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Updated: June 2, 2025
On the accession of Claudius, he was banished to Corsica at the instance of the Empress Messalina, on the charge of being the favoured lover of Julia Livilla, Caligula's youngest sister.
The policy was almost uniformly successful: the one exception was the Sanhedrim of the Jews, which obstinately refused the imperial cult and resisted Caligula's effort to introduce his statue with the same successful pertinacity as had repelled the efforts of Antiochus Epiphanes in the days of the Maccabees.
I take the spectacle of the Jewish people defying the Roman edict, and preferring death by starvation or the sword to the introduction of Caligula's deified statue into the temple, as a sublime type of steadfastness. But not, before the dispersion, unique in essential qualities. There is more likeness than contrast between the way we English got our island and the way the Israelites got Canaan.
The history of monarchies is continually presenting us with instances of innocent and helpless children sacrificed to such a supposed necessity as this. Ultimate design of the conspirators. Effect produced by the tidings of Caligula's death. Chærea and the conspirators secrete themselves. The senate is convened. Two parties formed. Account of Claudius. His apparent imbecility.
Power can prove itself to itself only by the strange misapplication which leads it to crown some absurd person with the laurels of success while insulting genius the only strong-hold which power cannot touch. The knighting of Caligula's horse, an imperial farce, has been, and always will be, a favorite performance.
On and on the two men walked, the Christian and his burden; their sandalled feet felt like lead as they sank ankle-deep in the mud of the unpaved road. "Come, take up thy cross and follow me!" and the Christian plodded on in the wake of the Divine Presence that beckoned to him upwards from above. From time to time Caligula's hoarse and querulous voice would break the death-like silence.
Unless a life of vice and madness had succeeded in making Caligula's face what the faces of some maniacs are the bloated ruin of what was once a living witness to the soul within I could fancy that death may have sanctified it with even more beauty than this bust of the self-tormented young man shows.
Born in Spain about 4 B.C.; died near Rome in 65 A.D.; celebrated as a Stoic and writer; taken to Rome when a child; a senator in Caligula's reign; banished to Corsica by Claudius in 41; recalled in 49, and entrusted with the education of Nero; after Nero's accession in 54 virtually controlled the imperial government, exercising power in concert with the Prætorian prefect, Burrus; on the assassination of Burrus in 62 petitioned for leave to retire from court, and virtually did withdraw; on being charged with complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, he committed suicide in obedience to Nero's order; his extant writings are numerous, and include "Benefits," "Clemency," and "Minor Essays."
The descendant of an obscure centurion, he had been a veterinary surgeon; then, having got Caligula's ear, he flattered it abominably. Caligula disposed of, he flattered Claud, or what amounted to the same thing, Narcissus, Claud's chamberlain.
There are many passages in history less monstrous than this which make us shudder, and this mean action of the Court made so little impression upon the minds of the generality of the people at that time that I have reflected a thousand times since that we are far more moved at the hearing of old stories than of those of the present time; we are not shocked at what we see with our own eyes, and I question whether our surprise would be as great as we imagine at the story of Caligula's promoting his horse to the dignity of a consul were he and his horse now living.
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