#‘Suetonius shows Gaius Caligula at once the more aggressive tyrant

[superiorsuicide]

Suetonius reports the name Cassius twice among the omens that predicted [Caligula’s] death, first the Cassius commanded to sacrifice a bull and again when Gaius was warned to beware of a Cassius and responded by punishing the wrong one. There were lightning strikes on the significant Ides of March. The wounds inflicted by assassins are carefully numbered at twenty-three for Caesar, and thirty for Gaius, who was evidently thought somehow worse by seven. Gaius was stabbed in the groin, whereas Caesar had covered himself modestly. On the eve of assassination, it was said that Divus Julius dreamed that he flew through the clouds hand in hand with Jupiter; Gaius, on the other hand, dreamed that Jupiter kicked him out of heaven with the big toe of his right foot, thus denying him the dignity of a solid shove.

HURLEY, DONNA W. ‘Rhetorics of Assassination: Ironic Reversal and the Emperor Gaius’ from Suetonius the Biographer: Studies in Roman Lives eds Power, Gibson.