[-4-] Gaius inevitably went so by contraries in every matter that he not
only emulated but even surpassed his predecessor's licentiousness and
bloodthirstiness, for which he had censured him; but of the qualities he
had praised in him he imitated not one. Though he had been the first to
insult him, the first to abuse him, so that others thinking to please
him in this way made use of rather heedless freedom of speech, he later
lauded and magnified Tiberius, going to the point of punishing some for
what they had said. These, as enemies of the former emperor, he hated for
their injurious remarks, and he hated equally those who in way praised
Tiberius, as being the latter's friends.

Though he had put an end to complaints arising from maiestas, he made
these the cause of many persons' downfall. Though according to his own
account he dismissed the anger that he felt toward those who had united
against his father and his mother and his brothers (and burned their
letters), he yet put to death great numbers of them on the basis of
evidence contained in such documents. He did, to be sure, really destroy
some papers, but not those which held definite incontrovertible proof; of
these he made copies. Besides, though he at first forbade any one to set
up his images, he went on to manufacture the statues himself. Whereas
once he requested the annulment of a decree that sacrifice should be
offered to his Fortune, and had this action of his inscribed on a tablet,
he afterward ordered temples and sacrifices to be prepared for him as for
some god. He delighted by turns in vast throngs of men and in solitude;
he grew angry if requests were preferred, or if they were not preferred.
He would start out on enterprises with the greatest amount of dash, and
then carry them through in the most sluggish manner. He both spent money
most unsparingly and showed a thoroughly sordid spirit in exacting it. He
was alike irritated and pleased both at those who flattered him and at
those who spoke their own minds. Many who were guilty of great crimes
he neglected to punish and many who had done no wrong he ruthlessly
slaughtered. Among his associates he made some the recipients of
excessive adulation and others of excessive insult. Consequently, no one
knew either what to say or how to act toward him, but all who met with
success obtained it as the result of chance rather than of rational
calculation.

[-5-] That was the kind of emperor into whose hands