in the Digest of Justinian, and so acquired a permanent place in the system of Roman law ”

“ Gaius. "Come, sir," said good Gaius, "be of good cheer: you are welcome to me and to my house. What thou hast a mind to, call for freely; and what thou wouldst have my servants do for thee, they will do it with a ready mind."
Then said Mr. Feeble-mind, "This is an unexpected favor, and as the sun shining out of a very dark cloud. Did Giant Slay-good intend me this favor when he stopped me, and resolved to let me go no farther? Did he intend that, after he had rifled my pockets, I should go to Gaius, mine host? Yet so it is." ”

“ We shall triumph still, Gaius, though, by the Immortals, these Christians have made fearful progress of late. They swarm in this city, and even, as I hear, throughout every part of the world; for since the time when the Emperor Diocletian wisely resolved to put them down, by destroying the places where they met to worship, preventing their secret assemblies, and burning their books, they have once more risen in an audacious manner and walk about with all the airs of freedmen. ”

“ For he represented to him, that Gaius was a person of a good and obedient disposition, and one who entertained the greatest affection for his cousin, so that out of his exceeding regard for him he would be willing even to abandon the government and to yield it up to him by himself, but that excessive modesty was anything but advantageous to many persons, in consequence of which Gaius, who was of a most guileless and single-minded disposition, was looked upon by many as crafty and designing. ”

“ There was no detail of the character of Gaius of which he was in ignorance; indeed, he once remarked to his successor, who was quarreling with Tiberius: "You will kill him, and others will kill you." The emperor knew of no one else that suited him so entirely, and at the same time he was well aware that the man would be a thorough knave; yet the story obtains that he was glad to give him the empire in order that his own crimes might find concealment in the enormity of Gaius's offences and that the largest and the noblest portion of what was left of the senate might perish after him. ”

“ But he forced Polus, a favourite freedman of his, to take his own life, because he was convicted of adultery with Roman matrons, and broke the legs of his secretary Thallus for taking five hundred denarii to betray the contents of a letter. Because the tutor and attendants of his son Gaius took advantage of their master's illness and death to commit acts of arrogance and greed in his province, he had them thrown into a river with heavy weights about their necks. ”

“ For all inferior men and nations are eager to imitate great men and great states. (339) Moreover, Gaius was in other respects a man in whose nature there was nothing stable or trustworthy so that, even if he did anything good or kind, he speedily repented of it, and in such a manner that he soon attempted to annul what he had done in such a way as to cause even greater affliction and injury to those whom he had favoured. ”

“ Varus's whole army, facing that way, saw their men flee and cut down. Upon which Rebilus, one of Caesar's lieutenants, whom Curio had brought with him from Sicily knowing that he had great experience in military matters, cried out, "You see the enemy are daunted, Curio! why do you hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity?" Curio, having merely "expressed this, that the soldiers should keep in mind the professions which they had made to him the day before," then ordered them to follow him, and ran far before them all. ”

“ Gaius, who was the elder, left Rome after squandering the greater part of his estate, and committed suicide because Tiberius would not allow him to take part in the allotment of the provinces in his year. [9]
4 The emperor Servius Galba was born in the consulship of Marcus Valerius Messala and Gnaeus Lentulus, on the ninth day before the Kalends of January, in a country house situated on a hill near Tarracina, on the left as you go towards Fundi. Adopted by his stepmother Livia, he took her name and the surname Ocella, and also changed his forename ”

“ For Tiberius, who was a man of very profound prudence, and the most able to all the men of his court at perceiving the hidden intentions of any man, and who was as pre-eminent in intelligence and acuteness as he was in good fortune, did very often look with suspicion upon Gaius as being evil disposed towards all the house of Claudius, and as being related to him only on the mother's side, {4}{caligula was the son of Germanicus and Agrippina.} and he feared for his grandson, lest he, being left a mere child, should be put to death by him. ”

“ These men hearing from travellers who visit the city how exceedingly eager and earnest Gaius is about his own deification, and how disposed he is to look unfavourably upon the whole race of Judaea, thinking that they have now an admirable opportunity for attacking them themselves, have erected an extemporaneous altar of the most contemptible materials, having made clay into bricks for the sole purpose of plotting against their fellow citizens; for they knew well that they would never endure to see their customs transgressed ”

“ This is the obscurest period of Roman history, as here the eleventh book of Livy is wanting. Certain it is, that Curius had a most fierce quarrel with the senate, no doubt about the division of the public land. Curius insisted upon a larger assignation being made to the people,—for so we must call it, and not commonalty any longer,—and likewise to the libertini, inasmuch as they were in the tribes. The quarrel was now also with the plebeian nobility; and so great was the exasperation, that a band of eight hundred youths united to defend the life of Curius, as the knights did that of Cicero. ”

“ That was the kind of emperor into whose hands the Romans had now fallen. Hence the deeds of Tiberius, though they were felt to have been most grievous, were still as far superior to those of Gaius as the deeds of Augustus were to those of his successor. For Tiberius always held the power in his own hands and used other people to help him carry out his wishes: Gaius, on the other hand, was ruled by charioteers and by gladiators; he was the slave of dancers and other theatrical performers. ”

“ Homer has mentioned this Ægæ in a speech of Hera,
“They bring you gifts to Helice and Ægæ,” [15]
plainly therefore Poseidon had gifts equally at Helice and Ægæ. And at no great distance from Crathis is a tomb on the right of the road, and on it you will find a rather indistinct painting of a man standing by a horse. And the road from this tomb to what is called Gaius is 30 stades: Gaius is a temple of Earth called the Broad-breasted. The statue is very ancient. And the woman who becomes priestess remains henceforth in a state of chastity, and before she must only have been married once. ”

“ He then publicly adopted his third grandson Agrippa and at the same time his stepson Tiberius by a bill passed in the assembly of the curiae; but he soon disowned Agrippa because of his low tastes and violent temper, and sent him off the Surrentum. He bore the death of his kin with far more resignation than their misconduct. For he was not greatly broken by the fate of Gaius and Lucius, but he informed the senate of his daughter's fall through a letter read in absence by a quaestor, and for very shame would meet no one for a long time, and even thought of putting her to death. ”

“ As Marcus Cicero was attending Gaius Caesar to the Capitol, he happened to tell his friends a dream of the night before; that a boy of noble countenance was let down from heaven on a golden chain and, standing by the door of the temple, was given a whip by Jupiter. Just then suddenly catching sight of Augustus, who was still unknown to the greater number of those present and had been brought to the ceremony by his uncle Caesar, he declared that he was the very one whose form had appeared to him in his dream. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But Gaius, looking upon every admonition as an insult, because he fancied that he himself was the wisest and most virtuous of all men, and moreover the most valorous and the most just, hated all who ventured to offer him instruction more than even his avowed enemies. ”

“ Many people at once made many direful predictions from his horoscope, and a remark of his father Domitius was also regarded as an omen; for while receiving the congratulations of his friends, he said that "nothing that was not abominable and a public bane could be born of Agrippina and himself." Another manifest indicatino of Nero's future unhappiness occurred on the day of his purification; [14] for when Gaius Caesar was asked by his sister to give the child whatever name he liked, he looked at his uncle Claudius, who later became emperor and adopted Nero, and said that he gave him his name. ”