His private life was polluted by vice and intemperance of every description. Cowardly as cruel, the report of a rebellion among those Germans of whose conquest he boasted, terrified him into preparing a refuge in his transmarine dominions, lest, like the Cimbri of old, they should force a passage into Italy. At a clap of thunder he would close his eyes and cover his head, and in a heavy storm the Latian Jupiter used to run under the bed, to hide himself from his Capitoline brother. He usually slept but three hours in the night, and that not calmly, but agitated by strange visions: the rest he passed sitting upon the bed, or traversing extensive colonnades, impatiently calling for the return of day. Justice began the work of retribution early, and he who troubled the rest of all others was unable to find quiet for himself. Among his other extraordinary qualities was a most insane jealousy of the slightest advantages enjoyed by others. He overthrew the statues of eminent men erected by Augustus in the field of Mars, and forbade them to be erected to any one in future except with his express permission. He even thought of not allowing Homer to be read: “Why not I, as well as Plato, who expelled that poet from his republic?” and talked of weeding all libraries of the writings and images of Virgil and Livy. This folly he carried even to envying the personal qualifications of his subjects, and being bald himself, he sent the barber abroad to shave every good head of hair that came in his way. Little remains to complete the picture, but to say that his tastes were low, as his character was brutish. Passionately fond of theatrical entertainments and the sports of the amphitheatre and circus, it was from the profligate followers of these arts that he chose his favourites, to whom, and to whom alone, he was devotedly attached. The story of his meaning to appoint his horse consul is well known: the brute would have done more credit to the subordinate, than his master to the imperial dignity; but it is apocryphal. But besides a marble stable and an ivory manger, indulgences to which so dignified an animal might reasonably aspire, Caligula assigned to him a house and establishment, that he might entertain company more splendidly. We regret not to know whether the senators or their horses were the objects of this hospitality.