Not being the acknowledged heir to the kingdom,--for Tiberius
Gemellus, the youthful grandson of Tiberius, was living, and Caius was
by birth only his grand-nephew,--he became a tool for the machinations
of Marco the praetorian praefect and his wife Ennia. One of his chief
friends was the cruel Herod Agrippa,[24] who put to death St. James and
imprisoned St. Peter, and whose tragical fate is recorded in the 12th
chap. of the Acts. On one occasion, when Caius had been abusing the
dictator Sulla, Tiberius scornfully remarked that he would have all
Sulla's vices and none of his virtues; and on another, after a quarrel
between Caius and his cousin, the Emperor embraced with tears his young
grandson, and said to the frowning Caius, with one of those strange
flashes of prevision of which we sometimes read in history. "Why are you
so eager? Some day you will kill this boy, and some one else will murder
you." There were some who believed that Tiberius deliberately cherished
the intention of allowing Caius to succeed him, in order that the Roman
world might relent towards his own memory under the tyranny of a worse
monster than himself.
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