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Page 34
But in proportion as Caligula became more and more fervid in this
adoration of his dead sister, the disagreement between himself and his
other two sisters became more embittered. Julia Livilla was exiled in
38; Agrippina, the wife of Domitius Enobarbus, in 39, and about this
same time the venerable Antonia died. It was noised about that
Caligula had forced her to commit suicide, and that Agrippina and
Livilla had taken part in a conspiracy against the life of the emperor.
How much truth there may be in these reports it is difficult to say,
but the reason for all these catastrophes may be affirmed with
certainty. Life in the imperial palace was no longer possible,
especially for women, with this madman who was transforming Rome into
Alexandria and who wished to marry a sister. Even Tiberius, the son of
Drusus and co-heir to the empire with Caligula, was at about this time
defeated in some obscure suit and disappeared.
Caligula therefore remained alone at Rome to represent in the imperial
palace the family which only ironically can be considered as the most
fortunate in Rome. Of three generations, upon whom fate seemed to have
showered all the gifts of life, there remained at his side only
Claudius, the clownish old man, the plaything of slaves and freedmen,
whom no one molested because all could make game of him. A madman and
an imbecile,--or at least one who was reputed such by everybody,--this
was all that remained of the family of Augustus seventy years after the
battle of Actium.
Alone, with no sisters now to elevate to the divine honors of the Roman
Olympus, Caligula was reduced to hunting for wives in the families of
the aristocracy. But it seems that even there could be found no great
abundance of women who had all the necessary qualities to make them the
Olympian consorts of so capricious a god. In three years he married
and repudiated three--and in a very strange manner, if we are to trust
the ancient accounts of Caligula's loves. The first was Livia
Orestilla, the wife of Caius Piso. The emperor, who had seen the woman
at the marriage celebration, became, we are told, so infatuated with
her that he obliged the husband to divorce her; he then married her,
and a few days later repudiated her. Caligula is said to have compared
himself on this occasion to Romulus who ravished the Sabine woman, and
to Augustus who raped Livia. The second was Lollia Paulina, wife of
Caius Memmius, proconsul of a distant province. Caligula heard of the
prodigious beauty of Lollia's grandmother. The portrayal of her charms
made him fall in love with her granddaughter, though absent and
distant. He gave orders for her immediate recall to Rome, and as soon
as she could be divorced from her husband he married her. This union,
like the former one, lasted only a brief time. The third wife was
Milonia Caesonia, and to her Caligula was more faithful, though from
the accounts of ancient writers she appears to have been much older
than he, rather homely, and already a mother of three daughters when he
first loved her. It is difficult to determine how much truth there is
in these reports: Caligula was, it is true, a raving maniac, and his
frenzy became more accentuated when under the sway of love--a passion
which deranges somewhat even wise men. It is not strange, therefore,
that in regard to women he may have been guilty of even greater
excesses than he was capable of in his dealings with men. Yet some of
these accounts seem a little incredible even when ascribed to a madman.
However that may be, Livia Orestilla, Lollia Paulina, Milonia Caesonia
are figures without relief, shades and ghosts of empresses, no one of
whom had time enough even to occupy the highest post. In vain the
people expected that there would appear in the imperial palace a worthy
successor to Livia. Caligula, like all madmen, was by nature solitary,
and could not live with other human beings: he was to remain alone, a
prey to his ravings, which became even stranger and more violent. He
now wished to impose upon the empire the worship of his own person,
without considering any opposition or local traditions and
superstitions. In doing this he did violence not only to the civic and
republican sentiment of Italy, which detested this worship of a living
man as an ignoble oriental adulation, but also to the religious feeling
of the Hebrews, to whom this cult appeared most horrible and idolatrous.
[Illustration: The Emperor Caligula.]
In this way difficulties, dissatisfaction, and sedition arose in all
parts of the empire. The extravagances, the wild expenditures, the
riotous pleasures, and the cruelties of Caligula increased the
discontent and disgust on every hand. We need not take literally all
the accounts of his cruelty and violence which ancient writers have
transmitted to us,--even Caligula has been blackened,--but it is
certain that his government in the last two years of his reign
degenerated into a reckless, extravagant, violent, and cruel tyranny.
One day the empire awoke in terror to the fact that the imperial
family--that family in which the legions, the provinces, and the
barbarians saw the keystone of the state--no longer existed; that in
the vast imperial palace, empty of women, empty of children, empty of
hope, there wandered a raging madman of thirty-one, who divorced a wife
every six months, who foolishly wasted the treasure and the blood of
his subjects, and who was concerned with no other thought than that of
having himself worshiped like a god in flesh and blood by all the
empire. A conspiracy was formed in the palace itself, and Caligula was
killed.
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