hese and the like
circumstances, he came at last to the empire in the fiftieth year of his
age [475], by a very surprising turn of fortune. Being, as well as the
rest, prevented from approaching Caius by the conspirators, who dispersed
the crowd, under the pretext of his desiring to be private, he retired
into an apartment called the Hermaeum [476]; and soon afterwards,
terrified by the report of Caius being slain, he crept into an adjoining
balcony, where he hid himself behind the hangings of (302) the door. A
common soldier, who happened to pass that way, spying his feet, and
desirous to discover who he was, pulled him out; when immediately
recognizing him, he threw himself in a great fright at his feet, and
saluted him by the title of emperor. He then conducted him to his
fellow-soldiers, who were all in a great rage, and irresolute what they
should do. They put him into a litter, and as the slaves of the palace
had all fled, took their turns in carrying him on their shoulders, and
brought him into the camp, sad and trembling; the people who met him
lamenting his situation, as if the poor innocent was being carried to
execution. Being received within the ramparts [477], he continued all
night with the sentries on guard, recovered somewhat from his fright, but
in no great hopes of the succession. For the consuls, with the senate
and civic troops, had possessed themselves of the Forum and Capitol, with
the determination to assert the public liberty; and he being sent for
likewise, by a tribune of the people, to the senate-house, to give his
advice upon the present juncture of affairs, returned answer, "I am under
constraint, and cannot possibly come." The day afterwards, the senate
being dilatory in their proceedings, and worn out by divisions amongst
themselves, while the people who surrounded the senate-house shouted that
they would have one master, naming Claudius, he suffered the soldiers
assembled under arms to swear allegiance to him, promising them fifteen
thousand sesterces a man; he being the first of the Caesars who purchased
the submission of the soldiers with money. [478]

XI. Having thus established himself in power, his first object was to
abolish all remembrance of the two preceding days, in which a revolution
in the state had been canvassed. Accordingly, he passed an act of
perpetual oblivion and pardon for every thing said or done during that
time; and this he faithfully observed, with the exce