The Truth About Caligula History Tried to Soften | Roman Empire History

The wife of a Roman senator wasn't supposed to be touched. Not in public, not in front of her husband, not by anyone. But Caligula was not anyone. He would invite Rome's most powerful men to dinner, seat their wives beside him, choose one during the banquet, and take her away while her husband sat frozen at the table. But the reason he did it was even more disturbing than the act itself. And the most terrifying part? This was not even the worst thing he did. Because Caligula made even Rome question whether it was being ruled by a man, or something far more dangerous. And the deeper you go into his story, the harder that question becomes to answer. Because Caligula did not simply cross lines. He erased them. There were things Rome believed no emperor would dare to do. Things too sacred, too shameful, too insane. Caligula did them anyway. And every time Rome thought it had seen the limit, he moved it further. Until the question was no longer how far he would go. The question was whether anyone would survive long enough to stop him. But the monster Rome feared did not appear overnight. Because before the name Caligula became a warning, it was a nickname given to a little boy in soldier's boots. The man we know today as Caligula was actually named Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus. He was born in AD 12 into the most popular family in the Roman Empire. His father, Germanicus, had everything Rome admired in a leader. He was brave and handsome. He was brilliant on the battlefield and loved by his soldiers deeply. Germanicus was the kind of man whose name alone could move a crowd. Caligula was born as the son of that man. Rome loved him before he ever came close to the throne. They loved his father. They loved his family. And the soldiers loved the little boy who wore tiny military boots and marched beside the legions. To them, he was almost like a mascot. The soldiers even gave him a nickname, Caligula. In Latin, it means little soldier's boot. Yes, that is where the name Caligula comes from. And that is what makes this story so fascinating. How did this beloved child, this sweet boy adored by the army, become one of the most feared men in Roman history? How did Rome's golden child turn from savior to monster in just four years? To understand that transformation, we have to go back to the beginning. During Caligula's childhood, the emperor was Tiberius. And Tiberius was afraid of Germanicus more than he was afraid of foreign armies. Because Germanicus was his nephew. But more importantly, he was popular. Too popular. Loved by the army, admired by the people, and respected across the empire. To a paranoid emperor, that kind of popularity could look like treason. In AD 19, Germanicus died while serving in Syria as a special envoy and military commander. Ancient sources say he was poisoned and many believe Tiberius was behind it. The golden general was dead at just 33 years old. But Tiberius did not stop there. Because Caligula's mother, Agrippina the elder, was also dangerous in the eyes of the emperor. She was the granddaughter of Augustus. She was noble, proud, and just as beloved as her husband. And she blamed Tiberius for Germanicus's death. That made her impossible to ignore. In AD 29, Agrippina was arrested and exiled to a prison island. She later died of starvation. Caligula's eldest brother was driven to suicide. His second brother was locked away in the palace dungeons and starved so badly that, before dying, he tried to eat the stuffing from his own mattress. And Caligula survived. Not because Tiberius loved him, but because Tiberius found him useful. The old emperor brought the boy to his villa on Capri, an infamous island where cruelty became entertainment and loyalty was tested through fear. Caligula spent his youth there. He learned to hide his emotions. He learned to smile at the man who had destroyed his family. He learned that power was the only thing that could keep a person alive. Later, when someone told Caligula he had a talent for acting, he is said to have replied, if Tiberius had not noticed my acting, I would not be alive. Caligula remained on Capri until AD 37, when Tiberius finally died. Some said the emperor died naturally, while others claimed Caligula had a hand in it. Either way, at just 24 years old, Caligula suddenly became emperor of Rome. And Rome exploded with joy. In the first months of his reign, Caligula seemed to be everything the empire had hoped for. He recalled political exiles. He burned Tiberius' secret files on Roman citizens and promised the people that no one would be persecuted because of what the former emperor had written about them. He lowered taxes, organized carefully planned games and public spectacles, honored his dead parents and siblings with ceremonies that moved the crowd to tears, gave bonuses to the soldiers, and handed out money to the citizens. The Senate admired him. The army praised him. The people of Rome filled the streets whenever he appeared. In his first three months, more than 160,000 animals were sacrificed across the empire in celebration. That is how much Rome loved this man. That is how desperately they had been waiting for someone like him. And then, in AD 37, everything changed. In October of that year, Caligula became gravely ill. The entire empire held its breath. Some modern historians believe he may have suffered from epilepsy. Others suggest meningitis. Some think it was a complete psychological collapse caused by years of trauma finally rising to the surface. Whatever happened, the man who recovered was not the same man who had fallen ill. The Caligula who rose from that sickbed was not the emperor Rome had known. The generosity ended. The compassion disappeared. The golden boy who had honored his family and freed political prisoners began executing people for the smallest offenses, sometimes simply for looking at him the wrong way. The change was so sudden and so complete that ancient historians treated the illness as the turning point. And the first thing the monster did was declare himself a god. I'm not saying this metaphorically. In the strictest sense of the word, Caligula declared himself divine. He was no longer merely an emperor. He was a living god walking among mortals. He began appearing in public dressed as different gods. Sometimes he came as Jupiter, king of the gods. Sometimes as Mercury. Sometimes as Apollo. And sometimes as Venus, wearing women's clothing and a wig. He built a temple for himself on the Palatine Hill. He placed a life-sized golden statue in his own image inside it. His servants dressed that statue every day in the same clothes the emperor himself wore. Caligula told people he spoke with the gods. He claimed Jupiter talked to him directly. He even claimed they were equals. Suetonius records that during a storm, Caligula once threatened Jupiter himself, shouting at the sky and challenging the king of the gods to a fight. And if you think that was the craziest thing he ever did, wait. Because we have not even reached the scandals involving his sisters, his sexual humiliations, or his senseless war against the Senate and the aristocracy. According to Cassius Dio, Caligula claimed he had slept with Luna, the goddess of the moon. He would invite her to his bed. Then he would ask senators if they had seen her lying beside him. The senators, terrified, would shake their heads. Now imagine you are a Roman senator in that room. The man standing before you controls your life, your family, and your fortune. And he is asking whether you saw an invisible goddess in his bed. You know the wrong answer could mean death. What would you do? That is what Rome became after Caligula's illness. A place where reality was whatever the emperor said it was. A place where disagreement was not only dangerous, it was deadly. And the Senate watched in horror. Caligula hated the Senate. He saw them as cowards. Men who had bowed to Tiberius. Men who had allowed his family to be destroyed. Men who did nothing while his mother starved to death and his brothers rotted in prison. And now those same men smiled at him and called him great. Caligula knew what they were, and he wanted them to know that he knew. So he humiliated them constantly. He forced senators to run beside his chariot in their togas. While he rode ahead laughing, they gasped for breath and stumbled behind him. He made them wait for hours, sometimes for days, for meetings he never intended to attend. At public games, he gave them the worst seats, while freedmen and slaves sat in the best places. And then the executions began. Caligula discovered that killing wealthy Romans could be profitable. When a senator died, his estate could pass to the emperor. A nobleman was accused of treason, and his property was confiscated. So Caligula began inventing charges against Rome's richest men, because he wanted their money. He turned the legal system into an auction house. He auctioned off gladiators at absurd prices and forced senators to bid. One senator fell asleep during the auction. Caligula interpreted every nod of the sleeping man's head as a bid. When the senator woke up, he realized he had accidentally bought 13 gladiators for an astronomical price. The executions became more and more brutal. Caligula ordered one man to be cut in two. He forced parents to watch the executions of their own children. And then he spoke the words that would echo through 2,000 years of history. If only the entire Roman people had a single neck. One neck. So he could execute them all at once. Every citizen. Every senator. Whether he meant it literally is still debated by historians. Honestly, I do not know either. And while making this video, I found myself wondering what you think. So while you share your thoughts in the comments, let me introduce you to the most pampered animal that has ever lived. Incitatus. Incitatus was Caligula's favorite racehorse, and perhaps the most famous horse in history. He had a stable made of marble. He ate from an ivory trough. He slept on purple blankets. Even his bridle was decorated with precious stones. Caligula loved this horse so much that he fed him oats mixed with gold flakes. Incitatus had his own house and a full staff of servants. The night before races, guards were placed outside his stable to keep everything silent so the horse could sleep well. Caligula even hosted dinner parties in the horse's honor. Senators and nobles were invited to dine with Incitatus as the guest of honor. They were expected to raise their glasses to him and treat him with the same respect they would show a member of the imperial family. Anyone who refused, smiled mockingly, or failed to show enough enthusiasm had to face the consequences. And then Caligula announced that he planned to make Incitatus a consul. The highest elected office in Rome, the office that had once commanded armies and presided over the Senate. Caligula wanted to give it to a horse. The plan was never carried out. He was killed before it could happen, but the intention was made public and Rome was stunned. At first glance, this looks like pure madness. But some historians believe it may have been something more calculated, a deliberate insult aimed directly at the Senate. Caligula was telling them that his horse could do their job. He was saying that a four-legged animal eating golden oats was worth more than all the senators in that chamber combined. Whether it was madness or the cruelest political joke in Roman history, the message was clear. The Senate understood exactly what their emperor thought of them, and they began to realize something terrifying. The child they had celebrated, the son of the beloved Germanicus, the golden boy on whom Rome had placed all its hopes. If they did not destroy him, he would destroy them. But Caligula wasn't finished yet. While he humiliated the Senate, threatened the Roman people, and spoke to the moon while dressed as Venus, he was doing things behind the palace gates that would shock even Romans who had survived Tiberius. What Caligula did in private was even worse than what he did in public. And even in public, he was already terrifying. None of it would end until a guard named Cassius Curia finally decided he had seen enough. According to Suetonius, one of Caligula's habits at banquets was enough to disgust even Roman aristocrats. He would invite senators and nobles to lavish dinner parties. He would seat their wives in places of honor beside him. Then, during the meal, he would choose whichever woman he wanted and take her to a private room. Afterward, he would return to the table and openly describe the experience in front of her husband. He would criticize the woman, compare her, and judge her like an animal at the market. And the husband would sit there, smile, eat, and pretend nothing had happened. Because the alternative to smiling was death. Caligula forced these husbands to thank him. To act grateful, their wives sat beside them, fully aware of what had just happened, and fully aware it could happen again the next night. And the husbands raised their cups to the emperor's health. But this was not just lust. It was deliberate humiliation. Systematic humiliation. Caligula was not only taking their wives. He was proving that he could. He was proving that nothing belonged to them. Not their property. Not their dignity. Not even their families. Everything existed only because he allowed it. And if that shocks you, wait. Because there is more to say about what he did to his sisters. Caligula had three sisters. Agrippina, Drusilla, and Lovilla. After Tiberius had eliminated everyone in his family, they were the only people he had left. When Caligula became emperor, he honored his sisters in a way no Roman woman had ever been honored before. He placed their faces on coins. He included their names in sacred oaths. And he granted them privileges usually reserved for the most sacred priestesses in Rome. But one sister received more than all the others. Drusilla. According to Suetonius, Caligula took Drusilla away from her husband and brought her into the imperial palace. In Suetonius' words, he treated her as his lawful wife. At state banquets, he seated her beside him in the place normally reserved for the empress. He lived with her. He appeared with her in public. And in October of AD 37, when Caligula fell ill and believed he was about to die, he named Drusilla as his heir. It was the first and only time a Roman emperor left the empire to a woman. Ancient sources make even darker claims. Suetonius writes that the relationship between Caligula and his sisters went far beyond anything Rome considered acceptable. And that Drusilla was his favorite. We cannot know whether these claims describe what truly happened or whether they are the darkest possible interpretation of a bond so intense that Romans could only explain it through their greatest taboos. But one thing is certain. What Rome saw between this emperor and his sister had no precedent. It did not fit any category they understood. And then Drusilla died on June 10th, AD 38. At only 21 years old, Drusilla was gone and Caligula was completely shattered. After the death of his favorite sister, he turned mourning into law. Laughter became a crime. Bathing became a crime. Having dinner with one's own family became a crime. Anyone who smiled during the mourning period could be executed. Caligula fled Rome at midnight, wandered through Southern Italy, and refused to shave or cut his hair. Then he demanded that the Senate declare Drusilla a goddess. And they did. She was given her own temple, her own priests, and her own sacred games. Caligula named her diva Drusilla Panthea, Drusilla the Divine, the universal goddess. From that day forward, he never took an oath without invoking her name. While this was happening, Caligula's treatment of his two surviving sisters grew worse and worse. Eventually, Agrippina and Levilla could no longer endure it. They formed an alliance with Drusilla's widower, Lepidus, and plotted to overthrow their brother. According to ancient sources, both sisters were involved with Lepidus while the conspiracy was being planned. Caligula uncovered the plot. Lepidus was executed immediately. But for his sisters, Caligula chose something worse than death. He forced Agrippina to walk back to Rome, carrying Lepidus's ashes. It was a public humiliation, designed to break her. Then he exiled both Agrippina and Levilla to the Pontine Islands, the same barren prison islands where their mother had starved to death ten years earlier. After that exile, Caligula had no one left, no family he could trust, no unbroken bond. The last people in the world who understood him, who shared his trauma, and who had survived that nightmare childhood with him, were gone. One was dead. The other two had been exiled. And a Caligula without support was a Caligula without limits. His spending became uncontrollable. Tiberius had left the imperial treasury full. According to some estimates, it held 2.7 billion sesterces. It was an enormous fortune, built through decades of careful and frugal management. Caligula spent it all in less than two years. He built floating palaces designed for nothing but luxury. On Lake Nemi, he constructed massive pleasure ships with marble floors, running water, gardens, and baths. He poured money into spectacles more extravagant than anything Rome had ever seen. He built palaces constantly, demolished structures he disliked, and rebuilt them on a whim. He imported exotic animals from every corner of the empire and used them in arena shows that cost more than some provinces produced in a year. And when the money ran out, he found new ways to get more. Ancient sources claim he opened what they describe as a brothel inside the imperial palace. Not for pleasure this time, but for profit. He furnished rooms with beds and placed the wives of noble families there. Then he sent invitations across Rome, offering their services for a fee. Senators and businessmen were encouraged to attend. Refusals were noticed, and Caligula collected the money. He auctioned off gladiators' lives. He auctioned the property of condemned prisoners. He even auctioned the outcomes of court cases. Justice became a product. If you wanted your relative released, you paid. If you wanted your enemy convicted, you paid more. The legal system of the most powerful empire in the world had been reduced to a cash register operated by a 27-year-old man who believed he was Jupiter. I'm sure there is a politician you are comparing him to right now. I will be waiting for you in the comments. Then Caligula turned his attention to something greater than Rome. Something that nearly tore The Jewish crisis, like most of Caligula's disasters, began with his insistence that he was a god. Across the empire, temples were built for Caligula. Statues were raised. Sacrifices were offered. Most provinces obeyed without protest. For Romans, emperor worship was part of the political system. You burned a little incense. You bowed before the statue. Then you went on with your life. But the Jews refused. They were the only people in the empire who would not worship a living man as a god. Their religion forbade it. They prayed for the emperor. They offered sacrifices in his name. But they did not pray to him. They did not deify him. They did not place his statue in their synagogues or in their temple. And, as you might expect, and Caligula could not tolerate that. The crisis escalated when Greeks in the city of Jamnaya erected an altar to Caligula in the town square, provoking their Jewish neighbors. The local Jews tore it down. When Caligula heard this, he did not see it as a local dispute. He saw it as rebellion. He saw the Jews as the only people in his empire refusing to recognize the identity he had declared for himself. So he issued an order that sent shockwaves from Rome to Jerusalem. He commanded that a massive statue of himself, depicted as Jupiter, king of the gods, be built and placed inside the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple, the holiest place in all of Judaism. A chamber entered only by the high priest and only once a year. Caligula wanted his face, his body, his divine image standing at the center of that sacred space. This was not merely an insult. It was an existential threat to Jews across the empire. This order meant the desecration of the holiest place on earth. It meant the breaking of their covenant. It meant war. Petronius, the Roman governor of Syria, was ordered to carry it out. He marched south with two legions. But when he reached the region, he encountered something he did not expect. Thousands of Jews blocked his path, not with weapons, but with their own bodies. Entire communities had abandoned their fields during harvest season. That meant famine. And famine meant death. But they stood before the Roman army and said no. They told Petronius they would rather die than allow the statue to be placed in the temple. Petronius was a soldier. He knew how to crush resistance. But this was not ordinary resistance. This was a people willing to starve rather than submit. If he forced the statue into the temple, he would ignite rebellion across the entire eastern Mediterranean. Millions of Jews. Decades of bloodshed. A war Rome did not need and could not afford. So Petronius wrote to Caligula. He stalled. He delayed. He tried to buy time. And every day he waited, he knew he came one day closer to his own execution for disobedience. Meanwhile, in Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher named Philo led a delegation to Rome to plead directly with the emperor. Philo later wrote a detailed account of this meeting. It remains one of the most extraordinary documents to survive from the ancient world. He describes Caligula as mocking, contemptuous and almost completely uninterested. As the emperor walked through his gardens, the Jewish delegation followed him. Caligula inspected renovation work. He joked about Jewish dietary laws and the delegation desperately tried to argue for religious freedom. The crisis ended only because Caligula died. The statue was never erected. Petronius survived. The temple survived. But this incident revealed something terrifying about Rome under Caligula. One man's delusion of divinity nearly caused a war that could have thrown the entire Eastern Empire into chaos. The ego of a man unchecked by any institution, advisor or law came dangerously close to creating a catastrophe that might have overshadowed anything Nero or any emperor after him ever did. And by this point, even the people closest to Caligula had had enough. The conspiracy began with Cassius Curia, a tribune of the Praetorian Guard, a career soldier, a man who had served Rome his entire life and now served an emperor who mocked him every day. That detail is what pushed Curia toward the edge. Caligula took pleasure in humiliating people, no matter their rank, and he had a habit of giving Curia insulting passwords. Every day, the tribune approached the emperor to receive the military password. Caligula knew Curia was sensitive about how others saw his masculinity, so he gave him words designed to humiliate him in front of his men. Feminine words, mocking words, words that made the soldiers laugh. Day after day, one of Rome's most powerful guards was publicly degraded by a young emperor who thought it was funny. At first, it sounds like a small thing compared with murders, divine madness, and the temple crisis. An insulting password seems insignificant, but that is how tyranny works. It is not only the great horrors, it is the daily humiliations, the private wounds, the constant reminders that you are powerless, and one day, a person decides, enough. On January 24th, AD 41, Caligula attended a series of theatrical performances in a temporary theater near the palace. He was in high spirits. He had spent the morning watching actors and dancers. During an intermission, he passed through a narrow, underground corridor connecting the theater to the palace. Curia was waiting for him there. The conspirator stepped forward and attacked. The first blow struck Caligula in the neck, but it did not kill him immediately. Still, Caligula did not survive that corridor, and the killing did not end with the emperor. The conspirators knew that if Caligula's family survived, they could become a future claim to the throne. So the soldiers found his family and executed them. That included his daughter, Julia Drusilla, named after his beloved sister. She was only two years old. The reasoning was brutal, but practical. One day, Caligula's daughter could become a symbol for loyalists, so she was executed too. When the Senate heard the news, it erupted in cheers. The same senators who had once laughed at Caligula's jokes, the same men who had raised their cups to his horse, the same men who had admitted they could see the moon goddess in his bed. Now, they celebrated his death and called for the restoration of the Republic. But the Praetorian Guard had other plans. While the Senate debated freedom and democracy, a group of soldiers searched the palace for threats. Behind a curtain, they found a man hiding. He was trembling, terrified, convinced he was about to die. His name was Claudius, Caligula's uncle. The stuttering, limping man the imperial family had always treated as a joke. The man no one took seriously. The man Rome assumed would never amount to anything. The soldiers dragged him out. But instead of killing him, they lifted him onto their shoulders. They carried him to the Praetorian camp and they proclaimed him emperor. The Senate, still dreaming of restoring the Republic, suddenly realized that the guards had already made the decision for them, just as they had with Caligula. The soldiers chose the emperor. The Senate approved the choice afterward. That was how Rome worked now. And Claudius, the man nobody took seriously, would soon discover that surviving Caligula was the easy part. What came next? The wife he trusted. The betrayals he never saw coming would make even Caligula's reign look predictable. But that's a story for another time. If you want to see it, hit like and subscribe and drop Claudius in the comments. Caligula ruled for three years and ten months. In that short time, he drained one of the greatest treasuries of the ancient world. He killed senators for their money. He humiliated Rome's most powerful men by taking their wives. He declared himself a god. He nearly went to war against an entire religion to prove it. He said he would make his horse the highest official in the empire. He dressed as Venus. He argued with Jupiter. He claimed he slept with the moon. And while all of this happened, the Senate smiled. The soldiers saluted. The people cheered. Because that is what happens when a madman holds the sword. You smile until someone finally dares to take it from him, just like in today's world. So, was Caligula truly mad? Ancient sources say yes. Modern historians are not so certain. Some argue he was a calculating tyrant who used shock and humiliation as political weapons, keeping everyone unstable and afraid. Others believe his illness damaged his mind in a way that could never be repaired. Still, others say the trauma of watching his family be systematically destroyed created a man who trusted nothing, loved nothing, and wanted to burn the world because the world had burned him first. The truth is probably a mixture of all of these. Madness and method. Trauma and tyranny. A child who lost everything. A survivor who stayed alive by playing a role. And then, when he gained absolute power, realized he no longer had to act. You have just watched YouTube's Best History channel, where the facts are told as they are. See you in the next video.