After the foundation of the prophets and apostles, with Christ Jesus himself as the supreme cornerstone, concerning whom the foregoing was said, the whole structure of the Church grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Where Christ is not the foundation, no structure of good work remains standing, as Gregory says in Cause 1, Question 1, When Paul.
We must now consider those who build upon it gold, silver, and precious stones: namely, of holiness and perfect charity; of doctrine or wisdom; of sonorous truth; of exquisite and innumerable sufferings; of the patience of the holy martyrs; and of firmness.
We shall not speak of all of them, but of those who became better known to human beings and are held in their veneration. Their architects were the supreme pontiffs and their fellow workers the most Christian emperors.
Thus Isidore says: “The heavenly kingdom often advances through the earthly kingdom, so that those who act within the Church against faith and discipline may be crushed by the severity of princes. Therefore let the princes of the age know that they will have to render an account to God because of the Church that they received from Christ to defend.” This is in Cause 23, Question 5, Princes.
[Running head: Chapter Twenty-One, Folio 200.]
The princes who attacked the Church and attempted to empty it down to its foundation were unable to do so. They themselves were exterminated and descended to the lower regions with the weapons of their malice.
Those who successively occupied the pontificate in the Apostolic and Roman See and those who were elevated to imperial power will therefore be described in order. So too will the marvelous and notable events of their times, the deeds not only of the faithful but also of unbelievers, and the sayings of the wise.
§ I: Under Octavian and Tiberius
Christ was born under Octavian in the forty-first year of his rule. He suffered under Octavian’s successor Tiberius in the eighteenth year of his rule. Rising on the third day and appearing to his disciples, Christ granted the supreme pontificate to Peter.
Peter held it through the remaining lifetime of Tiberius and under the emperors Gaius Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, who succeeded one another. Under Nero, Peter himself was martyred with Paul.
Although all these emperors were pagans, they did not inflict persecution upon Christians except Nero, who after some years of his reign stirred up the first persecution against Christians. By God’s providence, the apostles and their other disciples were therefore given the opportunity during that interval to spread the Church throughout the world, although certain local persecutions by Jews and Gentiles against individual saints did not cease.
We must therefore consider the life and character of those emperors.
After Octavian Augustus’s death, as Eusebius says, Tiberius was the third ruler of the Romans. He reigned for twenty-three years. He began to rule in the sixteenth year from the Lord’s Nativity and in the year 3979 from the beginning of the world according to the Hebrews, but according to the Septuagint, the Church’s more common opinion, and Eusebius in the Chronicle, in the year 5199.
As Suetonius says, at the beginning of his principate Tiberius conducted himself in a thoroughly civil manner and almost as a private person. Of the many very great honors offered to him, he accepted only a few modest ones. He refused the forename “Emperor,” the surname “Father of the Fatherland,” and a crown offered in his entrance hall.
He opposed flatteries. When a man of consular rank made satisfaction to him and tried to entreat him at his knees, Tiberius so avoided him that he fell backward. If anything too flattering about himself was said in conversation or in a sustained speech, Tiberius did not hesitate immediately to interrupt, reprove, and correct it.
He was firm and patient in the face of abuse, wicked rumors, and defamatory poems about himself and his family. He repeatedly declared that in a free city both tongues and minds ought to be free.
In addressing and honoring both individuals and groups, he nearly exceeded the measure of ordinary humanity. He never entered the senate chamber except alone. When something was decreed contrary to his opinion, he did not even complain. It was evident that he too rose before the consuls and yielded place to them.
When governors advised burdening the provinces with tribute, he wrote in reply that it belonged to a good shepherd to shear the flock, not to swallow it. He reduced expenditures upon games and public entertainments. He judged that limits should be placed upon household furnishings and that public frugality should also live through his example.
He removed a man from the senatorial quaestorship because he had repudiated on the third day a wife whom he had married the day before. He expelled astrologers from the city but pardoned those who begged forgiveness and promised to abandon their art.
While still a recruit in the camp, however, because of his excessive eagerness for wine, he was called Tiberius [read: Biberius] instead of Tiberius, Claudius [read: Caldius] instead of Claudius, and Nero [read: Mero] instead of Nero.
Later, while emperor and engaged in that very correction of public morals, he spent an uninterrupted night and two days feasting and drinking with Pompeius Flaccus and Lucius Piso. He immediately conferred the province of Syria upon one and the prefecture of the city upon the other.
For the quaestorship he preferred an entirely unknown candidate to the most noble men because, while Tiberius drank to him at a banquet, the man had drained an amphora of wine. He gave Asellius Sabinus sextricia decem [read: sestertia decem, ten thousand sesterces] for a dialogue in which a mushroom, a fig-pecker, an oyster, and a thrush entered into a contest.
He was sparing and tenacious with money. He never supported the companions of his journeys and expeditions with a salary, but only with food. He very rarely granted discharges to veterans, calculating that old age would bring death and death would bring financial advantage.
As time advanced, he soon turned his mind to plunder. It is sufficiently established that Lentulus, whose estate was immense, was driven by fear and anguish into weariness of life and was condemned to die with no heir other than Tiberius himself.
Tiberius customarily proposed questions at dinner from his daily reading. When he learned that Selenichus the grammarian was asking his servants which authors he was treating at any given time and thus came prepared, he first removed Selenichus from his companionship and afterward drove him even to death.
He punished a Praetorian soldier with death for stealing a peacock from a garden.
Not a day passed without the punishment of human beings, not even a religious and sacred day. Many were accused and condemned together with their children. It was even forbidden for relatives to mourn the condemned. No informer’s credibility was rejected.
Every crime was received as capital, even the accusation of a few simple words. A poet was charged with having assailed Agamemnon with insults in a tragedy, and a historian with having called Brutus and Cassius the last of the Romans. The authors were immediately punished and their writings abolished, although those writings were proved to have been recited some years before in Augustus’s hearing.
Those delivered into custody were deprived not only of the comfort of study but also of the use of conversation. Some who were summoned to plead their case wounded themselves at home, certain of condemnation and wishing to avoid disgrace and torment. Others drank poison in the middle of the senate chamber. Nevertheless, bound up over their wounds, half alive and still trembling, they were dragged to prison.
Force was used to make those who wished to die continue living. Tiberius regarded death as such a light punishment that, when he heard that one defendant named Carnulus had anticipated it, he cried: “Carnulus has escaped me.”
When another begged for the prompt arrival of his punishment, Tiberius answered: “I have not yet been reconciled with you.”
He walked with his neck rigid and bent backward, his expression almost entirely withdrawn. He was generally silent, speaking never or very rarely even with those closest to him, and then very slowly and not without a certain soft gesticulation of the fingers. All these things were disagreeable and full of arrogance.
He was rather negligent concerning the gods and religions. Filled with belief in astrology, he thought that all things were governed by fate. Yet he feared thunder beyond measure and, whenever the sky was unusually troubled, always wore a laurel wreath on his head, because this kind of leaf is said not to be struck by lightning.
He cultivated the liberal arts most zealously. Through excessive affectation and moroseness he obscured his style in formal speech, and sometimes wished an extemporaneous speech to be considered superior to a prepared one.
As Josephus relates, he was slow in all his business. Thus, when he appointed procurators in the provinces, he hardly ever or never changed them. When he was repeatedly asked why he did not change procurators, he answered that in this way he spared the poor common people.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
For procurators, knowing that they possess their procuratorship for only a short time, milk the people even to blood and rule all the more harshly because their rule will be shorter. Those who newly arrive dissipate whatever they find.
Tiberius demonstrated this by the example of a wounded man who lay in the road and did not drive a multitude of flies away from his wound. Another man came upon him, thought he refrained through weakness, and drove off the flies that covered the wound.
The wounded man said to him: “You have treated me badly, because the flies you removed were already full of blood and troubled me less. But the fresh flies that come will sting me more sharply.” In the same way, newly appointed procurators and officials rage more sharply against their subjects.
According to Eusebius in the Chronicle, in the twenty-first year of Tiberius’s rule, when Pylatus reported the teaching about Christ to Tiberius, Tiberius proposed to the senate that Christ be received among the other sacred beings.
Richard of Saint Victor says: “It was the Roman custom for judges of the provinces to report in writing to the senate if anything new occurred in the provinces that they governed. Pylatus therefore wrote a letter to Tiberius about the things that had been perpetrated against the Lord Jesus, also indicating to him that Jesus was truly the Savior of the world.”
Vincent sets down the words of this letter in Book 9 of the Historical Mirror. There Pylatus relates substantially how the Jews handed over to him a man of their race who had been promised by God through their prophets and who worked many miracles by enlightening the blind, healing the sick, and raising the dead. The people said that he was God’s Son, but the chief priests, moved by envy, handed him over to Pylatus and, inventing one falsehood after another, said that he was a magician and acted against their law.
Pylatus says: “At their judgment I condemned him to death upon the cross. After dying, he rose alive on the third day.”
As Richard says in the place cited above, Tiberius reported this to the senate with the support of great favor, asking that Christ be declared God. The senate refused, indignant that according to custom the letter had not first been delivered to it. From that day his previously most praiseworthy moderation began to change as a punishment of the senators who opposed him.
Nevertheless, when by the counsel of the Fathers it had been resolved, as Eusebius says in the Chronicle, that Christians should be expelled from the city, Tiberius threatened the accusers of Christians with death by an edict, as Tertullian writes.
§ II: The Notorious Mockery of Paulina in the Temple of Isis at Rome
Egisippus relates that a certain woman named Paulina lived at Rome. She possessed most outstanding beauty and eminent dignity and was married to a most noble citizen. A certain military commander named Mundus sought her through entreaties. She was not swayed, but she lay open to the error of a superstitious vice.
Mundus bribed the priests of Isis to carry what purported to be the commands of the god Anubis to her: Anubis invited her to the temple; delighted by her devotion and chastity, he wished her to commit herself to him in secret at night.
Receiving this joyfully, she told her husband that a god had answered her prayers and requested her presence, which she could not refuse without sin. Thus, by both her own and her husband’s judgment, she went to the temple of Isis and spent the night there.
When the witnesses had been removed far away, as though she were about to receive knowledge of a sacred mystery, she settled herself upon her bed, thinking that her god would come to her in a dream.
When part of the night had passed, so that she could more easily be deceived while full of sleep, Mundus came wearing the appearance and clothing of Anubis and rushed upon her with kisses.
When the woman awoke, he said that he was Anubis. Believing him to be a god and declaring herself blessed that he had deigned to visit her, she did not deny him when he sought an embrace. First, however, she asked whether a god could unite himself with a human being.
He promised that this was possible, giving the example that the supreme god Jupiter had received Alemena and that several other women had received gods. He also declared that he was a god and persuaded her that she would beget a god.
After they coupled, the woman returned to her husband more joyful, saying that she had been joined to a god and that, according to his promise, she would beget a god. The husband felt immense joy over his wife’s defilement.
Mundus afterward met the woman and said: “Blessed Paulina, because of intercourse with a god! Anubis is a great god. But learn not to deny to gods and human beings those to whom the gods grant what you had refused, for the gods disdain neither to give us their forms nor their names. Behold, the god Anubis summoned Mundus to his rites so that he might join him to you.
“What, therefore, did your hardness profit you except to deprive you of the advantage of the twenty thousand that I had offered you?”
Realizing that she had been mocked and grieving over the injury to her chastity, the woman confessed the fraud to her husband. He brought his complaint to the ruler. Moved by the insult to this powerful man and by the invention of the atrocious crime, the ruler dragged the priests from the temple, subjected them to questioning, and killed them after they confessed. He sank the image of Isis in the Tiber.
Mundus was permitted to flee because, being overcome by love and beauty, he was judged worthy of lighter punishment.
I did not think this mockery, which occurred during Tiberius’s rule, should be passed over, so that the emperor’s deformity might be gathered from it. For just as the life of a good prince is a kind of precept for goodness and a form for living, so his filth is a law for crimes.
Here one should also attend to the deceit and stupidity of idolatry and the vanity of the woman.
In Tiberius’s second year, thirteen cities, including Ephesus and others, fell in an earthquake.
Tiberius himself sent Pontius Pylatus as procurator of Judea for the empire. Several years after Christ’s Passion—against whom Pylatus had pronounced an unjust sentence—Vitellius, governor of Syria, and the Jews accused him before Tiberius of violently killing innocent people, of placing an image of the Gentiles in the Temple while the Jews protested, and of converting to his own uses money deposited in the corbona by making an aqueduct to his house.
Pylatus received a sentence of relegation or exile to Lugdunum, from which he originated, so that he might die there to the disgrace of his race. Finally, as Eusebius says, after falling into many calamities, he killed himself by his own hand.
§ III: Herod Agrippa During Tiberius’s Time
During this Tiberius’s reign, Philip, tetrarch of the region of Yturea and Trachonitis and brother of Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, died. Lisanias, tetrarch of Abilene, also died.
With the two tetrarchies thus vacant, another Herod Agrippa aspired to one of them. He was the nephew of Herod the tetrarch and brother of that tetrarch’s wife, Herodias, who caused John the Baptist to be beheaded. Herod Agrippa and Herodias were children of Aristobulus, son of Herod the Great, who had caused the innocent little children to be killed.
This Agrippa was a magnanimous and warlike man. He therefore resolved to go to Rome in the hope that he might obtain one of the tetrarchies from Emperor Tiberius.
When Tiberius saw him arrive at Rome and recognized him as a most energetic soldier, he retained him with himself and caused him to adhere to his son Drusus, to whom he had already granted the empire during his lifetime.
Agrippa was a man of great liberality. To win the good will of the Romans, he spent much and obligated himself by many debts. As Josephus says, there was no man in whom the mutability of fortune could be perceived so greatly.
[Running head: Chapter Twenty-One, Folio 201.]
His first misfortune in this matter was that Drusus, Tiberius’s son, died. Tiberius grieved so inconsolably over his death that he removed from his presence all who had been familiarly attached to Drusus, lest they recall his death to his memory.
Herod was therefore compelled to return to Judea. Despairing because of his excessive poverty, he entered a tower to be afflicted there by hunger and so to die.
His wife reported this to her sister Herodias, wife of Herod the tetrarch. Herodias begged her husband to recall him from the tower and give him the necessities of life. He agreed, established a livelihood for him at Tiberias, assigned him a house, and gave him what was necessary for life.
One day, while Herod the tetrarch was in Tiberias and was feasting more cheerfully than usual, he reproached Agrippa with the benefits he had conferred upon him, namely that he had delivered him from death by hunger.
Agrippa grieved beyond measure and resolved to return to Tiberius at Rome again, in the hope that he might find the emperor’s disposition changed. Tiberius received him honorably.
Tiberius had two grandsons, one through his son Drusus, who was named Tiberius, and the other through his brother Germanicus, who was named Gayus. Tiberius wished to substitute as his successor in the empire the son of his son, namely Tiberius, because he loved him more. Herod, however, loved Gayus more and adhered more closely to him. Hence he stirred up Tiberius’s hidden anger against himself.
One day, while Agrippa sat with Gayus in a chariot, he raised his hands to heaven and said: “Would that I might see the death of this troublesome old man and Gayus as lord of the whole world.”
A certain person, namely Agrippa’s charioteer, heard this. Agrippa later imprisoned him for theft, and he accused Agrippa of the crime of injured majesty because he had prayed for the emperor’s death.
Tiberius ignored the accusation for some time. One day, while Tiberius rode in a horse-drawn chariot and held Agrippa by the hand, he called the jailer and said: “Bind this man and put him in prison.”
Agrippa and everyone else marveled that Tiberius ordered him bound while he walked in purple because he was of royal seed.
As Agrippa was led to prison, he suffered intolerable thirst because he had eaten lavishly. By chance a water carrier met him and gave him a drink. Refreshed, Agrippa promised that he would soon reward him under Gayus’s reign, trusting that Gayus would shortly rule.
One day Agrippa stood leaning against a tree in whose branches an owl was sitting. One of his fellow prisoners approached him and said: “Do not think that I speak to flatter you, since you are a fellow prisoner with me. I wish to tell you what the gods have indicated to me.” This man was very skilled in augury.
He said: “You will soon be freed and elevated so high that all your friends will envy you. You will die in this prosperity, leaving your possessions to your children. But whenever you see a bird of this kind above you again, know that you will die on the fifth day.”
While Agrippa was in prison, the prison’s master showed deference to him because he knew him to be noble and Gayus’s friend. As though unaware, he allowed Agrippa’s friends to provide him many comforts in prison. Agrippa remained there for six months.
§ IV: The Death of Tiberius, the Succession of Gayus, and Agrippa’s Elevation
While Tiberius was at Capri, he began to grow ill. Seeing that he was about to die, he summoned the nobles of his empire and his two grandsons, Tiberius and Gayus. He resolved to substitute a successor for himself on the following day.
He prayed to his gods to make their intention known to him, namely which of his grandsons they wished to be substituted in the empire. He determined within himself that he would appoint emperor the one who came to him first on the following day, so that he might choose as though by lot. Nevertheless, he gave Tiberius notice to come first.
Tiberius refused to come in the morning until after he had eaten breakfast. Gayus therefore came first. When the elder Tiberius saw him, he wept bitterly, grieving that the other man whom he wished to appoint had not come.
Tiberius said to Gayus: “Son, you will succeed me in the empire, which was more rightly owed to Tiberius by hereditary right as my son’s son. But I see that you are useful to the empire and know the intentions of the gods.”
Having summoned the nobles, he announced Gayus as emperor and died.
A rumor immediately sounded for a short time at Rome. A certain Hebrew, a friend of Herod Agrippa, came to the prison and said to him in Hebrew: “The lion is dead.” Agrippa began to rejoice wonderfully, so that the prison’s master asked the cause of such rejoicing. Agrippa confessed that the man had signified Tiberius’s death to him.
The prison’s master immediately freed Agrippa and seated him beside himself at the table. On the following day other rumors arose, namely that Tiberius had recovered and would come to Rome on the third day.
The prison’s master then reproved Agrippa, saying that he had deceived him. Lest the blame for having freed him from prison rebound upon his own head, he beat Agrippa severely and put him back in prison.
Reliable reports of Tiberius’s death and Gayus’s elevation afterward burst forth. Gayus came to Rome and buried Tiberius honorably. He wished to release Agrippa from prison that very day, but he was dissuaded lest he appear so quickly to revoke Tiberius’s acts as invalid.
After several days he released and elevated Agrippa. He gave him the two tetrarchies that had belonged to Philip and Lisanias, placed a diadem upon him, elevated him as king, and sent him back to Judea.
When Herod Agrippa had thus been elevated as king, all his relatives envied him, including his sister Herodias. She had pitied him when he was unhappy but envied him when he was fortunate, especially because he possessed the name of king, while her husband, who was older and a son of Herod the Great, had never merited to be called king but only tetrarch.
Day after day she therefore persuaded her husband to go to Rome and strive by every means to obtain the name of king for himself. He preferred to remain at leisure because he was wealthy. Hence his exasperated wife often said to him: “May your wealth perish, because you love wealth more than honors.”
At last overcome by his wife’s persistence, he went to Rome with her to Gayus in great state. They found Gayus at Bayis.
Herod Agrippa perceived that they had not come to Rome for his good. He resolved to go after them but first sent his own confidential messenger, who was very close to Gayus. Through him he directed a letter containing the charge that even while Tiberius lived, Herod the tetrarch had contracted a friendship with the king of the Parthians so that he might rebel against the Roman Empire.
As evidence of this, he informed Gayus that Herod possessed in his cities arms sufficient for seventy thousand men.
Herod the tetrarch, surnamed Antipas, and his wife Herodias had been received honorably by Gayus when Agrippa’s messenger arrived, carrying his letters to Gayus.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
After reading the letter, Gayus began to inquire elsewhere about the circumstances of Herod the tetrarch and whether there was as great a supply of arms in his cities as he had heard. Herod did not deny it. Gayus then believed that what Agrippa had reported to him was true and banished Herod into exile.
To Herod’s wife, however, because she was the sister of Agrippa, whom Gayus loved greatly, he granted the freedom to return and retain her land. She instead accompanied her husband into exile, saying that she would not abandon in adversity the man whose prosperity she had shared. They were deported into exile at Lugdunum, where they afterward died miserably.
This was the Herod who ordered John the Baptist to be beheaded and mocked Christ during his Passion when Christ was clothed in a white garment. Gayus gave to Agrippa the Galilee that Herod the tetrarch had possessed, and thus Agrippa held three tetrarchies. So says Comestor.
§ V: On the Very Wicked Character of This Gayus
Upon Tiberius’s death, Gayus became emperor. According to Hugh of Fleury, he was called Gallicula [read: Caligula] because he had been born in the army and therefore received a nickname from the military boot called a calicula [read: caliga]. He was the son of Germanicus, brother of Emperor Tiberius, as was said above, and he ruled for four years.
As Comestor says, during the first two years at the beginning of his reign he was sufficiently gentle. Afterward his heart became vain, and he erupted into such pride and madness that he wished everyone in his empire to worship him as a god, saying that he was Jupiter’s brother. Hence he also placed his only daughter between Jupiter’s knees.
Suetonius also says this about him. Gayus often stood in the temple of Castor and Pollux between the two brothers and presented himself in the middle to be worshiped by those entering. He also established a temple of his own divinity, a priest [read: priests], and most extraordinary victims. In the temple stood a golden image that was clothed each day in the garment he himself was wearing. Each of the richest men, competing and struggling with the greatest ambition, took his turn discharging the offices of that priesthood.
At night he continually invited the full and shining moon into his embraces and bed. At other times he spoke privately with Capitoline Jupiter, now whispering and in turn putting his ear near the god, now speaking more loudly and not without quarrels. His threatening voice was heard until, as Gayus reported, Jupiter had been won over and had freely invited him to live with him.
§ VI: On His Cruelty
Suetonius says that through indignities and harassment Gayus caused the death of his grandmother Antonia, though some say that he also gave her poison. He showed no honor to her after death but watched her burning funeral pyre from the dining room.
He unexpectedly killed his brother Tiberius by suddenly sending a military tribune against him. He compelled his father-in-law Silanus to kill himself by cutting his throat with a razor.
He believed that his infant daughter Julia was his offspring by no surer proof than her savagery. Even at that age it was so great that with hostile fingers she attacked the faces and eyes of infants playing with her.
By closing the granaries he sometimes inflicted famine upon the people. He forced parents to be present at the executions of their sons. To one father who pleaded ill health he sent his own litter.
He once asked a man recalled from exile what he had been accustomed to do there. The man answered flatteringly: “I always prayed to the gods that what has now happened would occur—that Tiberius would die and you would become emperor.” Gayus therefore imagined that his own exiles were likewise praying for his death. He sent men around the islands where the exiles were held and had them all slaughtered.
He said that in his own nature he praised and approved nothing more than shamelessness. He permitted no one to be punished except by frequent, small blows.
He was also accustomed to complain openly about the condition of his times because they were distinguished by no public calamities. While devoting his mind to games and banquets, he wished for massacres of armies, famine, plague, fires, and an opening of the earth. In his deeds and sayings the same cruelty remained present.
Whenever he kissed the neck of his wife or mistress, he added: “So fine a neck will be cut off as soon as I command it.” Whenever handsome men met him, he disfigured them by shaving the backs of their heads.
He spared neither his own chastity nor anyone else’s. He habitually committed incest with all his sisters and frequently prostituted them to his favorites. Finally, he punished them as adulteresses and as accomplices in plots against him.
He surpassed the genius of every prodigal. He devised a new use for baths and the most monstrous kinds of food and banquets: he bathed in hot and cold perfumes, swallowed the most precious pearls dissolved in vinegar, and set bread and dishes of gold before his guests.
He possessed soundness neither of mind nor of body. He was especially agitated in sleep, for he rested no more than three hours of the night, and even during these he did not rest but was terrified by strange visions. Therefore he spent a large part of the night awake and weary of lying down, now sitting upon his bed and now wandering through very long porticoes, repeatedly invoking and awaiting the light.
In clothing, footwear, and the rest of his attire he followed neither his country’s fashion nor civil, masculine, or even human custom.
Drained and needy because of his excessive prodigality, he turned his mind to plunder. Through varied and most elaborate kinds of false charges, exactions, and taxes, he imposed new and unheard-of levies, leaving no class of property or people on which he did not place some tax.
Finally inflamed by desire for money, he often walked barefoot over immense heaps of gold coins spread out in a very large place and rolled his whole body upon them for a long time.
He undertook military service and warfare only once. The most contrary faults existed in him: the highest self-confidence and excessive fear. Although he so greatly despised the gods, at the slightest thunder and lightning he used to collapse and cover his head; at heavier storms he sprang from his bed and hid beneath it.
Among the liberal disciplines he devoted himself chiefly to eloquence. He was indeed fluent and ready, especially if he had to plead against someone. Words and thoughts came readily to him, while his delivery and voice were such that in his ardor he could not remain in one place and could be heard by people standing far away.
He also practiced other and very diverse kinds of arts with the greatest zeal. He was carried away by his delight in singing and dancing to such a degree that even at public spectacles he could not refrain from joining in with an actor’s recitation and openly imitating a stage performer’s gestures as though praising and correcting him.
As Comestor says, Gayus sent his image throughout his whole empire so that everyone would worship it. All did so except the Jews.
When a disturbance arose at Alexandria between Jews and Gentiles, both sides came before Gayus so that he might decide the controversy between them. Among the Gentiles’ other allegations against the Jews was that the Jews dishonored the god whom all the Gentiles commonly acknowledged because they refused to worship Gayus’s image.
Philo, a most eloquent and wise man sent by the Jews, wished to plead in their defense, but Gayus refused to hear him. Yet he had willingly heard Appio plead very fiercely for the Gentiles against the Jews, whom he hated. Greatly angered against the Jews by Appio’s words, Gayus dismissed Philo with disgrace when he attempted to speak.
On leaving, Philo said to the Jews: “You ought to be of good courage, for Gayus is angry with you. Divine aid must be present where human aid ceases.”
Gayus commanded Petronius, governor of Syria, by letter to place his statue in the Temple at Jerusalem, where it could more easily be acknowledged by the surrounding peoples, and, if the Jews perhaps would not consent, to gather an army and slaughter them all.
When Petronius attempted to do this, he saw that Jewish sedition and rebellion would follow, because the Jews were prepared to die rather than consent. Persuaded also by Agrippa’s friends, he postponed the matter until he could write to Gayus about it through honorable men. These men did not dare present themselves before Gayus, however, but appointed as mediator in the affair Agrippa, who was Gayus’s intimate friend.
Herod Agrippa invited Gayus to a banquet, which he prepared magnificently and with the greatest luxury. During the feast Gayus recalled how much Herod had endured for him, and on that account said that if Herod asked anything, he was prepared to grant it.
Herod then asked him to revoke that command so that Gayus’s statue would not be placed in the Temple. Although Gayus was angry, he nevertheless granted the request and informed Petronius that if his statue had not yet been placed in the Temple, he was not to place it there thereafter.
Later, however, Gayus changed his mind and wrote to Petronius: “Because you have despised the emperor’s command and loved the Jews’ gifts more, choose whatever kind of death you wish for yourself, so that others may learn to obey the emperor’s commands.” But before this letter reached Petronius, Gayus’s death was made known. Thus the statue was not placed in the Temple.
Suetonius also says that Gayus sought to commit enormous crimes and was sometimes preparing even greater ones. He had determined to move to Alexandria after first killing all the most distinguished men of both orders. Lest this seem doubtful to anyone, two little books bearing different titles were found among his secret papers. One was labeled “Sword,” the other “Dagger,” and both contained the marks and names of men destined for death.
A huge chest filled with various poisons was also found. When these were submerged and cast into the sea, they are said to have poisoned it and killed fish, which the current carried onto the nearest shores.
Some also believe that he gave Tiberius poison during his illness and, because Tiberius did not die quickly, suffocated him out of fear that he might leave the empire to another.
Many men did not lack the courage to kill Gayus. Yet when one conspiracy after another had been uncovered, the rest feared to attack him. At last they formed and accomplished a plan to kill him, not without the counsel of very powerful leaders, namely Cassius Chereas [read: Chaerea] and Cornelius Sabinus.
Thus, on the ninth day before the Kalends of February, while Gayus was returning from the circus games and was already near the imperial palace, the tribune Cassius met him. Drawing his sword, he dealt him a powerful though not entirely mortal blow, saying, “Take what is ratified.” Gayus neither cried out nor lamented from that wound, but, bearing its pain, fled.
Sabinus intercepted him and struck him a great blow between the neck and shoulder. Then, as Gayus fell to his knees, many conspirators surrounding him finished him with thirty wounds. Their signal to everyone was the repeated command, “Strike again.” Some even drove their weapons through his private parts after he was dead.
At the first commotion after Gayus’s killing, his German bodyguards immediately ran up to avenge his death. Gayus was very dear to them because he had placated them with gifts of money. With swords drawn they killed some of his assassins and also certain innocent senators, hoping that Gayus still lived.
When they learned that he was dead, however, they feared the people’s fury and ceased pursuing the conspirators, lest they provoke a conflict with the senators’ most exalted order and the nobles, whom they knew to be exceedingly joyful over Gayus’s death.
Cassius and Sabinus, the leaders of the conspiracy, believed that danger would remain if Gayus’s wife and daughter survived and his entire progeny was not removed with him. They therefore sent a tribune named Lupus and commanded him to kill Gayus’s wife Cesena [read: Caesonia] and his daughter.
Some maintained that Cesena [read: Caesonia] had caused every evil done by Gayus. They said that she had given him a potion so that she could subject his mind to her service, and that by a lover’s enchantments she had driven him into madness. She had so bound him to herself that the wealth of the Romans and of the whole world over which Gayus presided seemed subject to her.
When Lupus came to the palace, he found Cesena [read: Caesonia], Gayus’s wife, beside her husband’s body with many others who were preparing everything necessary for his burial with great care. Her daughter was with her.
When she saw Lupus with other armed men and understood why he had come, without delay she offered her throat and invited him not to postpone accomplishing the purpose for which he had come. Thus with great courage she accepted the death Lupus inflicted, and her daughter was killed with her.
Afterward Gayus’s corpse was carried to the Lamian Gardens and half burned. Later his sisters, returned from exile, dug it up, cremated it, and buried it.
It is sufficiently established, however, that before this was done the guards of the gardens were disturbed by dreadful shades. In addition, no night passed without some terror in the house where he had lain until the house itself was consumed by fire.
On the day before Gayus died, as Suetonius reports, he dreamed that he stood in heaven beside Jupiter’s throne and that Jupiter pushed him with the big toe of his right foot, hurling him down to earth.
§ VII: Philo in the Time of Gayus
In these times Philo, mentioned above, flourished as a most distinguished writer. As Jerome says, he was reckoned among the foremost not only in our own philosophy but also in that of the Greeks.
By ancestry he was a Hebrew descended from forefathers, and at Alexandria, though illustrious among all men, he was more illustrious and noble than the noblemen themselves. How great and what sort of man he was in the divine laws and the institutions of his fathers is clear from the monuments of his books that he handed down.
Who could worthily explain how great his education in liberal letters was and how great his learning in philosophy, especially in the Platonic and Pythagorean schools? He surpassed all who flourished with him and all who preceded him.
He was most abundant in eloquence, most profound in thought, and most subtle in interpreting and understanding the divine Scriptures, discovering copiously and speaking still more copiously. Philo wrote many books about sacred Scripture and many other subjects.
When he came to Rome a second time, to Emperor Claudius, it is established that he then spoke with the Apostle Peter and enjoyed his friendship. For this reason he extolled with praises at Alexandria the followers of Mark the Evangelist, Peter’s disciple.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
Concerning Philo it was commonly said among the Greeks: “Either Plato follows Philo, or Philo follows Plato,” so great is the likeness of their expression and thought.