These Protectors, who were unknown to me personally, did not behave with conspicuous courage when we stopped to parley with them, or even dare to utter the stern message with which I afterwards learned that they had been entrusted. They called me `Caesar’ a title to which I then had no claim, not being a member of the Julian house; and said very humbly: `You will pardon us, Caesar, but the Senate would be much obliged by your immediate attendance at the House: they are anxious to learn your intentions:'
I was willing enough to go, but the Guards would not allow it. They felt only contempt for the Senate and, now that they had chosen an Emperor of their own, were resolved not to let him out of their sight, and to resist every attempt on the part of the Senate either to restore the Republic or to appoint a rival Emperor.
Angry shouts arose, `Clear off, d'ye hear?' `Tell the Senate to mind their own business and we'll mind ours!' `We won't allow our new Emperor to be murdered too.' I leaned through the window of my sedan and said: `Pray give my respectful compliments to the Senate and inform them that for the present I am unable to comply with their gracious invitation. I have a prior one. I am being carried off by the sergeants, corporals, and private soldiers of the Palace Guard to enjoy their hospitality, at the Guards' Camp. It is as much as my life is worth to insult this devoted soldiery.'
So away we went again. `What a wag our new Emperor is!' they roared. When we reached the Camp I was greeted with greater enthusiasm, than ever. The Guards Division consisted of some 12,000 infantrymen besides the attached cavalry. It was not only the corporals and sergeants who now acclaimed me Emperor, but the captains and the colonels too. I discouraged them as much as I could while thanking them for their goodwill. I said that I could not consent, to be their Emperor until I had been so appointed by the Senate, in whose hands the election rested. I was conveyed to Headquarters, where I was treated with a deference to which I was wholly unaccustomed, but found myself virtually a prisoner.
As for the assassins, as soon as they had made sure of Caligula and escaped from the pursuing Germans and from Caligula's chairmen and yeomen who also came hurrying up with cries of vengeance, they had run down to Vinicius's house, which was not far from the Market Place. Here were waiting the colonels of the three City Battalions, who were the only regular troops stationed in Rome besides the Watchmen and the Imperial Guards. These colonels had not taken any active part in the conspiracy but had promised to put their forces at the disposal of the Senate as soon as Caligula was dead and the Republic restored. Cassius now insisted that someone must go at once and kill Caesonia and myself: we were too closely related to Caligula to be allowed to survive him.. A colonel called Lupus volunteered for the task; he was a brother-in-law of the Guards' Commander. He came up to the Palace and, striding sword in hand through many deserted rooms, finally reached the Imperial bedchamber where Caligula's body was lying, bloody and frightful, just as Herod had left it. But Caesonia was now sitting on the bed with the head on her lap, and little Drusilla, Caligula's only child, was at her knees. As Lupus entered, Caesonia was wailing to the corpse, `Husband, husband, you should have listened to my advice.' When she saw Lupus's sword' she looked up anxiously into his face and knew that she was doomed. She stretched out her neck. 'Strike clean,' she said. 'Don't bungle it like the other assassins did.' Caesonia was no coward. He struck and the head fell. He then caught up the little brat, who came rushing at him, biting and scratching. He held her by the feet, swung her head against a marble pillar, and so dashed out her brains. It is always unpleasant to hear of the murder of a child: but the reader must take my word for it that if he too had known little Drusilla, her father's pet, he would have longed to do what Lupus did.
There has been a great deal of argument since about the meaning of Caesonia's, address to the corpse, which certainly was ambiguous. Some say that what she meant was that Caligula should have listened to some advice that she had given him about killing Cassius, whose intentions she suspected, before he had time to put them into effect. The people who explain it in this way are those who blame Caesonia for Caligula's madness, saying that it was she who first disordered his wits by giving him the love-philtre which bound him to her so entirely. Others hold, and I must say that I agree with them, that she meant that she had advised Caligula to mitigate what he was pleased to call his `immovable rigour' and behave more like a humane and sensible mortal.
Lupus then came in search of me, to complete his task.' But by this time the shouts 'Long live the Emperor Claudius' were just beginning. He stood in the doorway of the hall where the meeting was being held, but when he saw how popular 'I had become he lost courage and stole quietly away.
In the Market Place the excited crowds could not decide whether to cheer themselves hoarse in honour of the assassins or howl themselves hoarse in demands for their blood. A rumour ran about that Caligula had not been murdered at all, that the whole business was an elaborate hoax stage-managed by himself, and that he was only waiting for them to express joy at his death before beginning a general massacre. That was what he had meant, it was said, by his promise to exhibit an entirely new spectacle that night, to be called Death, Destruction, and the Mysteries of Hell.
Caution prevailed and they had begun to bawl loyally, `Search out the murderers! Avenge our glorious Caesar's death!' when Asiaticus, an ex-Consul, who was a man of imposing figure and one who had been in Caligula's close confidence, climbed up on the Oration Platform and exclaimed: `You are looking for the assassins? So am I. I want to congratulate them. I only wish I had struck a blow myself. Caligula was a vile creature and they acted nobly in killing him. Don't be idiots, men of Rome! You all hated Caligula, and now that he is dead you will be able to breathe freely again. Go back to your homes and celebrate his death with wine and song!'
Three or four companies of City troops were drawn up close by, and Asiaticus said to them: 'We are counting on you soldiers to keep the peace. The Senate is supreme once more,, Once more we are a Republic. Obey the Senate's orders and I give you my word that every man of you will be considerably richer by the time things have settled down again. There must be no plundering or rioting. Any offence against life or property will be punished by death.' So the people changed their tune at once and began cheering the assassins and the Senate and Asiaticus himself.
From Vinicius's house those of the conspirators who were senators were proceeding to the Senate House, where the Consuls had hastily called a meeting; when Lupus came running down from the Palatine Hill with the news that the Guards had acclaimed me Emperor and were hurrying me off to their camp. So they sent me a threatening message by two Protectors of the People, whom they mounted on cavalry horses and told to overtake me. They were to deliver the message as if from the Senate in session: I have already related how, when it came to the point, the threat lost most of its force. The other conspirators, the Guards officers, headed by Cassius, then seized the Citadel on the Capitoline Hill, manning it with one of the City Battalions.
I should like to have been an eye-witness of that historic meeting of the Senate, to which crowded not only all the senators but also a large number of knights and others who had no business to be there. As soon as news came of the successful seizure of the Citadel they all left the Senate House and moved up to the Temple of Jove near by, thinking it a safer place. But the excuse they gave themselves was that the official designation of the Senate House was `The Julian Building' and that free men should not meet in a place dedicated to the dynasty from whose tyranny they had now at last so happily escaped. When they were comfortably settled in their new quarters everyone began speaking at once. Some senators cried out that the memory of the Caesars should be utterly abolished, their statues broken, and their temples destroyed. But the Consuls rose and pleaded for order. `One thing at a time, my Lords,' they said. `One thing at a time.' They called on a senator named Sentius to make a speech - because he always had oneready in
his head and was a loud and persuasive orator. They hoped that once somebody began speaking in proper form instead of exchanging random shouts and congratulations and arguments with neighbours, the House would soon settle down to business.
Sentius spoke. `My Lords,' he said, `this is well-nigh incredible! Do you realize that we are free at last, no longer slaves to the madness of a tyrant? Oh, I trust that your hearts are all beating as strongly and proudly as mine, though how long this blessed condition will last, who will dare to prophesy? At all events let us enjoy it while we can, and let us be happy. It is nearly a hundred years now since it was possible to announce in this ancient and glorious city, 'We are free; so of course neither you nor .I can recall what it felt like in the old days to utter those splendid words, but certainly at the present moment my soul is as buoyant as a cork. How happy are the decrepit old men who at the end of a long life of slavery can breathe their last breath to-day with that sweet phrase on their lips 'We are free'! How instructive, too, for the young men, to whom freedom is but a name, to know what it means when they hear the glad universal cry go up: 'We are free'' But, my Lords and gentlemen, we must remember that virtue alone can preserve liberty. The mischief of tyranny is that it discourages virtue. Tyranny teaches flattery and base fear. Under a tyranny we are straws upon the wind of caprice. The first of our tyrants was Julius Caesar. Since
