The reign was too short, even if Caligula had troubled his head with the provinces, for him to spoil the good work done in them during the preceding half-cycle.  He did not so trouble his head; being too busy murdering the pillars of Roman society.  Then a gentleman who had been spending the afternoon publicly kissing his slippers in the theater, experienced, as they say, a change of heart, and took thought to assassinate him on the way home; whereupon the Praetorians, let loose and having a thoroughly good time, happened on a poor old buffer of the royal house by the name of Claudius; and to show their sense of humor, made him emperor tout de suite. The senate took a high hand, and asserted its right to make those appointments; but Claudius and the Praetorians thought otherwise; and the senate, after blustering, had to crawl.  They besought him to allow them the honor of appointing him.—­what a difference the mere turn of a cycle had made:  from Augustus bequeathing the Empire to Tiberius, ablest man to ablest man, and all with senatoral ratification; to the jocular appointment by undisciplined soldiery of a sad old laughingstock to succeed a raging maniac.

Claudius was a younger brother of Germanicus; therefore Tiberius’ nephew, Caligula’s uncle, and a brother-in-law to Agrippina.  Mr. Baring-Gould says that somewhere deep in him was a noble nature that had never had a chance:  that the soul of him was a jewel, set in the foolish lead of a most clownish personality.  I do not know; certainly some great and fine things came from him; but whether they were motions of his own soul (if he had one), or whether the Gods for Rome’s sake took advantage of his quite negative being, and prompted it to their own purposes, who can say?—­Sitting down, and keeping still, and saying nothing, the old man could look rather fine, even majestic; one saw traces in him of the Claudian family dignity and beauty.  But let hm walk a few paces, and you noted that his feet dragged and his knees knocked together, and that he had a paunch; and let him get interested in a conversation, and you heard that he first spluttered, and then roared.  Physical wakness and mental backwardness had made him the despair of Augustus:  he was the fool of the family, kept in the background, and noticed by none.  Tiberius, in search of a successor, had never thought of him; had rather let things go to mad Caligula.  He had never gone into society; never associated with men of his own rank; but chose his companions among small shopkeepers and the ’Arries and ’Arriets of Rome, who, ‘tickled to death’ at having a member of the reigning family to hobnob with them in their back-parlors, would refrain from making fun of his peculiatities.  Caligula had enjoyed using him as a butt, and so had spared his life.  He had never even learned to behave at table:  and so, when he came to the throne, made a law that table-manners should no longer be incumbent on a Roman gentleman.  All this is recorded of him; one would hardly believe it, but that his portraits bear it out.*