,--this
was all that remained of the family of Augustus seventy years after the
battle of Actium.

Alone, with no sisters now to elevate to the divine honors of the Roman
Olympus, Caligula was reduced to hunting for wives in the families of
the aristocracy. But it seems that even there could be found no great
abundance of women who had all the necessary qualities to make them the
Olympian consorts of so capricious a god. In three years he married
and repudiated three--and in a very strange manner, if we are to trust
the ancient accounts of Caligula's loves. The first was Livia
Orestilla, the wife of Caius Piso. The emperor, who had seen the woman
at the marriage celebration, became, we are told, so infatuated with
her that he obliged the husband to divorce her; he then married her,
and a few days later repudiated her. Caligula is said to have compared
himself on this occasion to Romulus who ravished the Sabine woman, and
to Augustus who raped Livia. The second was Lollia Paulina, wife of
Caius Memmius, proconsul of a distant province. Caligula heard of the
prodigious beauty of Lollia's grandmother. The portrayal of her charms
made him fall in love with her granddaughter, though absent and
distant. He gave orders for her immediate recall to Rome, and as soon
as she could be divorced from her husband he married her. This union,
like the former one, lasted only a brief time. The third wife was
Milonia Caesonia, and to her Caligula was more faithful, though from
the accounts of ancient writers she appears to have been much older
than he, rather homely, and already a mother of three daughters when he
first loved her. It is difficult to determine how much truth there is
in these reports: Caligula was, it is true, a raving maniac, and his
frenzy became more accentuated when under the sway of love--a passion
which deranges somewhat even wise men. It is not strange, therefore,
that in regard to women he may have been guilty of even greater
excesses than he was capable of in his dealings with men. Yet some of
these accounts seem a little incredible even when ascribed to a madman.
However that may be, Livia Orestilla, Lollia Paulina, Milonia Caesonia
are figures without relief, shades and ghosts of empresses, no one of
whom had time enough even to occupy the highest post. In vain the
people expected that there would appear in the imperial palace a worthy
successor to Livia. Caligula, like all madmen, was by nature