Читать книгу The Empresses of Rome онлайн

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But the amusement of Rome reached its height when Caligula, in the year 39, discovered his divinity. Other Emperors were content to leave it to the flattery of their people to detect a divinity in them after their very human careers were over. “I am turning into a god,” said one of them ironically, as he died. Caligula believed that his splendour was already divine. Vitellius, a contemptible courtier, father of the later Emperor, shrewdly borrowed the idea from Oriental monarchs, and suggested it to Caligula. Then were witnessed scenes in Rome which even the wildest extravagances of Nero cannot rival. Its citizens had, at the peril of their lives, to restrain their laughter, and bend in respectful worship, when the slim, ungraceful youth—he was yet only in his twenty-seventh year—with the weariness of dissipation on his pale face, trod their streets in the garments of Jove, with a beard of gold thread, or marched past them with the bow and quiver and golden halo of Apollo, or dressed to the more congenial part of Venus. A machine was made by which he could, in a puerile way, imitate the thunder of the rival god; and he ordered the heads to be struck off the statues of the Greek deities and replaced by copies of his own. A deity must have a cult. Caligula appointed himself and his horse, for which he provided a marble palace and an ivory manger, the high priests of his cult. Cæsonia was associated in the priesthood, and the position of ordinary priest of the cult was sold to various nobles at the price of eight million sesterces each. Poor men were forced to ruin themselves and put an end to their lives; wealthier men meekly posed as the ministers of a divinity who gorged himself with food and wine at each meal, and resorted to the vomit that he might return to the table.