pt
the title of _Father_, and that he acquired after no long time. Though
he had proved himself the most libidinous of men, had seduced one
woman already betrothed and had dragged others from their husbands, he
afterward hated them all save one. And he would certainly have detested
her, had he lived any longer. Toward his mother, his sisters, and his
grandmother Antonia he conducted himself in the most dutiful manner
possible. The last named he immediately saluted as Augusta and appointed
her priestess of Augustus, giving her at once all the privileges
pertaining to the vestal virgins. To his sisters he assigned these honors
of the vestal virgins, the right to witness horse-races in the same
section of seats with him, and the right to have uttered in their behalf
as well the prayers which were annually offered by the magistrates and
the priests for his welfare and that of the State, and the oaths of
allegiance sworn to his empire. He set sail himself and with his own
hands collected and brought back the bones of his mother and of his
brothers that had died: wearing the purple-bordered toga and attended
by some lictors, as at a triumph, he deposited these in the monument
of Augustus. All measures voted against them he canceled, all who had
plotted against them he chastised, and recalled such as were in exile on
their account.--Now, though he had done all this, he showed himself
the most impious of men in the case both of his grandmother and of his
sisters. The former, because she had rebuked him for something, he forced
to seek death by her own hand; and after ravishing all his sisters he
shut two of them up on an island: the third had previously died. Again in
the matter of Tiberius (whom he also termed "grandfather"), he asked that
he might receive from the senate the same honors as Augustus; but these
were not immediately voted, for the senators could not endure to honor
that tyrant, nor did they make bold to dishonor him because they were
not yet clearly acquainted with the character of their young lord, and
consequently postponed everything until the latter should be present:
so then Gaius bestowed upon him no mark of notice other than a public
funeral, after bringing the body into the City by night and having it
laid out at daybreak. And though he did make a speech over it, he did
not say so much in praise of Tiberius as he did to remind the people of
Augustus and Germanicus, comparing himself meanwhile with them.