[-3-] He went through the same process of deterioration, too, in almost all other respects.  At first he seemed a most democratic person and would send no letters either to the people or to the senate nor assume any of the titles of sovereignty; yet he became most dictatorial, so that he took in one day all those honors which Augustus had with difficulty secured, voted one by one, during the long extent of his reign, some of which Tiberius had refused to accept at all.  He postponed nothing except the title of Father, and that he acquired after no long time.  Though he had proved himself the most libidinous of men, had seduced one woman already betrothed and had dragged others from their husbands, he afterward hated them all save one.  And he would certainly have detested her, had he lived any longer.  Toward his mother, his sisters, and his grandmother Antonia he conducted himself in the most dutiful manner possible.  The last named he immediately saluted as Augusta and appointed her priestess of Augustus, giving her at once all the privileges pertaining to the vestal virgins.  To his sisters he assigned these honors of the vestal virgins, the right to witness horse-races in the same section of seats with him, and the right to have uttered in their behalf as well the prayers which were annually offered by the magistrates and the priests for his welfare and that of the State, and the oaths of allegiance sworn to his empire.  He set sail himself and with his own hands collected and brought back the bones of his mother and of his brothers that had died:  wearing the purple-bordered toga and attended by some lictors, as at a triumph, he deposited these in the monument of Augustus.  All measures voted against them he canceled, all who had plotted against them he chastised, and recalled such as were in exile on their account.—­Now, though he had done all this, he showed himself the most impious of men in the case both of his grandmother and of his sisters.  The former, because she had rebuked him for something, he forced to seek death by her own hand; and after ravishing all his sisters he shut two of them up on an island:  the third had previously died.  Again in the matter of Tiberius (whom he also termed “grandfather"), he asked that he might receive from the senate the same honors as Augustus; but these were not immediately voted, for the senators could not endure to honor that tyrant, nor did they make bold to dishonor him because they were not yet clearly acquainted with the character of their young lord, and consequently postponed everything until the latter should be present:  so then Gaius bestowed upon him no mark of notice other than a public funeral, after bringing the body into the City by night and having it laid out at daybreak.  And though he did make a speech over it, he did not say so much in praise of Tiberius as he did to remind the people of Augustus and Germanicus, comparing himself meanwhile with them.