1. Gaius Caesar, who amid the multitude of his other vices had a bent for insult, was moved by the strange desire to brand everyone with some stigma, while he himself was a most fruitful source of ridicule; such was the ugliness of his pale face bespeaking his madness, such the wildness of his eyes lurking beneath the brow of an old hag, such the hideousness of his bald head with its sprinkling of beggarly hairs. And he had, besides, a neck overgrown with bristles, spindle shanks, and enormous feet. It would be an endless task were I to attempt to mention the separate acts by which he cast insult upon his parents and grandparents and upon men of every class; I shall, therefore, mention only those which brought him to his destruction.
2. Among his especial friends there was a certain Asiaticus Valerius, a proud-spirited man who was hardly to be expected to bear with equanimity another’s insults. At a banquet, that is at a public gathering, using his loudest voice, Gaius taunted this man with the way his wife behaved in sexual intercourse. Ye gods! what a tale for the ears of a husband! what a fact for an emperor to know! and what indecency that an emperor should go so far as to report his adultery and his dissatisfaction in it to the woman’s very husband — to say nothing of his being a consular, to say nothing of his being a friend! 3. On the other hand, Chaerea, a tribune of the soldiers, had a way of talking that ill-accorded with his prowess; his voice was feeble and, unless you knew his deeds, was apt to stir distrust. When he asked for the watchword, Gaius would give him sometimes “Venus,” sometimes “Priapus,” seeking to taunt the man of arms, in one way or another, with wantonness. He himself, all the while, was in shining apparel, shod with sandals,17 and decked with gold. And so Chaerea was driven to use the sword in order to avoid having to ask for the watchword anymore! Among the conspirators he was the first to lift his hand; it was he who with one blow severed the emperor’s neck. After that from all sides blades showered upon him, avenging public and private wrongs, but the first hero was Chaerea, who least appeared one. 4. Yet this same Gaius would interpret everything as an insult, as is the way of those who, being most eager to offer an affront, are least able to endure one. He became angry at Herennius Macer because he addressed him as Gaius, while a centurion of the first maniple18 got into trouble because he said “Caligula.” For in the camp, where he was born and had been the pet of the troops, this was the name by which he was commonly called, nor was there ever any other by which he was so well known to the soldiers. But now, having attained to boots, he considered “Little Boots”19 a reproach and disgrace. 5. This, then, will be our comfort: even if by reason of tolerance we omit revenge, someone will arise to bring the impertinent, arrogant, and injurious man to punishment; for his offenses are never exhausted upon one individual or in one insult.
Let us turn now to the examples of those whose endurance we commend — for instance to that of Socrates, who took in good part the published and acted gibes directed against him in comedies,20 and laughed as heartily as when his wife Xanthippe drenched him with foul water. Antisthenes was taunted with having a barbarian, a Thracian woman, for his mother; his retort was that even the mother of the gods was from Mount Ida.21