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His portraits are photographic. Whether he describes the money-loving Chaerea with his shaven eye-brows and head reeking with cunning and malice; or the insolent Verres, lolling on a litter with eight bearers, like an Asiatic despot, stretched on a bed of rose-leaves; or Vatinius, darting forward to speak, his eyes starting from his head, his neck swollen, and his muscles rigid; or the Gaulish and Greek witnesses, of whom the former swagger erect across the forum, the latter chatter and gesticulate without ever looking up; we see in each case the master's powerful hand.

Caius Julius Cæsar Caligula prepared to have her sought for throughout the length and breadth of his Empire, and would no doubt have succeeded in time in this search had not a few months later Chaerea, the praetorian tribune, done the work with his hands which the dagger of young Escanes had failed to do. The winter had been slow in coming, but it had come at last.

The oracle of Fortune at Antium likewise forewarned him of Cassius; on which account he had given orders for putting to death Cassius Longinus, at that time proconsul of Asia, not considering that Chaerea bore also that name.

Others say, that the crowd being kept at a distance by some centurions who were in the plot, Sabinus came, according to custom, for the word, and that Caius gave him "Jupiter," upon which Chaerea cried out, "Be it so!" and then, on his looking round, clove one of his jaws with a blow. As he lay on the ground, crying out that he was still alive , the rest dispatched him with thirty wounds.

One Chaerea, a Roman of position, nursed an insult of the emperor, and stabbed him shortly after these events; and the world had the respite of a tolerably sane emperor before the crowning horror of Nero was let loose upon it. The murder of the capricious tyrant released not only the Jews of Alexandria, but also the Jews of Palestine, from the burden of fear for their religion.

The conspirators having resolved to fall upon him as he returned at noon from the Palatine games, Cassius Chaerea, tribune of the pretorian guards, claimed the part of making the onset. This Chaerea was now an elderly man, and had been often reproached by Caius for effeminacy.

Respecting what followed, two different accounts are given. Some say, that, whilst he was speaking to the boys, Chaerea came behind him, and gave him a heavy blow on the neck with his sword, first crying out, "Take this:" that then a tribune, by name Cornelius Sabinus, another of the conspirators, ran him through the breast.