he was adored; the prodigal emperors always were; so were their
successors, the wicked popes. Man was still too near to nature to
be aware of shame, and infantile enough to care to be surprised.
In that was Caligula's charm; he petted his people and surprised
them too. Claud wearied. Between them they assimilate every
contradiction, and in their incoherences explain that
incomprehensible chaos which was Rome. Caligula jeered at
everybody; everybody jeered at Claud.

The latter was a fantastic, vacillating, abstracted, cowardly
tyrant, issuing edicts in regard to the proper tarring of barrels,
and rendering absurd decrees; declaring himself to be of the
opinion of those who were right; falling asleep on the bench, and
on awakening announcing that he gave judgment in favor of those
whose reasons were the best; slapped in the face by an irritable
plaintiff; held down by main force when he wanted to leave;
inviting to supper those whom he had killed before breakfast;
answering the mournful salute of the gladiators with a grotesque
Avete vos--"Be it well too with you," a response, parenthetically,
which the gladiators construed as a pardon and refused to fight;
dowering the alphabet with three new letters which lasted no
longer than he did; asserting that he would give centennial games
as often as he saw fit; an emperor whom no one obeyed, whose
eunuchs ruled in his stead, whose lackeys dispensed exiles, death,
consulates and crucifixions; whose valets insulted the senate,
insulted Rome, insulted the sovereign that ruled the world, whose
people shared his consort's couch; a slipshod drunkard in a
tattered gown--such was the imbecile that succeeded Caligula and
had Messalina for wife.