"Cassius Chærias."
"Are you so brave?" persisted the impudent child, shoving up his bandage impatiently, and disclosing a truly disfigured and malicious little face.
"I can't see you, or what you are like. But I think I could make you afraid if I was emperor."
The man destined hereafter to deliver mankind from the boundless profligacy, the wicked oppression, and the insane, raging, incredible cruelties of which it was daily the miserable victim by killing Caligula the emperor, looked steadily at Caligula the child, and said not a word.
"I should like to feel your sword, whether it is heavy," pursued the child. "Give it me." And he started to his feet.
"Silence! pert baby," said Germanicus, pushing him back into his place.
"It seems to me," said Augustus, looking round, and there was an instantaneous hush of general conversation as he did so; "that we have represented around us Europe, Asia, and Africa. Young Herod and his friends may count for Asia."
"You," added Augustus, addressing the tall, Brahmin-like man who stood near Tiberius, "come from Egypt, do you not?"
"Mighty emperor," returned the other in measured and sepulchral tones, "I come from the land where great Babylon once was the seat of empire."
No sooner had this man opened his mouth than the observant Sejanus started.