s among the emperors in the list of members of his
house.[4] But in regard to Augustus and Gaius they took the oaths which
had regularly been the custom and others to the effect that they would
hold Gaius and his sisters in greater respect than themselves and their
children, and they offered prayers for all of them alike.

On the very first day of the new year one Machaon, a slave, climbed upon
the couch of Jupiter Capitolinus and after uttering from that place many
dire prophecies killed a little dog which he had brought in with him and
slew himself.

The following good deeds must be set down to the credit of Gaius. He
published, as Augustus had done, all the accounts of public funds, which
had not been made known during the time Tiberius was out of the city. He
helped the soldiers extinguish a conflagration and assisted those who
suffered loss by it. As the equestrian order pined from lack of men he
summoned the foremost men from every office, even abroad, and enrolled
them with due regard to their relatives and their wealth. Some of them he
allowed to wear the senatorial costume occasionally even before they had
held any office through which we enter the senate, on the strength of
their hopes to secure admission to that body. Previously it would seem
that only those who had been born in the senatorial order were allowed to
do this. These deeds caused pleasure to all. But this action in restoring
the elections to the populus and the plebs, rescinding the decisions of
Tiberius about these matters, and in abolishing the one per cent.
tax, and again in scattering at some gymnastic contest tickets and
distributing very large gifts to such as secured them,--these actions,
though they delighted the lower classes, grieved the sensible, who
reflected that even if the offices fell once more into the hands of the
general public, still, in case the existing funds should be exhausted and
private sources of income fail, many dreadful disasters would result.

[-10-] The performances of his next to be enumerated elicited the censure
of all without distinction. He caused very great numbers of men to fight
as gladiators, forcing them to contend both separately and in groups,
drawn up in a kind of military formation: he requested permission from
the senate to do this, and again,--something quite contrary to the spirit
of the enacted law that he might do whatsoever he pleased,--he asked
leave to put to death a number of persons, among