Legatio Ad Gaium

And he was intending to do this while on his voyage along the coast during the period which he had allotted for his sojourn in Egypt. For an indescribable desire occupied his mind to see Alexandria, to which he was eager to go with all imaginable haste, and when he had arrived there he intended to remain a considerable time, urging that the deification about which he was so anxious, might easily be originated and carried to a great height in that city above all others, and then that it would be a model to all other cities of the adoration to which he was entitled, inasmuch as it was the greatest of all the cities of the east, and built in the finest situation in the world. For all inferior men and nations are eager to imitate great men and great states.

Moreover, Caius was in other respects a man in whose nature there was nothing stable or trustworthy so that, even if he did anything good or kind, he speedily repented of it, and in such a manner that he soon attempted to annul what he had done in such a way as to cause even greater affliction and injury to those whom he had favoured.

For instance, he released some prisoners, and then for no reason whatever he threw them into prison a second time, inflicting upon them a second calamity more grievous than the first, namely, that which was caused by unexpected misfortune.

Again, he condemned some persons to banishment who had expected sentence of death; not because they were conscious of having committed crimes deserving of death, or indeed of any punishment at all, even the lightest, but because of the extravagant inhumanity of their master they J did not expect to escape. Now to these men, banishment was a downright gain, and equivalent almost to a restoration, since they looked upon it that they had escaped the greatest of all evils, the danger of death.