Caligula – Rome’s Mad Emperor

What would you do if you were given absolute power? Would you use it to fix the world's ills, or would you use it to satisfy your own darkest desires? It's a question we've seen answered again and again in history, but never so conclusively as in the reign of Rome's third emperor, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, or as you know him, Caligula. Born into a powerful military family, Caligula rose up to become the most infamous emperor in Roman history. During his four-year reign, he indulged in so much excess that 2,000 years later, his name is still a byword for cruelty and perversion. You probably know the tales about Caligula seducing his sister and making his horse a consul. You may not know, though, that the rest of his life was, if anything, even wilder. Today, we'll take you inside the twisted world of Rome's maddest emperor. When Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus was born on August 31, 12 AD, it was into a world of privilege that would have made the average Roman's head spin. Gaius's father was the General Germanicus, a military hero of the empire. His mother, Agrippina the Elder, came from a family that had once been in line to the imperial throne. To call the family elite would somewhat undersell it. They were like if the Kennedys, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and the Queen of England had all joined into one single family unit. Still, Germanicus was a working general, and for little Gaius, that meant a childhood growing up in military camps on the western frontier along the Rhine. When stationed in these camps, Gaius was given a small soldier's uniform to wear. The sight of this toddler parading around tickled the soldiers serving under Germanicus so much that they gave him the nickname Little Boot, or, to render it in Latin, Caligula. But while life may have seemed sweet for little Caligula on the frontier, in Rome, an almighty storm was brewing. For nearly four decades, the imperial throne had been in the hands of Augustus. But with the first citizen now nearing the end of his life, dark political forces were beginning to stir. Augustus' plan had been for one of Agrippina's two brothers to inherit his throne, but both of them had died young. After falling out with a third successor, Augustus was forced to turn to a sullen general called Tiberius. Tiberius was technically a hero of the empire, but he was also something of a colossal dick. Nobody liked him, not even Augustus. The only way that the dying emperor could get Tiberius on the throne without a riot was to force Tiberius to adopt Caligula's dad, the beloved Germanicus. That way, everyone could sleep soundly, knowing that however terrible Tiberius was, Germanicus would soon be in charge. So you probably know the phrase, the best laid plans of mice and men. Well, Tiberius was about to do to Augustus' plans exactly what Jerry does to Tom with a stick of dynamite. On August 19, 14 AD, Augustus shuffled off this mortal coil. No sooner was he gone than Tiberius began moving against Germanicus. Caligula's family were taken from the Rhine and transplanted to Syria. There, on October 10, 19 AD, Germanicus died under mysterious circumstances. Convinced Tiberius had poisoned her husband, Agrippina agitated for justice. It was at this point that Tiberius brought the other boot, crashing down. Tiberius forbade Agrippina to remarry, and he exiled her to a remote island. Further, her eldest two sons were also in prison. One of them committed suicide, the other starved to death. For Caligula, it was a life-changing upheaval. Although his grandmother shielded him from Tiberius' wrath, he was suddenly left without parents, without brothers, without hope. His only consolation may have been that his three sisters were also allowed to live. Certainly, the experience had made them close. So close, in fact, that it was often rumored that Caligula was sleeping with the youngest, Julia Drusilla. But Tiberius wasn't just cunning. He was also cruel. In AD 31 or 32, the 19-year-old Caligula was suddenly summoned to Tiberius' villa on the island of Capri. From now on, the Emperor informed him, he would have to live alongside the man who destroyed his family. It was a bizarre, perverted thing for Tiberius to do. It would also be a catastrophe for the entire Empire. So here's a couple of things you should know about Tiberius. The first is that Tiberius was basically a Roman version of Stalin. He ruled through fear, instigating a wave of treason trials in which people were convicted by kangaroo courts, executed, and their bodies dumped in the river Tiber. The second is that he did all of this while staying away from Rome itself. In AD 26, the old despot retreated to a villa on Capri, where he had a good time while a flunky did all of the actual repressing. Incidentally, a good time for Tiberius generally meant everyone else having an extremely bad time. If we can believe the surviving sources, Tiberius' time on Capri was past satisfying himself with underage boys and girls, and then having them hurled off cliffs to their deaths. Oh, and he also liked to have the odd person publicly tortured, because why not? And so it was into this world that Caligula was summoned. It's impossible to say why Tiberius called Caligula to him. Maybe it was just a sick game. Tiberius' flunkies would often question the boy about his dead family, goading him to lash out. But Caligula wasn't stupid. He kept his mouth shut, and deferred to Tiberius, more like a servant than an adopted family member. So Tiberius never got around to killing the boy. Not only that, he seemed to have grown to like him. Before long, Tiberius was allowing Caligula to indulge in orgies of his own. He was allowed to arrange and watch sadistic tortures at his own leisure. It is said that, after seeing how much the quiet Caligula enjoyed watching others suffer, Tiberius remarked, I am nursing a viper for the Roman people. If he really believed that, though, Tiberius didn't show it. At some point in the mid-30s AD, Tiberius named Caligula and Caligula's cousin, Germilus, as joint heirs to the empire. Maybe if Tiberius knew what the quiet young man had been up to on Capri, he would have been more cautious. Caligula later claimed he liked to get up in the dead of night and creep into Tiberius' bedroom, where he would hold a dagger over the old man, ready to plunge it in. Only the voice of the dead Augustus stopped him from doing this deed. Less looney tunes, Caligula also worked behind the scenes to forge an alliance with the powerful Praetorian guard prefect, Niveus Sutorius Machro. When the time came, Caligula wanted the guard on his side. And that time came on March 16, 37 AD. That morning, word went out that Tiberius had died in his sleep. Rome's tyrant emperor was finally dead. There are a few theories about how Tiberius died, and one prominent one is that Caligula suffocated the old man with a pillow. But even if this is just later writers adding narrative spice to the tale, the result was the same. In Rome, the people went nuts. They demanded Tiberius' body be dragged through the streets and hurled into the river, as all those who had been executed at his trials had done to them. While Rome was busy partying, out on Capri, Caligula was putting his plan into motion. With Tiberius gone, the Praetorian guard came out for Caligula. Jumilus was placed under house arrest. And he never tasted freedom again. His rival imprisoned, Caligula robed Rome and presented himself to the people as their new emperor. And this wasn't as hard as you might think. People hated Tiberius. The whole city was seriously pumped that he was gone, and now they were being told that his replacement would be the son of their beloved General Germanicus. They liked that. To paraphrase Philip J. Fry, Rome was basically just like, shut up and take our throne. Aged only 24, Caligula was elevated to undisputed ruler of the empire. The people were ecstatic. As he rode into the city, they lined up and screamed like he was Roman Elvis. It would not be long before Caligula was making those same citizens scream, but for very different reasons. So this is it, right? The part where we finally get into all the juicy stories about Caligula promoting his horse and marrying his sister? I'll make that still a bit of a ways down the road. Because here's the thing about Caligula, the mad emperor. When he first seized power, he was seen as Caligula, the emperor that everyone just couldn't get enough of. Seriously. Caligula 1.0 was like everything Rome had ever dreamed of. He ended Tiberius' treason trials. He restored confiscated property. He eased up on persecution. He lowered taxes. He gave the army a pay rise. As if this wasn't enough, Caligula also threw endless gladiator games and feasts to celebrate his rise to power. Imagine if you're an ordinary Roman. For over twenty years, you've been living in a state of fear under a tyrant who could have you killed at any time. And now there's a new guy in town, and he's given you bread and circuses, and a promise that he's not going to kill you at random. Pretty good times. As 37 AD rolled on, people dared to hope that maybe this was it. Maybe Tiberius had been a one-off, and all the emperors were going to be good from now on. But no. That October, Caligula suddenly took sick. It was possible he was poisoned. At any rate, he spent the best part of a month floating on the threshold between life and death. The people of Rome were appalled. They couldn't lose their shiny new emperor. There was weeping in the streets. In the Senate, senators took turns to stand up and beseech the gods to spare Caligula. A handful even begged Jupiter to take them in his place. Miraculously, these prayers worked. Caligula recovered, dragging his weakened body back to the land of the living. If this was a horror movie, this would be the point where we'd say, however, it seemed he brought some evil spirit back with him. Since this is history, they will simply say Caligula came back a changed man. The popular emperor was gone, and his place was something much, much darker. Not long after recovering, Caligula invited the senators who'd prayed for his life to come and visit him. There, he thanked them for asking Jupiter to take them in his place. Then, he asked them when they were going to do it. No record exists of the conversation that followed, but it likely went something like this. Your highness? Asked the senators, rather puzzled. You know, it, replied Caligula. You asked the gods to let you die so I may live. Well, I am alive. So, I repeat, when are you going to die? The senators had no choice. One by one, they were all forced to commit suicide. It was the first sign of the madness that was about to consume the entire empire. Now, we need to be careful here, because plenty of ancient and contemporary writers like to use Caligula's sickness as a transformative event, like he was a saint before, and a devil after. But we've already seen Caligula getting his rocks off torturing people in Tiberius's villa. We've also seen him quietly dispose of his rival to the throne, and scheme his way to power. So, yeah, Caligula became a monster after his illness, but it's not like the signs weren't already there. With the senators dead, Caligula returned to public life. From the get-go, it was clear that something was wrong. He ditched the robes and started dressing in outlandish costumes, sometimes including in women's clothes. He claimed that he was plagued by endless headaches. You can almost imagine the people of Rome giving one another side-long glances and wondering what happened to their fun emperor. Well, Caligula still wanted to have his fun, and Rome was about to discover that Caligula's definition of fun was even more terrifying than Tiberius's. The History of Caligula Now, before we go any further, there's something you need to understand about this period in Roman history. So many sources have been lost over the years that we have barely any contemporary accounts of Caligula. The information we do have on his life generally comes from Suetonius's book on the emperors, and Cassius Dio's biography of Caligula. Both are not exactly great historians, and they lived a long time after Caligula had died, with Dio not even being born until 120-odd years after Caligula's death. To put it another way, expecting either of these guys to give a pinpoint, accurate account of Caligula's reign is like expecting someone born this very year to give an eyewitness account to the life of Otto von Bismarck. That being said, there's likely a kernel of truth in their otherwise suspect accounts, and even a kernel would be enough to rank Caligula as one of the maddest rulers in history. It's said that post-illness Caligula liked to humiliate the Senate. Senators would be made to run alongside his carriage for miles at a time through the streets of Rome. Those that refused would be humiliated in other ways. Caligula would throw dinner parties for the Senators and their wives. Midway through the meal, he'd pick a wife he liked the look of, take her into a backroom, and force himself on her. He'd then return her to her husband, who'd be forced to act like nothing had happened. Speaking of women, Caligula's sexual appetites were both enormous and enormously cruel. In AD 37 or 38, for example, he went to the wedding of Gaius Calpurnius Piso and Livia Rostiglia. The Emperor was so taken with Livia that he ordered her to marry him instead. She did, and he had his way with her, then he divorced her the next morning. As a final kicker, he forbade her to ever marry Gaius. Livia wasn't the only one. Lolina Paulina was also forced to divorce her husband and marry Caligula, only to be ditched after barely six months. Then there are the other rumors that Caligula slept with everyone from whores to young boys to the male actor Monesta. But the most famous affair Caligula had was, of course, with his sister. Do you remember Giulia Drusilla, who we mentioned back at the start of the video, that it was rumored that Caligula was sleeping with her? Well, once he became Emperor, Caligula seems to have gone out of his way to confirm those rumors. Drusilla was elevated to the status of Emperor's wife. The army was required to take a loyalty oath to her, and the two were never apart. When Drusilla died in June of 38 AD, the heartbroken Caligula had declared her a goddess and forced people to worship her. Even with this weird relationship, though, much of what you may have heard is untrue. That shocking scene in I, Claudius where Caligula eats the fetus torn from Drusilla's body was pure fiction. Still, Caligula's cruelty and his insanity were becoming hard to ignore. Cassius Dio has it that the Emperor practiced pulling terrified facial expressions purely to put the fear of God into his subjects. At one part, he allegedly burst out laughing. When guests asked what was funny, Caligula replied, I've just thought that if only to give the word, and you all have your throats cut. Hilarious. But it was more than just an idle threat. In AD 38, Caligula finally ordered Jemelas executed. Incredibly, he had Macro, the Praetorian guard prefect who'd help him seize power, executed shortly after. It was Caligula's first major taste of blood and, apparently, he liked it enough to go back for more. Throughout all this, the fun pre-illness Emperor hadn't completely vanished. For all his bad rep, Caligula did do some good stuff. He extended Rome's aqueduct network, bringing clean drinking water to many parts of the city. He had new ports constructed, opening the Empire to more trade. There's also reason to believe some of the more infamous stories about him are just false. That whole thing about making his horse a consul, it's thought Caligula was probably insulting a senator's intelligence and made a comment to the effect of, you're so useless, I might as well make my horse consul. Which later writers took literally. On the other hand, it's quite possible that the tale of the Bay of Baoli is true. If you've not heard of this, it's claimed that Caligula discovered an old prophecy by an astrologer that said Caligula had no more chance of becoming Emperor than of riding a horse across the Bay of Baoli. Once he became Emperor, Caligula requisitioned boats from across Italy, moored them together, and turned them into a two or three mile bridge across the Bay. He then spent two whole days riding up and down along it in triumph. So many boats were put out of action for this that Rome suffered a grain shortage. Fun as they are, tales like this often conceal Caligula's truly dark nature. In 1839, the treasury was empty. Too much money had been spent funding Caligula's lavish lifestyle, so Caligula pulled a fast one. He reinstated Tiberius' treason trials, and now they would be even crueler than before. People were selected from Roman society at random, and had all of their property confiscated with no warning. The lucky ones were sent into exile. The unlucky ones were executed. Executions under Caligula were worse than under any prior Emperor. Executioners were instructed to keep people alive as long as possible, slowly torturing them to death over several days. Relatives were forced to watch these displays. In some cases, parents were summoned to see their children murdered, unable to do anything but smile and cheer, lest the mad Emperor have them killed as well. Just as he had on Capri, it seemed Caligula still loved to watch people suffer. Yet gory as this was, it wasn't quite as bad as you might believe. While Tiberius arranged to have rivals assassinated as far away as Syria, Caligula basically forgot about anyone he wasn't face to face with. His treason trials might have left Rome's streets flowing with blood, but the rest of the Empire continued to function as normal. And then, in AD 39, at the height of his reign of terror, Caligula finally met the woman of his dreams. Melonia Caesonia was a woman as amoral and lacking in empathy as her husband. Older than Caligula, and dedicated to nothing more than self-indulgence, she managed to win the young despot's heart. Although few records of Melonia survive, we do know that she bore Caligula a daughter, and that the Emperor named her Julia Drusilla after his dead sister. We also know that Caligula's messed up way of showing affection for his wife was to teasingly remind her that he could have her tortured and killed whenever he wanted to. Overall, then, Caligula reached the second anniversary of his illness in a good place. Which is another way of saying everyone else reached it in a really terrible place where they feared constantly for their lives. As October rolled around, the Emperor felt secure enough to turn his back on Rome and head off to the frontier to do some conquering. But Caligula had misjudged just how cowed by him his opponents were. With the madman out of the picture, his victims in the Senate and the Praetorian Guard began to whisper to one another about finding a new Emperor. Caligula didn't know about it, but his short reign was nearly over. It's interesting to wonder how Caligula must have felt returning to the frontier where he'd been raised no longer a toy soldier, but a conquering Emperor. At least, that's one way of looking at it. By some accounts, Caligula spent his time along the Rhine putting down a German revolt and invading Gaul. On the other hand, different accounts make it sound like the toy soldier hadn't really grown up at all. One version has it that Caligula paid soldiers to dress up like Germans and stage an attack so that he could defeat them and appear a hero. When actual Germans attacked shortly after, the Emperor ran away. What's not in dispute is that by AD 40, Caligula had decided to invade Britain. At that time, Britannica was a strange, damp island not yet under the Roman heel. So conquering it would boost Caligula's prestige. Accordingly, Caligula rode north with 200,000 men up the cliffs of Gaul, facing the English Channel. Once there, he told his men to prepare for a great victory and then had them go down to the beaches and collect seashells. Declaring these were spoils of a great victory over the sea, Caligula turned around and headed back to Rome. Back in the Eternal City, the conspiracy against the Emperor was growing. It was fed, in part, by Caligula's belief that he was literally a god. He claimed to communicate with Jupiter and ordered statues of himself be placed in every temple of the Empire. When the news reached Judea, it very nearly caused an armed uprising. It was only thanks to Herod Griffith's diplomatic skills that Caligula waived the rule for Judean temples and averted civil war. But this last flash of sanity was not enough to save an Emperor already so far gone. On January 24, 41 AD, the anti-Caligula faction made their move. Outside the Palatine Games, a unit led by Cassius Correa waited until Caligula was coming out and then surrounded him and stabbed him to death. Before the alarm could be raised, they marched straight to the house where Melonia and the Emperor's baby daughter lived and killed them both. For a moment on that febrile day, it really looked like Rome's entire system of Emperors was about to collapse, that the Senate might seize the day and restore the Republic. But no, Cassius Correa and his men instead tracked down Caligula's uncle, the doddering old Claudius, and had him declared Emperor. The Guard may have been ready to kill Caligula, but they weren't ready to kill the system that had created him. The failure of their nerves that day would result in another Caligula, 13 years down the line, in Emperor Nero. That winter day in 41 AD, though, all the carnage Nero would unleash was still a long way away. Instead, the Senate focused on purging the virus of Caligula from the Empire. Statues of the now-dead Emperor were smashed. His name was scrubbed from monuments. One likely fictitious telling is that the army even tracked down and killed Caligula's horse. Before Claudius had established himself on the throne, Caligula was gone, almost wiped from Roman history. The people wanted no more reminders of their mad tyrant. So why do we remember him today? Why is Caligula one of the few Roman Emperors nearly everyone can name? Part of it is doubtless entertainment value. Even if the story about making his horse a consul is untrue, it's still amusing. But part of it may also be that Caligula serves as a warning from history. Before he took the throne, Caligula was a quiet nobody. When he was made an Emperor, all he seemingly wanted to do was please the people. The old phrase has it that absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the life of Caligula, we can see that this is true. We all like to believe that a good man could rule us all justly and wisely. But Caligula's biography suggests otherwise. It suggests that almost anyone can become a monster, perhaps even you or I. In the end, Caligula may have only ruled Rome for a mere four years, but his deranged actions during that time have ensured his name will live on in infamy.