a younger brother of Germanicus; therefore
Tiberius' nephew, Caligula's uncle, and a brother-in-law to
Agrippina. Mr. Baring-Gould says that somewhere deep in him was
a noble nature that had never had a chance: that the soul of him
was a jewel, set in the foolish lead of a most clownish
personality. I do not know; certainly some great and fine
things came from him; but whether they were motions of his own
soul (if he had one), or whether the Gods for Rome's sake took
advantage of his quite negative being, and prompted it to their
own purposes, who can say?--Sitting down, and keeping still, and
saying nothing, the old man could look rather fine, even
majestic; one saw traces in him of the Claudian family dignity
and beauty. But let hm walk a few paces, and you noted that his
feet dragged and his knees knocked together, and that he had a
paunch; and let him get interested in a conversation, and you
heard that he first spluttered, and then roared. Physical
wakness and mental backwardness had made him the despair of
Augustus: he was the fool of the family, kept in the background,
and noticed by none. Tiberius, in search of a successor, had
never thought of him; had rather let things go to mad Caligula.
He had never gone into society; never associated with men of his
own rank; but chose his companions among small shopkeepers and
the 'Arries and 'Arriets of Rome, who, 'tickled to death' at
having a member of the reigning family to hobnob with them in
their back-parlors, would refrain from making fun of his
peculiatities. Caligula had enjoyed using him as a butt, and so
had spared his life. He had never even learned to behave at
table: and so, when he came to the throne, made a law that
table-manners should no longer be incumbent on a Roman gentleman.
All this is recorded of him; one would hardly believe it, but
that his portraits bear it out.*

------
* The accounts of Claudius and Nero are from _The Tragedy of the
Caesars,_ by S. Baring-Gould.
------

For all that he did well at first. He made himself popular with
the mob, cracking poor homely jokes with them at which they
laughed uproariously. He paid strict attention to business:
made some excellent laws; wisely extended Roman citizenship
among the subject peoples; undertook and pushed through useful
public works. Rome was without a decent harbor: corn from Egypt
had to be transshipped at sea and brought up the Tiber in
lighters; which resulted in much