*Accession.* Tiberius left as his heirs his adoptive grandson Caius, the sole surviving son of Germanicus, better known by his childhood name of Caligula, acquired in the camps on the Rhine, and his grandson by birth, Tiberius Gemellus. Upon Caius, the elder of the two, then twenty-five years of age, the Senate immediately conferred the powers of the principate. The resentment of the senators towards his predecessor found vent in refusing him the posthumous honor of deification. Caius adopted his cousin, but within a year had him put to death.
*Early months of his rule.* The early months of his rule seemed the dawn of a new era. The pardoning of political offenders, the banishment of informers, the reduction of taxes, coupled with lavishness in public entertainments and donations, all made Gaius popular with the Senate, the army and the city plebs. However, he was a weakling in body and in mind, and a serious illness, brought on by his excesses, seems to have left him mentally deranged.
*Absolutism his ideal.* Reared in the house of Antonia, daughter of Antony and Octavia, in company with eastern princes of the stamp of Herod Agrippa, he naturally came to look upon the principate as an autocracy of the Hellenistic type. In his attempt to carry this conception into effect, the vein of madness in his character led him to ridiculous extremes. Not content with claiming deification for himself and his sisters, he built a lofty bridge connecting the Palatine Hill with the Capitoline, so that he might communicate with Jupiter, his brother god. He prescribed the sacrifices to be offered to himself, and was accused of seeking to imitate the Ptolemaic custom of sister marriage. Thoroughly consistent with absolutism was his scorn of republican magistracies and disregard of the rights of the Senate; likewise his attempt to have himself saluted as _dominus_ or "lord."
*The conflict with the Jews.* His demand for the acknowledgment of his deification by all inhabitants of the empire brought Caius into conflict with the Jews, who had been exempted from this formal expression of loyalty. In Alexandria there was a large Jewish colony, which enjoyed exceptional privileges and was consequently hated by the other Alexandrians. Their refusal to worship the images of Caius furnished the mob with a pretext for sacking the Jewish quarters and forcibly installing statues of the princeps in some of their synagogues. The Jews sent a delegation to plead their case before Caius but could obtain no redress. In the meantime Caius had ordered Petronius, the legate of Syria, to set up his statue in the temple at Jerusalem, by force, if need be. However, the prudent Petronius, seeing that this would bring about a national revolt among the Jews delayed obeying the order, and the death of Caius relieved him of the necessity of executing it at all.