It is relevant, too, to note the insolence of his cruelty, though some one may consider that we are straying from the subject and embarking upon a digression; but such insolence will be an element in cruelty when it is extravagant in its fury. He had scourged senators, but he himself made it possible to say, “An ordinary event.” He had tortured them by every unhappy device in existence — by the cord, by knotted bones, by the rack, by fire, by his own countenance. But here also will come the answer: “A great matter, truly! Because three senators, as if no better than worthless slaves, were mangled by whip and flame at the behest of a man who contemplated murdering the whole senate, a man who used to wish that the Roman people had only one neck in order that he might concentrate into one day and one stroke all his crimes, now spread over so many places and times.” What was ever so unheard of as an execution by night? Though robberies are generally curtained by darkness, the more publicity punishments have, the more they avail as an admonition and warning. But here also I shall hear the answer “That which surprises you so much is the daily habit of that beast; for this he lives, for this he loses sleep, for this he burns the midnight oil.” But surely you will find no other man who has bidden that the mouths of all those who were to be executed by his orders should be gagged by inserting a sponge, in order that they might not even have the power to utter a cry. What doomed man was ever before deprived of the breath with which to moan? Caesar feared lest the man’s last agony should give utterance to some speech too frank, lest he might hear something that he would rather not. He was well aware, too, that there were countless crimes, with which none but a dying man would dare reproach him. If no sponges were to be found, he ordered the garments of the poor wretches to be torn up, and their mouths to be stuffed with the strips. What savagery is this? Let a man draw his last breath, leave a passage for his departing soul, let it have some other course of exit than a wound! It would be tedious to add more — how he sent officers to the homes of his victims, and on that same night made away with their fathers too — that is, out of human pity he freed the fathers from their sorrow! And, indeed, my purpose is not to picture the cruelty of Gaius, but the cruelty of anger, which not only vents its fury on a man here and there, but rends in pieces whole nations, which lashes cities and rivers10 and lifeless things that are immune to all feeling of pain.