r in the banquets of Capreae, where the remains
of his villa may still be seen. Once he set out, intending to visit
Rome, but no sooner had he landed in Campania than the sight of hundreds
of country people shouting welcome so disturbed him that he hastened on
board ship again, and thus entered the Tiber; but at the very sight of
the hills of Rome his terror returned, and he had his galley turned
about and went back to his island, which he never again quitted.

Only two males of his family were left now--a great-nephew and a nephew,
Caius, that son of the second Germanicus who had been nicknamed
Caligula, a youth of a strange, exciteable, feverish nature, but who
from his fright at Tiberius had managed to keep the peace with him, and
had only once been for a short time in disgrace; and his uncle, the
youngest son of the first Germanicus, commonly called Claudius, a very
dull, heavy man, fond of books, but so slow and shy that he was
considered to be wanting in brains, and thus had never fallen under
suspicion.

At length Tiberius fell ill, and when he was known to be dying, he was
smothered with pillows as he began to recover from a fainting fit, lest
he should take vengeance on those who had for a moment thought him dead.
He died A.D.. 37, and the power went to Caligula, properly
called Caius, who was only twenty-five, and who began in a kindly,
generous spirit, which pleased the people and gave them hope; but to
have so much power was too much for his brain, and he can only be
thought of as mad, especially after he had a severe illness, which made
the people so anxious that he was puffed up with the notion of his
own importance.

[Illustration: ROME IN THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS CAESAR.]

He put to death all who offended him, and, inheriting some of Tiberius'
distrust and hatred of the people, he cried out, when they did not
admire one of his shows as much as he expected, "Would that the people
of Rome had but one neck, so that I might behead them all at once." He
planned great public buildings, but had not steadiness to carry them
out; and he became so greedy of the fame which, poor wretch, he could
not earn, that he was jealous even of the dead. He burned the books of
Livy and Virgil out of the libraries, and deprived the statues of the
great men of old of the marks by which they were known--Cincinnatus of
his curls, and Torquatus of his collar, and he forbade the last of the
Pompeii to be called Magnus.

He made an