and highly extolled their achievements; then, distributing money among them, and congratulating them upon their riches, he dismissed them, with orders to be joyful: and, that such exploits should not pass without a memorial, he ordered a lofty tower to be erected by the seaside.[18] 13. Cassius Cher'ea, a tribune of the Praetorian bands, was the person who at last freed the world from this tyrant. Besides the motives which he had in common with other men, he had received repeated insults from Calig'ula, who took all occasions of turning him into ridicule, and impeaching him with cowardice, merely because he happened to have an effeminate voice. Whenever Cher'ea came to demand the watch-word from the emperor, according to custom, he always gave him either Venus, Adonis, or some such, implying softness and effeminacy. 14. Cher'ea secretly imparted his design to several senators and knights, whom he knew to have received personal injuries from Calig'ula. While these were deliberating upon the most certain and speedy method of destroying the tyrant, an unexpected incident gave new strength to the conspiracy. 15. Pempe'dius, a senator of distinction, being accused before the emperor of having spoken of him with disrespect, the informer cited one Quintil'ia, an actress, to confirm the accusation. 16. Quintil'ia, however, was possessed of a degree of fortitude not frequently found even in the other sex. She denied the fact with obstinacy; and, being put to the torture, bore the severest tortures of the rack with unshaken constancy. 17. Indeed, so remarkable was her resolution, that though acquainted with all the particulars of the conspiracy, and although Cher'ea was the person appointed to preside at her torture, she revealed nothing; on the contrary, when she was led to the rack, she trod upon the toe of one of the conspirators, intimating at once her knowledge of their conspiracy, and her resolution not to divulge it. 18. Thus she suffered, until all her limbs were dislocated; and, in that deplorable state, was presented to the emperor, who ordered her a gratuity for what she had endured. 19. Cher'ea could no longer contain his indignation, at being thus made the instrument of a tyrant's cruelty. After several deliberations of the conspirators, it was at last resolved to attack him during the Palatine games, which lasted four days,[19] and to strike the blow when his guards should not have the opportunity to defend him. 20. The first three days of the games passed. Cher'ea began to apprehend that deferring the completion of the conspiracy might be the means of divulging it; he even dreaded that the honour of killing the tyrant might fall to the lot of some other person bolder than himself. At last he resolved to defer the execution of his plot only to the day following, when Calig'ula should pass through a private gallery, to some baths near the palace.