me doubtful which
would win the day.

In fact, immediately after Caligula was killed, and the tidings of
his death began to spread about the palace and into the streets of
the city, a considerable tumult arose, the precursor and earnest of
the dissensions that were to follow. Upon the first alarm, a body of
the emperor's guards that had been accustomed to attend upon his
person, and whom he had strongly attached to himself by his lavish
generosity in bestowing presents and rewards upon them, rushed
forward to defend him, or if it should prove too late to defend him,
to avenge his death. These soldiers ran toward the palace, and when
they found that the emperor had been killed, they were furious with
rage, and fell upon all whom they met, and actually slew several
men. Tidings came to the theater, and the word was spread from rank
to rank among the people that the emperor was slain. The people did
not, however, at first, believe the story. They supposed that the
report was a cunning contrivance of the emperor himself, intended to
entrap them into some expression of pleasure and gratification, on
their part, at his death, in order to give him an excuse for
inflicting some cruel punishment upon them. The noise and tumult in
the streets soon convinced them, however, that something
extraordinary had occurred; they learned that the news of the
emperor's death was really true, and almost immediately afterward
they found, to their consternation, that the furious guards were
thundering at the gates of the theater, and endeavoring to force
their way in, in order to wreak their vengeance on the assembly, as
if the spectators at the show were accomplices of the crime.

In the mean time Chaerea and the other chief conspirators had fled to
a secret place of retreat, where they now lay concealed. As soon as
they had found that the object of their vengeance was really dead,
and when they had satisfied themselves with the pleasure of cutting
and stabbing the lifeless body, they stole away to the house of one
of their friends in the neighborhood, where they could lie for a
time secreted in safety. The life-guards sought for them everywhere,
but could not find them. The streets were filled with tumult and
confusion. Rumors of every kind, false and true, spread in all
directions, and increased the excitement. At length, however, the
consuls, who were the chief magistrates of the republic, succeeded
in organizing a force and in restoring