"And to think that I have but a sign to make and that beautiful
head of yours is off!" Musings of this description were so
humorous that one evening he explained to guests whom he had
startled with his laughter, that it was amusing to reflect how
easily he could have all of them killed.

But even to a god life is not an unmixed delight. Caligula had his
troubles. About him there had settled a disturbing quiet. Rome was
hushed, the world was very still. There was not so much as an
earthquake. The reign of Augustus had been marked by the defeat of
Varus. Under Tiberius a falling amphitheatre had killed a
multitude. Caligula felt that through sheer felicity his own reign
might be forgot. A famine, a pest, an absolute defeat, a terrific
conflagration--any prodigious calamity that should sweep millions
away and stamp his own memory immutably on the chronicles of time,
how desirable it were! But there was nothing. The crops had never
been more abundant; apart from the arenas and the prisons, the
health of the empire was excellent; on the frontiers not so much
as the rumor of an insurrection could be heard, and Nero was yet
to come.

Perplexed, Caligula reflected, and presently from Baiae to
Puzzoli, over the waters of the bay, he galloped on horseback, the
cuirass of Alexander glittering on his breast. The intervening
miles had been spanned by a bridge of ships and on them a road had
been built, one of those roads for which the Romans were famous, a
road like the Appian Way, in earth and stone, bordered by inns, by
pink arcades, green retreats, forest reaches, the murmur of
trickling streams. So many ships were anchored there that through
the unrepleted granaries the fear of famine stalked. Caligula,