They carried me in my sedan towards their camp, going at a jog trot. As soon as one chairman showed any signs of flagging his place was taken by another. The Germans ran shouting ahead. I sat quite numb, self-possessed but never so blankly miserable in all my life before. With Herod gone the outlook seemed hopeless again. We had just reached the Sacred Way at the foot of the Palatine Hill when messengers came hurrying along it to intercept us and protest against my usurpation of the monarchy. The messengers were two `Protectors of the People'. (This office was a survival from the middle days of the Republic, when the Protectors maintained the rights of the common people against the tyrannous encroachments of the nobility: their persons were inviolate and, though they claimed no legislative power, they had forced from the nobles the right to veto any act of the Senate which displeased them. But Augustus and his two Imperial successors had also adopted the title of `Protector of the People', with its prerogatives; so that the real ones, though they continued to be elected and to perform certain functions under Imperial direction, had lost their original importance.) It seemed clear that the Senate had chosen these messengers not only as an indication that all Rome was behind them in their protest, but also because their inviolateness of person would protect them from any hostility on the part of my men.
These Protectors, who were unknown to me personally, did not behave with conspicuous courage when we stopped to parley with them, or even dare to utter the stern message with which I afterwards learned that they had been entrusted. They called me `Caesar’ a title to which I then had no claim, not being a member of the Julian house; and said very humbly: `You will pardon us, Caesar, but the Senate would be much obliged by your immediate attendance at the House: they are anxious to learn your intentions:'
I was willing enough to go, but the Guards would not allow it. They felt only contempt for the Senate and, now that they had chosen an Emperor of their own, were resolved not to let him out of their sight, and to resist every attempt on the part of the Senate either to restore the Republic or to appoint a rival Emperor.
Angry shouts arose, `Clear off, d'ye hear?' `Tell the Senate to mind their own business and we'll mind ours!' `We won't allow our new Emperor to be murdered too.' I leaned through the window of my sedan and said: `Pray give my respectful compliments to the Senate and inform them that for the present I am unable to comply with their gracious invitation. I have a prior one. I am being carried off by the sergeants, corporals, and private soldiers of the Palace Guard to enjoy their hospitality, at the Guards' Camp. It is as much as my life is worth to insult this devoted soldiery.'
So away we went again. `What a wag our new Emperor is!' they roared. When we reached the Camp I was greeted with greater enthusiasm, than ever. The Guards Division consisted of some 12,000 infantrymen besides the attached cavalry. It was not only the corporals and sergeants who now acclaimed me Emperor, but the captains and the colonels too. I discouraged them as much as I could while thanking them for their goodwill. I said that I could not consent, to be their Emperor until I had been so appointed by the Senate, in whose hands the election rested. I was conveyed to Headquarters, where I was treated with a deference to which I was wholly unaccustomed, but found myself virtually a prisoner.
As for the assassins, as soon as they had made sure of Caligula and escaped from the pursuing Germans and from Caligula's chairmen and yeomen who also came hurrying up with cries of vengeance, they had run down to Vinicius's house, which was not far from the Market Place. Here were waiting the colonels of the three City Battalions, who were the only regular troops stationed in Rome besides the Watchmen and the Imperial Guards. These colonels had not taken any active part in the conspiracy but had promised to put their forces at the disposal of the Senate as soon as Caligula was dead and the Republic restored. Cassius now insisted that someone must go at once and kill Caesonia and myself: we were too closely related to Caligula to be allowed to survive him.. A colonel called Lupus volunteered for the task; he was a brother-in-law of the Guards' Commander. He came up to the Palace and, striding sword in hand through many deserted rooms, finally reached the Imperial bedchamber where Caligula's body was lying, bloody and frightful, just as Herod had left it. But Caesonia was now sitting on the bed with the head on her lap, and little Drusilla, Caligula's only child, was at her knees. As Lupus entered, Caesonia was wailing to the corpse, `Husband, husband, you should have listened to my advice.' When she saw Lupus's sword' she looked up anxiously into his face and knew that she was doomed. She stretched out her neck. 'Strike clean,' she said. 'Don't bungle it like the other assassins did.' Caesonia was no coward. He struck and the head fell. He then caught up the little brat, who came rushing at him, biting and scratching. He held her by the feet, swung her head against a marble pillar, and so dashed out her brains. It is always unpleasant to hear of the murder of a child: but the reader must take my word for it that if he too had known little Drusilla, her father's pet, he would have longed to do what Lupus did.
There has been a great deal of argument since about the meaning of Caesonia's, address to the corpse, which certainly was ambiguous. Some say that what she meant was that Caligula should have listened to some advice that she had given him about killing Cassius, whose intentions she suspected, before he had time to put them into effect. The people who explain it in this way are those who blame Caesonia for Caligula's madness, saying that it was she who first disordered his wits by giving him the love-philtre which bound him to her so entirely. Others hold, and I must say that I agree with them, that she meant that she had advised Caligula to mitigate what he was pleased to call his `immovable rigour' and behave more like a humane and sensible mortal.
Lupus then came in search of me, to complete his task.' But by this time the shouts 'Long live the Emperor Claudius' were just beginning. He stood in the doorway of the hall where the meeting was being held, but when he saw how popular 'I had become he lost courage and stole quietly away.
In the Market Place the excited crowds could not decide whether to cheer themselves hoarse in honour of the assassins or howl themselves hoarse in demands for their blood. A rumour ran about that Caligula had not been murdered at all, that the whole business was an elaborate hoax stage-managed by himself, and that he was only waiting for them to express joy at his death before beginning a general massacre. That was what he had meant, it was said, by his promise to exhibit an entirely new spectacle that night, to be called Death, Destruction, and the Mysteries of Hell.