us_; religious, chaste,
and virtuous, that she might not violate the _Lex de adulteriis_;
simple and modest, in deference to the _Lex sumptuaria_. She must be
able to rule wisely over the vast household of the emperor, full of his
slaves and freedmen, and she must aid her husband in the fulfilment of
all those social duties--receptions, dinners, entertainments--which,
though serious concerns for every Roman nobleman, were even more
serious for the emperor. That she should be stupid or ignorant was of
course out of the question. In fact, from this time to the downfall of
Nero the difficulties of the imperial family and its authority arise
not so much from the emperors as from their wives; so that it may truly
be said that it was the women who unwittingly dragged down to its ruin
the great Julio-Claudian house.

[Illustration: A bronze sestertius (slightly enlarged), showing the
sisters of Caligula (Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on one
side and Germanicus on the other side.]

[Illustration: A bronze sestertius with the head of Agrippina the
Elder, daughter of Agrippa and Julia, the daughter of Augustus. She
was the wife of Germanicus, and their daughter, Agrippina the younger,
was the mother of the Emperor Nero.]

But if the difficulty was serious, there never was a man so little
fitted and so ill prepared to face it as this young man of twenty-seven
who had been exalted to the imperial dignity after the death of
Tiberius. Four years before his election as emperor, he had married a
certain Julia Claudilla, a lady who doubtless belonged to one of the
great Roman families, but about whom we have no definite information.
We cannot say, therefore, whether or not at the side of a second
Augustus she might have become a new Livia. In any case, it is certain
that Caligula was not a second Augustus. He was probably not so
frenzied a lunatic as ancient writers have pictured him, but his was
certainly an extravagant, unbalanced mind, given to excesses, and
unhinged by the delirium of greatness, which his coming to the throne
had increased the more because it had been conferred upon him at a time
when he was too young and before he had been sufficiently prepared.
For many years Caligula had never even hoped to succeed Tiberius; he
had continually feared that the fate of his mother and his two brothers
was likewise waiting for him. Far from having dreamed that he would be
raised to the imperial purple, he had mer