reserved for the bloody exhibitions of the amphitheatre. Food could be
had, and perhaps at no very exorbitant price, but on terms somewhat higher
than the ordinary market price. A slight excuse served with Caligula for
acts the most monstrous. Instantly repairing to the public jails, and
causing all the prisoners to pass in review before him (_custodiarum
seriem recognoscens_), he pointed to two bald-headed men, and ordered
that the whole file of intermediate persons should be marched off to the
dens of the wild beasts: "Tell them off," said he, "from the bald man to
the bald man." Yet these were prisoners committed, not for punishment, but
trial. Nor, had it been otherwise, were the charges against them equal,
but running through every gradation of guilt. But the _elogia_ or
records of their commitment, he would not so much as look at. With such
inordinate capacities for cruelty, we cannot wonder that he should in his
common conversation have deplored the tameness and insipidity of his own
times and reign, as likely to be marked by no wide-spreading calamity."
Augustus," said he, "was happy; for in his reign occurred the slaughter of
Varus and his legions. Tiberius was happy; for in his occurred that
glorious fall of the great amphitheatre at Fidenae. But for me--alas!
alas!" And then he would pray earnestly for fire or slaughter--pestilence
or famine. Famine indeed was to some extent in his own power; and
accordingly, as far as his courage would carry him, he did occasionally
try that mode of tragedy upon the people of Rome, by shutting up the
public granaries against them. As he blended his mirth and a truculent
sense of the humorous with his cruelties, we cannot wonder that he should
soon blend his cruelties with his ordinary festivities, and that his daily
banquets would soon become insipid without them. Hence he required a daily
supply of executions in his own halls and banqueting rooms; nor was a
dinner held to be complete without such a dessert. Artists were sought out
who had dexterity and strength enough to do what Lucan somewhere calls
_ensem rotare_, that is, to cut off a human head with one whirl of