The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 06 : $b the early Roman Empire
History
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 06 : $b the early Roman Empire
World history
Upon his applying himself to make preparations for his triumph, besides
prisoners and those who had deserted from the barbarians, he picked out
the men of greatest stature in all Gaul, such as he said were fittest for
a triumph, with some of the most considerable persons in the province,
and reserved them to grace the solemnity; obliging them not only to dye
their hair of a yellowish colour, and let it grow long, but to learn the
German language, and assume the names commonly used in that country.
He ordered likewise the galley in which he had entered the ocean, to
be carried a great part of the way to Rome by land, and wrote to the
collectors of his revenue in the city, “to make proper preparations for
a triumph against his arrival, at as small expense as possible; but such
a one, however, as had never been seen before, since they had full power
and authority to seize the estates of all men whatever.”
In person, Caligula was tall, of a pale complexion, ill shaped, his neck
and legs very slender, his eyes and temples hollow, his forehead broad
and grim, his hair thin, and about the crown quite decayed. The other
parts of his body were much covered with hair. On this account, it was
reckoned a capital crime for any person to look down from above, as he
was passing by, or so much as to name a goat. His countenance, which was
naturally hideous and frightful, he purposely rendered more so, forming
it by a glass into the most horrible contortions. He was crazy both in
body and mind, being subject when a boy to the falling sickness. When he
arrived at the age of manhood, he would endure fatigue tolerably well,
yet so that occasionally he was liable to a faintness, during which he
remained incapable of any effort, even for his own preservation. He was
not insensible of the disorder of his mind, and sometimes had thoughts of
retiring to purge his brain. It was believed that his wife Cæsonia had
administered to him a love-potion which threw him into a frenzy. What
most of all disordered him was want of sleep, for he seldom had more than
three or four hours’ rest in a night; and even then he slept not soundly,
but disturbed by strange dreams; fancying one time that the ocean spoke
to him. Being therefore often weary with lying awake so great a part of
the night, he would one while sit upon the bed, and another while walk in
the longest porticos about his house, and now and then invoke and look
out for the approach of day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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