left for the ruin of the city and of
the laws. Moreover, in order to finish this matter with the utmost zeal,
and in order to satisfy his hatred of Caius, he sent Julius Lupus, one
of the tribunes, to kill Caius's wife and daughter. They proposed this
office to Lupus as to a kinsman of Clement, that he might be so far a
partaker of this murder of the tyrant, and might rejoice in the virtue
of having assisted his fellow citizens, and that he might appear to have
been a partaker with those that were first in their designs against him.
Yet did this action appear to some of the conspirators to be too cruel,
as to this using such severity to a woman, because Caius did more
indulge his own ill-nature than use her advice in all that he did; from
which ill-nature it was that the city was in so desperate a condition
with the miseries that were brought on it, and the flower of the city
was destroyed. But others accused her of giving her consent to these
things; nay, they ascribed all that Caius had done to her as the cause
of it, and said she had given a potion to Caius, which had made him
obnoxious to her, and had tied him down to love her by such evil
methods; insomuch that she, having rendered him distracted, was become
the author of all the mischiefs that had befallen the Romans, and that
habitable world which was subject to them. So that at length it was
determined that she must die; nor could those of the contrary opinion at
all prevail to have her saved; and Lupus was sent accordingly. Nor
was there any delay made in executing what he went about, but he was
subservient to those that sent him on the first opportunity, as desirous
to be no way blameable in what might be done for the advantage of the
people. So when he was come into the palace, he found Cesonia, who was
Caius's wife, lying by her husband's dead body, which also lay down on
the ground, and destitute of all such things as the law allows to the
dead, and all over herself besmeared with the blood of her husband's
wounds, and bewailing the great affliction she was under, her daughter
lying by her also; and nothing else was heard in these her circumstances
but her complaint of Caius, as if he had not regarded what she had often
told him of beforehand; which words of hers were taken in a different
sense even at that time, and are now esteemed equally ambiguous by those
that hear of them, and are still interpreted according to the different
inclinations of people. Now