In this way difficulties, dissatisfaction, and sedition arose in all parts of the empire.  The extravagances, the wild expenditures, the riotous pleasures, and the cruelties of Caligula increased the discontent and disgust on every hand.  We need not take literally all the accounts of his cruelty and violence which ancient writers have transmitted to us,—­even Caligula has been blackened,—­but it is certain that his government in the last two years of his reign degenerated into a reckless, extravagant, violent, and cruel tyranny.  One day the empire awoke in terror to the fact that the imperial family—­that family in which the legions, the provinces, and the barbarians saw the keystone of the state—­no longer existed; that in the vast imperial palace, empty of women, empty of children, empty of hope, there wandered a raging madman of thirty-one, who divorced a wife every six months, who foolishly wasted the treasure and the blood of his subjects, and who was concerned with no other thought than that of having himself worshiped like a god in flesh and blood by all the empire.  A conspiracy was formed in the palace itself, and Caligula was killed.

The senate was much perplexed when it heard of the death of Caligula.  What was to be done?  The majority was inclined to restore the former republican government by abolishing the imperial authority, and to give back to the senate the supreme direction of the state, which little by little had passed into the hands of the emperor.  But many recognized that this return to the ancient form of government would be neither easy nor without danger.  Could the senate, neglected, divided, and disregarded as it was, succeed in governing the immense empire?  On the other hand, it was not much easier to find an emperor, granted that an emperor was henceforth necessary.  In the family of Augustus there was only Claudius, too foolish and ridiculous for them to think of making him the head of the state.  It seems that some eminent senator offered his candidacy, but the senate hesitated in perplexity, on the ground that if the authority of the members of the family of Augustus was already so uncertain, so debatable, and so darkly threatened, what would happen to a new emperor, unknown to the legions and the provinces, and unsupported by the glory of his ancestors?  While the senate was debating in such uncertainty, the pretorians discovered Claudius in a corner of the imperial palace, where he had been cowering through fear lest he too be killed.  Recognizing in him the brother of Germanicus, the pretorians proclaimed him emperor.  An act of will is always more powerful than a thousand scruples or hesitations:  the senate yielded to the legions, and recognized Claudius the imbecile as emperor.

[Illustration:  Claudius.]