stus."
Meantime he incidentally showed the necessity of selling them, so that no
one dared to appear to be indigent, and he sold with each article some
valuable association.

[-22-] In spite of all this he did not secure any surplus. He kept up his
expenditures both for the objects that regularly interested him,
producing some spectacles at Lugdunum, and also for the army. For the
number of soldiers he had gathered amounted to twenty myriads, or, as
some say, to twenty-five myriads. Seven times was he named imperator by
them (just as pleased him), though he had won no battle and slain no
enemy. To be sure, he did once by a ruse seize and make prisoners a few
of the latter, but it was his own people whom he wasted most, striking
some of them down individually and butchering others _en masse_. Once he
saw a crowd either of prisoners or some other persons and gave orders (in
the cant phrase) that they should all be slain from baldhead to baldhead.
Another time he was playing dice and, finding that he had no money,
called for the census of the Gauls and ordered the wealthiest of them to
be put to death. Then he returned to his fellow gamblers and said: "Here
you are playing for a few denarii, while I have collected nearly fifteen
thousand myriads." So these men perished without consideration. Indeed,
one of them, Julius Sacerdos, who was fairly well off but not so
extremely wealthy as naturally to become the object of attack,
nevertheless fell a victim because of a similarity of names. This shows
how carelessly everything went.

Others who perished I need not cite by name, simply mentioning enough
to satisfy the requirements of my record. One, then, that he killed was
Gastulicus Lentulus, a man of good reputation in every way, who had been
governor of Germany for ten years; his death was due to the fact that the
soldiers liked him. Another that he murdered was Lepidus, that lover and
favorite of his, husband of Drusilla, the man who together with Gaius had
maintained criminal relations with the emperor's other sisters Agrippina
and Julia, the man whom he had permitted to stand for office five years
earlier than the laws allowed, whom he also declared he should leave
to succeed him as emperor. To celebrate the event he gave the soldiers
money, as though he had worsted some hostile force, and sent three
daggers to Mars the Avenger in Rome. His sisters for their connection
with Lepidus he deported to the Portian islands, havi