flashes of prevision of which we sometimes read in history. "Why are you
so eager? Some day you will kill this boy, and some one else will murder
you." There were some who believed that Tiberius deliberately cherished
the intention of allowing Caius to succeed him, in order that the Roman
world might relent towards his own memory under the tyranny of a worse
monster than himself. Even the Romans, who looked up to the family of
Germanicus with extraordinary affection, seem early to have lost all
hopes about Caius. They looked for little improvement under the
government of a vicious boy, "ignorant of all things, or nurtured only
in the worst," who would be likely to reflect the influence of Macro,
and present the spectacle of a worse Tiberius under a worse Sejanus.

[Footnote 23: We shall call him Caius, because it is as little correct
to write of him by the _sobriquet_ Caligula as it would be habitually to
write of our kings Edward or John as Longshanks or Lackland. The name
Caligula means "a little shoe," and was the pet name given to him by the
soldiers of his father, in whose camp he was born.]

[Footnote 24: Josephus adds some curious and interesting particulars to
the story of this Herod and his death which are not mentioned in the
narrative of St. Luke (_Antiq_. xix. 7, 8. Jahn, _Hebr. Commonwealth_,
§ cxxvi.)]

At last health and strength failed Tiberius, but not his habitual
dissimulation. He retained the same unbending soul, and by his fixed
countenance and measured language, sometimes by an artificial
affability, he tried to conceal his approaching end. After many restless
changes, he finally settled down in a villa at Misenum which had once
belonged to the luxurious Lucullus. There the real state of his health
was discovered. Charicles, a distinguished physician, who had been