At this moment Chaereas asked him for the watchword of the night.

He gave the watchword, "Jupiter." "Receive him in his wrath!" exclaimed Chaereas, striking him on the throat, while almost at the same moment the blow of Sabinus cleft the tyrant's jaw, and brought him to his knee.

He crouched his limbs together to screen himself from further blows, screaming aloud, "I live! I live!" The bearers of his litter rushed to his assistance, and fought with their poles, but Caius fell pierced with thirty wounds; and, leaving the body weltering in its blood, the conspirators rushed out of the palace, and took measures to concert with the Senate a restoration of the old Republic.

On the very night after the murder the consuls gave to Chaereas the long-forgotten watchword of "Liberty." But this little gleam of hope proved delusive to the last degree.

It was believed that the unquiet ghost of the murdered madman haunted the palace, and long before it had been laid to rest by the forms of decent sepulchre, a new emperor of the great Julian family was securely seated upon the throne..