Financial difficulties drove the Emperor at length into imposing a number of new taxes on Italy and Rome, and these measures deprived him of any vestige of popularity that he still enjoyed with the populace on account of the shows with which he amused them. In January, 41 A.D., he imposed a tax on imports at the Italian harbors, and at the gates of the Italian cities, including Rome. He ordained a fee of 2% per cent, for persons suing in the courts of law. He established an income tax, which was levied even on prostitutes. He seems to have also resorted to the device of debasing the currency. A feeling of hostility grew up between the people and their ruler; and it is said that Gaius, disgusted at the symptoms of his unpopularity, expressed the wish, “Would that the Roman people had only one neck!”
But from these new imposts men had not long to suffer. A conspiracy was formed among the praetorian officers, in which Cassius Chaerea, who owed a personal grudge to the Emperor, and Sabinus, both tribunes of the praetorian guards, took the most active part. L. Annius Vinicianus and some of the imperial freedmen were also implicated. The blow was struck on the 24th of January (41A.D.) just as Gaius was making preparations for a campaign of extortion in the rich province of Egypt. The assassination was accomplished by Chaerea and his fellows in the vaulted corridor which connected the palace with the Circus Maximus, through which Gaius was passing to see the horse-races. The conspirators succeeded in escaping from the swords of the German bodyguards, and the corpse of Gaius was hastily interred in the Lamian gardens. At a later period it was exhumed and cremated by the sisters whom he had banished. At his death Gaius was only thirty years old.
SECT. III. — PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT — THE JEWS
If the principate of Gaius was a reaction on that of Tiberius in domestic policy, so too in provincial affairs he aimed at altering the arrangements of his predecessor. Tiberius had deposed Antiochus of Commagene, and made that district a province; Gaius restored it to the deposed king’s son, Antiochus IV. Epiphanes Magnus, increased it by the Cilician coast, and restored 100,000,000 sesterces, the confiscated property of his father. Agrippa, whom Tiberius had imprisoned, received the tetrarchy of his uncle, Philip II, who had recently died, and in addition Abilene. Two years later, he induced the Emiperor to depose Antipas and his wife Herodias, the rulers of Samaria, and send them into exile, on the ground of treason. Samaria was given to Agrippa, who thus united under his scepter the lands which had formed the kingdom of Herod the Great, with the exception of the province Judea. In Thrace a Roman officer had governed the inheritance of Cotys since 19 A.D.. Gaius restored it to Rhoemetalces, son of Cotys, and increased the realm by the rest of Thrace, which had belonged to another Rhoemetalces, the son of Rhascuporis. The younger brothers of the restored Rhoemetalces had been brought up with Gaius himself in Italy, and were related through their mother Antonia Tryphaina with his own grandmother Antonia. He therefore provided them also with kingdoms. To Polemo he gave Pontus Polemoniacus, and to Cotys Lesser Armenia. Another appointment made by Gaius at the same time (38 A.D.) was that of the Arabian Scaemus to the throne of Ituraea.
But while he restored dependent kingdoms in the east, he pulled down a dependent kingdom in the west. Ptolemy, king of Mauretania, was summoned to Rome and executed, in order that his treasures might replenish the Emperor’s coffers. It was contemplated to divide Mauretania into two provinces, Caesariensis and Tingitana; and this arrangement was afterwards carried out. Gaius also made an administrative change in the neighboring provinces of Africa and Numidia. Africa was the only senatorial province in which a legion was stationed under the command of the governor. Gaius removed this anomaly by consigning the legion to an imperial legatus, who was also entrusted with civil functions in Numidia, while the powers of the proconsul were confined to the administration of civil affairs in Africa Vetus.
The claim of the Emperor to receive adoration as a god led to disturbances among the Jews, both in Judea and at Alexandria. In 38 B.C. Herod Agrippa visited Alexandria on the way to his new kingdom. His appearance in the streets in royal state led to an anti-Jewish demonstration among the non-Jewish population; and the prefect of Egypt Avillius Placcus, with a zeal which proved unlucky for himself, seized the opportunity to require that the Jews, whom they detested, should set up statues of the Emperor in their synagogues. When the Jews refused to submit to such an abomination, their fellow-citizens drove them into one quarter of the town, and destroyed their dwellings throughout the rest. Many of them were slain in the tumult. But Flaccus, who had also issued an edict forbidding the Jews to keep the Sabbath, paid the penalty of his wrong-doing. He was immediately superseded, and sent as a prisoner to Rome by Bassus, who succeeded him. The Jews, however, had only a short respite. When Gaius began to claim divine worship from all his subjects, he would not brook the solitary refusal of the Jews. It was expected that a decree would go forth, ordaining that the imperial image should be set up in all synagogues; and with a view to avert, if possible, such a calamity, the Jews of Alexandria sent an embassy to appeal directly to the Emperor (40 A.D.). The details of this embassy have come down to us from the pen of the most distinguished of the ambassadors, the learned philosopher Philo. At the same time the Alexandrians sent a counter-embassy to thwart the Jews. When they arrived on the coast of Campania, the tidings met them that orders had just been issued to Petronius, the governor of Judea, to set up a colossal statue of the Emperor in the Holy of Holies at Jerusalem. Gaius was at this time engaged in transforming the house and gardens of the Lamias into a royal residence, and the rival embassies from Alexandria were summoned thither. They found him hurrying about from room to room, surrounded by architects and workmen, to whom he was giving directions, and they were compelled to follow in his train. Shopping to address the Jews, he asked, “Are you the God-haters, who deny my divinity, which all the world acknowledges?” The Alexandrian envoys hastened to put in their word, “Lord and master, these Jews alone have refused to sacrifice for your safety”. “Nay, Lord Gaius”, said the Jews, “it is a slander. We sacrificed for you, not once, but thrice; first when you assumed the empire, then when you recovered from your sickness, and again for your success against the Germans”. “Yes”, observed Gaius, “you sacrificed forme, not to me”; and thereupon he hurried to another room, the Jews trembling, and their rivals jeering, “as in a play”. The next remark he addressed to them was, “Pray, why do ye not eat pork?”. Finally he dismissed them with the observation, “Men who deem me no god are after all more unlucky than guilty”. The embassy of Philo and his fellows was a failure. Gaius was resolved to impose his worship on the Jews, and his orders to Petronius were confirmed. The rebellion of Judea seemed inevitable, when the death of the mad tyrant averted the sacrilege from the temple of Jerusalem.
Chapter XV.
The Principate of Claudius (41-54 A.D.)
SECT. I. — ACCESSION AND CHARACTER OF CLAUDIUS
Gaius Cesar was the first of a long list of Roman Emperors who were destined to fall by the hands of assassins. His death led to a serious crisis, for the conspirators had acted without a thought of what was to come, and no one was marked out to step into the place of the murdered Emperor. Augustus had formally selected Tiberius as his successor, and conferred on him the tribunician power; Tiberius had practically selected Gaius by his testament, but Gaius had not either conferred a share of the imperial prerogatives on any one, or made a will. Thus it