is he was himself both eating and drinking and was feasting the rest
of the company. Pomponius Secundus, consul at the time, was taking his
fill of the food as he sat by the emperor's feet, and at the same time
kept continually bending over to shower kisses upon them. Gaius himself
decided that he wanted to dance and act as a tragedian. The followers of
Chairea could endure it no longer. As he went out of the theatre to see
the boys of most noble lineage whom he had imported from Greece and Ionia
to sing the hymn composed in his honor, the conspirators wounded him,
then intercepted him in a narrow passage and killed him. When he fell to
the ground none of those present would keep his hands off him but they
all savagely stabbed the lifeless corpse again and again. Some chewed
pieces of his flesh. His wife and daughter were immediately slain.
So Gaius, who accomplished all these exploits in three years, nine
months, and twenty-eight days, learned by actual experience that he was
not a god.
Now he was openly spurned by those who had been accustomed to
do him reverence even when absent. His blood was spilled by persons
who were wont to speak and to write of him as "Jove" and "god."
His statues and his images were dragged from their pedestals, for the
people in particular retained a lively remembrance of the distress they
had endured.
All the soldiers in the Germanic division raised an outcry and their
remonstrance extended to the point of indulging in slaughter.
Those who stood by remembered the words once spoken by him to the
populace: "How I wish you had but one neck!" and made it plain to him
that it was he who had but one neck, whereas they had many hands. And
when the pretorian guard, filled with consternation, began running about
and demanding who had slain Gaius, Valerius Asiaticus, an ex-consul, took
a remarkable mode of bringing them to their senses, in that he climbed
up to a conspicuous place and cried out: "I only wish I had killed him!"
This alarmed them so that they stopped their outcry.
All such persons as in any way acknowledged the authority of the
senate obeyed their oaths and became once more quiet.--While the
overthrow of Gaius was thus being accomplished, the consuls Sentius
and Secundus forthwith transferred the funds from the treasure-chambers
to the Capitol. They stationed most of the senators and
plenty of soldiers as guards over it to prevent any plundering bein
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