All the temples and all the rest of the public works had been filled with statues and votive offerings, so that he said he should have to make it a matter of thought what to do with them.  He forbade the praetors’ giving gladiatorial games and ordained that any one else who superintended them in any place whatsoever should not allow to be written or reported the statement that such games were being held for the emperor’s preservation.  He became so used to settling all these matters by considering the merits of each case rather than according to the dictates of custom that he adopted the same attitude toward other departments of life.  For instance, when this year he betrothed one of his daughters to Lucius Junius Silanus and gave the other in marriage to Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, he did nothing out of the common to commemorate the occasion, but attended the courts in person on those days and convened the senate as usual.  He ordered his sons-in-law temporarily to hold office among the viginti viri, and later to act as prefects of the city at the Feriae.  After a long interval he gave them the right to stand for the other offices five years sooner than was customary.

Gaius had despoiled this Pompeius of his title Magnus and came very near killing him because he was so named.  Yet out of contempt for him, since he was still but a boy, he did not go to such extremes, and merely abolished the offending epithet, saying that it was not safe for any one to be called Magnus.  Claudius now restored to him this title and gave him his daughter to wife.

[-6-] These were certainly commendable actions.  In addition, when at one time in the senate the consuls came down from their seats to talk with him, he rose in turn and went to meet them.  In Naples he lived entirely like a private citizen.  He and his associates while there adopted the Greek manner of life invariably; at the musical entertainments he would wear cloak and military boots, and at the gymnastic exercises a purple robe and golden crown.  His action, moreover, in regard to money was remarkable, for he forbade any one to bring him contributions, as had been customary in the reigns of Augustus and of Gaius, and he refused to allow any person to name him as heir if such person possessed any relatives whatever.  Indeed, the funds that had been confiscated by government order during the period of Tiberius and Gaius he gave back either to the victims themselves, if they still survived, or otherwise to their children.

It had been the custom[2] that if any slightest detail were carried out contrary to precedent on the occasion of the games these should be given over again, as I have stated.  But since such occasions were frequent, occurring a third, fourth, fifth, and sometimes tenth time, and this partly by accident but generally by intention on the part of those benefited by these happenings, he enacted a law that on only one day should the equestrian contests take place a second time; in fact, however, he usually abrogated this privilege also.  The schemers henceforth easily avoided falling into irregularities, as they gained very little by so doing.