Caligula

At last, as if resolved to make war in earnest, he drew up his army on the shore of the ocean, with his balistk and other engines of war, and while no one could imagine what he intended to do, on a sudden commanded them to gather up the sea shells, and fill their helmets and the folds of their dress with them, calling them " the spoils of the ocean due to the Capitol and the Palatium." As a monument of his success, he raised a lofty tower, upon which, as at Pharos,[*](It seems generally agreed that the point of the coast which was signalized by the ridiculous bravado of Caligula, somewhat redeemed by the erection of a lighthouse, was Itium, afterwards called Gessoriacum, and Bononia (Boulogne), a town belonging to the Gaulish tribe of the Morini; where Julius Casar embarked on his expedition, and which became the usual place of departure for the transit to Britain. ) he ordered lights to be burned in the night-time for the direction of ships at sea; and then promising the soldiers a donative of a hundred denarii[*](The denarius was worth at this time about seven pence or eight pence of English money.) a man, as if he had surpassed the most eminent examples of generosity, "Go your ways," said he, "and be merry; go, ye are rich."