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[-14-] At the same time that he authorized these murders, apparently because he was so very poor, he devised another kind of transaction.  He took the surviving combatants and sold them at an excessive valuation to the consuls, the praetors, and the rest, meeting with acquiescence from some and compelling others, who objected strenuously, to carry out his wishes at the horse-races; and most of all he imposed upon the ones especially selected by lot for this purpose, for he had ordered that two praetors, just as it might happen, should be allotted to take charge of the gladiatorial games.  He himself sat on the auctioneer’s platform and kept outbidding them.  Many also came from outside to bid against them, particularly because he allowed such as wished to employ a greater number of gladiators than the law permitted and because he often had recourse to them himself.  So people bought them for large sums, some through need of the men, others thinking they should gratify him, and the largest number (in case they were reputed to be property-holders) out of a wish to avail themselves of this pretext for spending some of their substance and thus by becoming poorer save their lives.

Yet, in spite of this action of his, he afterward put out of the way by poison the best and most famous of these slaves.  He did the same also in the case of rival horses and charioteers, being greatly devoted to the party that wore the frog green and from this color was called the Party of the Leek.  Even now the place where the chariots practiced is called Galanum.  One of the horses, that he named Incitatus, he invited to dinner, offered him golden barley, and drank his health in wine from gold goblets.  He took oaths by the same beast’s Guardian Spirit and Presiding Fortune and promised besides that he would appoint him consul.  This he would certainly have done, too, if he had lived longer.

[-15-] Now formerly for the purpose of providing funds it had been voted that all those persons who had wished to leave anything to Tiberius and were alive should at their death bestow the same upon Gaius.  The publication of a decree was deemed necessary to prevent its seeming that he could break the laws in securing by inheritance such gifts; for he had at the time neither wife nor children.  But at the time of which I am speaking he proceeded to levy for himself without any vote absolutely all the property of men who had served among the centurions and had after the triumph which his father celebrated left it to somebody other than the emperor.  When not even this sufficed, he hit upon the following third means of raising money.  There was a senator, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, who had noticed that the roads during the reign of Tiberius were in bad condition and was always nagging the road commissioners about it and furthermore kept making a nuisance of himself before the senate regarding the matter.  Gaius took him as a confederate and