erranean civilizations,--this horrible
aberration was looked upon as a sovereign privilege which brought the
royal dynasty into relationship with the gods. By means of it, this
family preserved the semi-divine purity of its blood; and perchance
this custom, which had survived up to the fall of the Ptolemies, was
only the projection of ideas and customs which in most ancient times
had had a much wider diffusion along the Mediterranean world, for
traces of it can be found even in Greek mythology. For were not
Jupiter and Juno, who constituted the august Olympian couple, at the
same time also brother and sister? Gradually restricted through the
spreading of Greek civilization, this custom was finally eradicated at
the shores of the Mediterranean by Rome after the destruction of the
kingdom of the Ptolemies.

The lunatic Caligula now suddenly took it into his head to transplant
this custom to Rome--to transplant it with all the religious pomp of
the Egyptian monarchy, and thus transform the family of Augustus, which
up to the present had been merely the most eminent family of the Roman
aristocracy, into a dynasty of gods and demigods, whose members were to
be united by marriage among themselves in order not to pollute the
celestial purity of their blood. A fraternal and divine pair were to
rule at Rome, like another Arsinoe and Ptolemy, whom the Alexandrian
throngs had worshiped on the banks of the Nile. The idea had already
matured in his mind at the end of the year 37, and among his three
sisters he had already chosen Drusilla to be his wife. This is proved
by a will made at the time of an illness which he contracted in the
autumn of the first year of his rule. In this will he appointed
Drusilla heir not only of his goods, but also of his empire, a wild
folly from the point of view of Roman ideas, which did not admit women
to the government; but it proves that Caligula had already thought and
acted like an Egyptian king.

[Illustration: Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the
Caesars.]

It is easy to understand why the peace and harmony which had been
reestablished for a moment in the troubled imperial family by the
advent of Caligula should have been of brief duration. His grandmother
and his sisters were Romans, educated in Roman ideals, and this exotic
madness of his could inspire in them only an irresistible horror. This
brought confusion into the imperial family, and after having suffered