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The last lines of this passage would alone have been applicable to Caius
Caesar. There was nothing fair or gay even about the beginning of his
reign. From first to last it was a reign of fury and madness, and lust
and blood. There was an hereditary taint of insanity in this family,
which was developed by their being placed on the dizzy pinnacle of
imperial despotism, and which usually took the form of monstrous and
abnormal crime. If we would seek a parallel for Caius Caesar, we must
look for it in the history of Christian VII. of Denmark, and Paul of
Russia. In all three we find the same ghastly pallor, the same
sleeplessness which compelled them to rise, and pace their rooms at
night, the same incessant suspicion; the same inordinate thirst for
cruelty and torture. He took a very early opportunity to disembarrass
himself of his benefactors, Macro and Ennia, and of his rival, the young
Tiberius. The rest of his reign was a series of brutal extravagances. We
have lost the portion of those matchless Annals of Tacitus which
contained the reign of Caius, but more than enough to revolt and horrify
is preserved in the scattered notices of Seneca, and in the narratives
of Suetonius in Latin and Dio Cassius in Greek.
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