meanwhile, his guests behind him, made cavalry charges across the
sea, or in a circus-chariot held the ribbons, while four white
horses, maddened by swaying lights, bore him to the other shore.
At night the entire coast was illuminated; the bridge was one
great festival, brilliant but brief. Caligula had wearied of it
all. At a signal the multitude of guests he had assembled there
were tossed into the sea.

By way of a souvenir, Tiberius, whom he murdered, had left him the
immensity of his treasure. "I must be economical or Caesar,"
Caligula reflected, and tipped a coachman a million, rained on the
people a hail of coin, bathed in essences, set before his guests
loaves of silver, gold omelettes, sausages of gems; sailed to the
hum of harps on a ship that had porticoes, gardens, baths, bowers,
spangled sails and a jewelled prow; removed a mountain, and put a
palace where it had been; filled in a valley and erected a temple
on the top; supplied a horse with a marble home, with ivory
stalls, with furniture and slaves; contemplated making him consul;
made him a host instead, one that in his own equine name invited
the fashion of Rome to sup with Incitatus.

In one year Tiberius' legacy, a sum that amounted to four hundred
million of our money, was spent. Caligula had achieved the
impossible; he was a bankrupt god, an emperor without a copper.
But the very splendor of that triumph demanded a climax. If
Caligula hesitated, no one knew it. On the morrow the palace of
the Caesars was turned into a lupanar, a little larger, a little
handsomer than the others, but still a brothel, one of which the
inmates were matrons of Rome and the keeper Jupiter Latialis.