[-14-] After he had become accustomed, then, to feast his fill on blood and slaughter, he had recourse more readily to other kinds of killings. The Cæsarians and Messalina were really responsible for this. Whenever they desired to obtain any one's death, they would terrify him, with the result that they would be allowed to do everything they chose. Often, when in a moment of sudden alarm his momentary terror had led him to order some one's death, afterward, when he recovered and came to his senses, he would search for the man and on learning what had happened would be grieved and repent. He began this series of slaughters with Gaius Appius Silanus. This man, who was of very noble family and at the time was governor of Spain, he had sent for, pretending that he wanted to see him about something, had married him to Messalina's mother, and had for some time held him in honor among his dearest and closest friends. Then he suddenly killed him. The reason was that Silanus had offended Messalina, the most abandoned and lustful of women, in refusing to lie with her, and by the slight shown the empress had alienated Narcissus, the emperor's freedman. As they had no true charge to bring against him, nor even one that would be believed, Narcissus invented a dream in which he declared he had seen Claudius murdered by the hand of Silanus. So just before dawn, while the emperor was still in bed, he came all of a tremble to tell him the dream, and Messalina by expatiating on it made it worse. Thus Silanus perished just because of a vision.