After Caligula’s death the Senate was convened in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill,--not in the accustomed Curia or Senate House, because that bore the now hated name of Julian from the family to which the slain emperor belonged. The body first of all issued decrees denouncing the tyranny of Caligula and giving honor to the “restorers of public freedom,” as the assassins were called, and especially to the ringleader of these, Chærea. They also granted a remission of some of the most unpopular taxes that Caligula had enforced. Some were ready to vote that the memory of the Cæsars should be entirely abolished and that the government should be restored to the simple republican form it had in the days of the Scipios and Cato. Others thought that the monarchy should be continued, but in an entirely different family line. Chærea, emboldened by his public honors, gave orders to a military tribune, who hastened to put to death Caligula’s wife and only child. It was properly a question for the Senate to decide,--who should be the successor to the imperial throne. While that body was deliberating, the matter was summarily settled by the action of the Prætorian Guards. In the general confusion some of them had begun plundering the imperial palace. There they had found, half-hidden behind a curtain in an obscure corner, a man about fifty-five years old, whom they recognized as Claudius, the son of Drusus and the uncle of Caligula. He sank at their feet probably expecting nothing but death. But they dared not do otherwise than respect the blood of the Cæsars. They were more loyal than the great body of the Senators to the royal family. So they hailed Claudius as emperor and carried him, astonished and protesting, to their camp. When in the morning it was found that the Senate had come to no conclusion, Claudius found courage to allow the soldiers to have their way and to swear allegiance to him. In return for their devotion he promised them a large donation in money. Herod Agrippa I, who had been such a friend of Caligula and who was still in Rome, advised the Senators that the wisest thing that they could do would be to yield to the wishes of the soldiers. This was an act for which, as we shall see, he was afterward generously rewarded by Claudius. In spite of some determined opposition, therefore, he was proclaimed the successor to the throne, the first of many Roman emperors who owed their elevation to the military power of the prætorian guard.