His valiant soldiers were disgracefully humiliated by being made to hunt for seashells on a French beach. And his gleeful menace directed at the long-suffering Roman aristocracy became legendary. On one famous occasion he was caught bursting into laughter at a palace dinner party when he was reclining next to the two consuls. ‘What’s the joke?’ one asked politely. ‘Just the thought that I would only have to nod and your throats would be cut on the spot,’ came the reply. Someone else would have wielded the knife if Chaerea had not.
