‘I am rearing a viper for the Roman people.’
(Tiberius talking about young Caligula, in Suetonius’s Life of Caligula, section 11)

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by his nickname Caligula (meaning ‘little boots’), was the third Roman emperor.

Born in 12 AD, Caligula ruled from 37 until his assassination in 41, four brief, chaotic years. He was the son of the popular Roman general Germanicus Julius Caesar and Augustus’s grand-daughter, Agrippina the Elder.

Family tree of the Julio-Claudian emperors

Coming from a small nuclear family I find extended family trees confusing at the best of times. The family tree of the early Roman emperors is especially confusing because:

1. the emperors and everyone else in their families married multiple times
2. many of the emperors, and people in their families, had the same names or combinations of the same names, such as Drusus, Germanicus, Nero and Tiberius
3. they regularly changed their names, exemplified by Octavian who went through half a dozen name changes – but most of all because:
4. all the key men adopted nephews or grandchildren as sons, thus radically confusing the traditional notion of ‘sons’ being the blood relative of at least one of their ‘parents’ – not in Imperial Rome, they weren’t

Which goes to explain why none of the Julio-Claudian emperors was a blood descendant of his immediate predecessor.

Maybe the family tree below helps. It is very much simplified. What I like about it, compared to the many similar trees on the internet, is the use of dotted lines to indicate adoption, which makes it clear how Julius Caesar adopted Octavian, Octavian – renamed Augustus – adopted Tiberius, Tiberius adopted Germanicus (who predeceased him) and then Gaius (Caligula) and Claudius adopted Nero.

Family tree of the Julio-Claudian emperors.

From it you can see that Caius Julius Caesar adopted his great-nephew Octavianus as son and heir. Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Thirteen years later (31 BC), after two further civil wars, Octavianus had become the sole power in Rome. Awarded the honorific ‘Augustus’ in 27 BC, he adopted a number of male members of his extended family but these died before him, so he ended up adopting his step-son, Tiberius Claudius Nero, as his son and heir.

Augustus had forced Tiberius to a) marry his daughter, Julia and b) to adopt Julia’s son, Germanicus, as his own son, sitting alongside his actual biological son, Drusus. According to Suetonius, Tiberius hated both these ‘sons’. He was happy when his adopted son, the popular charismatic Germanicus, died in 19 AD, and when his biological son, Drusus, died in 23 AD (possibly had him poisoned).

Suetonius’s life of Caligula

Roman texts were divided into short sections, sometimes called ‘chapters’ though most are less than a page long. Suetonius’s biography of the emperor Caligula is 60 sections long.

Suetonius himself divides his Life of Caligula into two halves: sections 1 to 21 deal with The Emperor; then the last 40 sections deal with The Monster.

Part One: The Emperor

1. Germanicus Julius Caesar was son of Drusus and the younger Antonia. A charming, immensely popular figure, successful general, popular with the crowd, stylish and elegant, he was adopted as ‘son’ by his paternal uncle Tiberius. He processed through the posts of quaestor­ship and consul before the legal age.

When Augustus died Germanicus was sent to the army in Germany. The legions there didn’t want to accept Tiberius as emperor but Germanicus made them. He defeated the Germans in various battles and was a warded a triumph back in Rome.

Chosen consul for a second time, he was sent to restore order in the Orient, and after vanquishing the king of Armenia and reducing Cappadocia to a province, died of a lingering illness at Antioch, aged just 33.

It was widely believed that Tiberius had him poisoned by the governor of Syria, Gnaeus Piso, governor of Syria. In consequence Piso narrowly escaped being torn to pieces by the people on his return to Rome, and was condemned to death by the senate.

3. Suetonius delivers a paean to Germanicus: he was a paragon of a man: handsome, brave: in battle he fought the enemy hand to hand; a great orator; adept at the best learning of Greece and Rome, among other fruits of his studies he left some Greek comedies. He was kind, with a remarkable capacity for winning men’s affection.

In Germany Germanicus planned to bury all the dead of Varus’s three lost legions (massacred in the Teutoburger Forest in 9 AD) and took the lead in collecting and assembling them by hand.

4. Germanicus was so popular with the masses that he was greeted by cheering crowds wherever he went. When he returned from Germany after quelling the rebellion, the entire population poured out of Rome as far as the twentieth milestone.

5. Popular sadness at Germanicus’s death was immense. The temples were stoned and the altars of the gods thrown down, some flung their household gods into the street. Even barbarian peoples unanimously consented to a truce as if all the world shared in the tragedy. It is said that some princes cut off their beards and had their wives’ heads shaved.

6. False rumours that he had recovered led to widespread rejoicing, only to be cast down when the final confirmation of his death came through. Public grief knew no limits and continued even during the festal days of the month of December.

Germanicus’s fame and regret for his loss were increased by the horror of the times which followed since it was widely believed that Tiberius’s cruelty had been held in check through his respect for Germanicus and was now given free rein.

7. Germanicus had married Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa and Julia, who bore him nine children. Two died in infancy, one in boyhood. Of the surviving six, three girls – Agrippina, Julia Drusilla and Livilla, born in successive years – and three boys – Nero, Drusus and Gaius Caesar, the future emperor. Nero and Drusus were accused of being public enemies by the senate on the accusation of Tiberius.

8. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was born in 12 AD when his father was 27. Suetonius spends several sections weighing the evidence about where Gaius was born.

9. Gaius’s surname, ‘Caligula’, was a jokey nickname awarded by the soldiers he grew up among. [Caliga was the name of a type of military boot. His father liked dressing his little son in a child’s version of a soldier’s outfit, including miniature versions of these boots. Latin formed diminutives of words by adding ‘-ula’ to the end of them. So ‘caligula’ literally meant ‘little boots’ and the nickname stuck.]

10. As a boy Caligula accompanied his father on his expedition to Syria. After Germanicus’s death, his widow, Caligula’s mother, Agrippina, returned with her six children to Rome, where she became entangled in a bitter feud with Tiberius, which led to her banishment. Caligula went to live with his great-grandmother Livia and when Livia died (in 29 AD), he lived with his grand-mother Antonia. The emperor Tiberius had retreated to Capri in 26. In 31, as he reached the age of manhood (18), Caligula was summoned to join him.

In Capri Caligula proved resilient to the ill-will of the emperor and his flatterers. He ignored the bad treatment of his mother and brothers, and was so obsequious to his grandfather that it was said of him that no one had ever been a better slave or a worse master.

11. Here in Capri his natural cruelty and viciousness were allowed to flourish. He developed a taste for witnessing torture and execution and by night revelled in gluttony and adultery. He liked wearing a wig and practicing the arts of dancing and singing. It was observing his cruelty and immorality blossoming which led Tiberius to (allegedly) say that Caligula’s advent marked the ruin of him (Tiberius) and the world; that he was rearing a viper for the Roman people and a Phaethon for the world. [In the Greek myth Phaethon tricked his father, Apollo, into letting him drive the chariot of the son which, not being strong enough, he let plunge down towards the earth, drying up rivers, causing earthquakes and destroying entire cities.]

12. Gaius took to wife Junia Claudilla, daughter of Marcus Silanus, a man of noble rank. He was appointed augur then advanced to the role of pontifex maximus. After the fall of Sejanus, Tiberius’s henchman, in 31, Tiberius encouraged Caligula to think of himself as the heir to the throne.

After Junia died in childbirth, Caligula seduced Ennia Naevia, wife of Macro, who at that time commanded the praetorian guard, promising to marry her when he became emperor. Difficult for us to understand that, according to Suetonius, he did this in order to worm himself into Macro’s favour.

Suetonius then, with astonishing casualness, claims that Caligula poisoned Tiberius. He ordered his signet ring of power to be taken from him and when it was discovered that Tiberius was still breathing, himself placed a pillow over his face. Others claim he strangled the old man (Tiberius was 78 when he died) with his own hand, immediately ordering the crucifixion of a freedman who cried out at the awful deed.

Later, Caligula put it about that he was avenging Tiberius’s execution of his mother and two brothers.

13. Caligula was popular with the general population because of his youth, his popularity with the soldiers, who he’d grown up among, and the aura from his legendary father, Germanicus. And Tiberius had led a reign of terror for over a decade. So his accession was greeted with rejoicing. His journey from Capri to Rome accompanying the body of Tiberius was greeted by cheering crowds at each town.

14. When he entered Rome, full and absolute power was at once put into his hands by the unanimous consent of the senate and of the mob, contrary to Tiberius’s will which had named his other grandson as joint heir with Caligula.

Foreign rulers sent messages of congratulation, including king Artabanus of Parthia who had been outspoken in his contempt for Tiberius.

15. At the beginning of his reign Caligula carefully courted popularity. He delivered a tearful eulogy at Tiberius’s funeral, then send to the islands where his mother and brothers had been banished, to fetch back their ashes to give a decent burial as well as games in the Circus in honour of his mother, providing a carriage to carry her image in the procession.

In memory of his father he renamed the month of September Germanicus. He lavished on his grandmother Antonia all the honours Livia Augusta had ever enjoyed. He took his uncle Claudius as his colleague in the consul­ship (37 AD). He adopted his brother Tiberius on the day that he assumed the gown of manhood and gave him the title of Chief of the Youth. He caused the names of his sisters to be included in all oaths.

He recalled those who had been condemned to banishment, had all documents relating to the cases of his mother and brothers carried to the Forum and burned, declared the era of anonymous informers over.

In other words, he dazzled everyone by displays of filial duty and respect.

16. Caligula banished from Rome the sexual perverts called spintriae who Tiberius had patronised.

He published the accounts of the empire, which had regularly been made public by Augustus,​ a practice discontinued by Tiberius. He allowed the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to himself. He revised the lists of the Roman knights strictly and scrupulously. He tried also to restore the suffrage to the people by reviving the custom of elections. He paid faithfully and without dispute the legacies named in the will of Tiberius as well as in that of Julia Augusta, which Tiberius had suppressed.

He remitted the tax of a two-hundredth on auction sales in Italy, made good to many their losses from fires, and whenever he restored kings to their thrones, he allowed them all the arrears of their taxes and their revenue for the meantime.

This was all wildly popular and a golden shield was voted him, which was to be borne every year to the Capitol on an appointed day by the colleges of priests, escorted by the senate, while boys and girls of noble birth sang the praises of his virtues in a choral ode. It was decreed that the day on which he began to reign should be called the Parilia (the festival celebrating the founding of Rome) indicating that, after the long cruel years of Tiberius, Rome had been founded a second time.

17. Caligula twice gave the people a gift of 300 sesterces each, and twice a lavish banquet to the senate and the equestrian order, together with their wives and children. To make a permanent addition to public gaiety he added a day to the Saturnalia and called it Juvenalis.

18. Caligula gave several gladiatorial shows. He exhibited stage-plays continually, of various kinds and in many different places, sometimes even by night, lighting up the whole city. He also gave many games in the Circus, lasting from early morning until evening, introducing the manoeuvres of the game called Troy.

19. Caligula bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at Puteoli, a distance of about 3,600 paces,​ by bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchoring them in a double line, afterwards a mound of earth was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner of the Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for two successive days, the first day on a caparisoned horse, resplendent in a crown of oak leaves, a buckler, a sword, and a cloak of cloth of gold.

[Interestingly, Suetonius makes mention, here, of his own family, telling us that his grandfather told him the reason for the work was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to Tiberius, when he was worried about his successor and inclined towards his natural grandson, that Gaius had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding about over the gulf of Baiae with horses.]

20. Caligula gave shows in foreign lands, Athenian games​ at Syracuse in Sicily, and miscellaneous games at Lugdunum in Gaul.

21. Caligula completed the public works which had been half finished under Tiberius, namely the temple of Augustus and the theatre of Pompey. He likewise began an aqueduct in the region near Tibur and an amphitheatre beside the Saepta (the former finished by his successor Claudius,​ while the latter was abandoned). He planned to have a canal run through the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece and sent a chief centurion to survey the work.

Part Two: The Monster

22. So much for Caligula as emperor; Suetonius tells us that the rest of his biography will now tell of the monster.

Caligula claimed to be a god. He ordered all the best statues in Greece brought to Rome, decapitated and topped with copies of his own head.

Caligula converted the temple of Castor and Pollux into the vestibule of a hugely expanded Imperial palace and often took his place between the divine brethren to be worshipped by citizens.

He set up a temple to his own godhead, with priests and with victims of the choicest kind. He placed in it a life-sized statue of himself made from gold, which was dressed each day in the same clothes he was wearing.

During the day he would talk confidentially with Jupiter Capitolinus, now whispering in his ear, then turning his ear to the god’s mouth. Sometimes they had angry arguments if Jupiter disobeyed Caligula’s orders.

23. Caligula hated to be thought of as the grandson of Agrippa, a mere commoner, so spread the rumour that his mother was the product of an incestuous passion between Augustus and his daughter, Julia. He insulted the memory of Livia, and drove his grandmother Antonia to an early death with insults (although some think that he also gave her poison)

He had his brother​, Tiberius, put to death without warning, suddenly sending a tribune of the soldiers to do the deed. He drove his father-in‑law Silanus to end his life by cutting his throat with a razor.

He spared his uncle, Claudius, as a laughing-stock.

24. Caligula lived in habitual incest with all his sisters. He is believed to have violated Drusilla when he was still a minor, and even to have been caught lying with her by his grandmother, Antonia. Afterwards, she married Lucius Cassius Longinus, an ex-consul, but Caligula took her from him and openly treated her as his lawful wife

After Drusilla died Caligula was beside himself with grief, not cutting his hair or shaving his beard. He never afterwards took an oath about matters of the highest moment except by the godhead of Drusilla. The rest of his sisters he slept with sometimes, or prostituted them to his favourites.

25. Suetonius says it is hard to decide whether he behave more appallingly in contracting his marriages, annulling them, or as a ‘husband’.

At the marriage of Livia Orestilla to Gaius Piso he gave orders that the bride be taken to his own house, where he ravished her for two days before ‘divorcing’ her. Two years later he banished her on the suspicion that she’d gone back to her former husband.

When he heard the rumour that the grandmother of Lollia Paulina, who was married to Gaius Memmius, had once been a remarkably beauti­ful woman, he recalled her from the province where he husband was serving suddenly called Lollia from the province, separated her from her husband, and married her; then in a short time had her put away, with the command never to have intercourse with anyone.

Though Caesonia was neither beauti­ful nor young, and was already mother of three daughters by another, Caligula loved her passionately, often exhibiting her to the soldiers riding by his side, decked with cloak, helmet and shield, and to his friends even in a state of nudity. Only when she bore him a daughter did he formally declare her his wife (in 39 AD). He named the child Julia Drusilla.

Ptolemy, son of king Juba, his cousin, Macro and Ennia, who helped him to the throne, he had put to death.

He forced senators to run alongside his chariot and to wait on him at table. Some he had put to death. When the consuls forgot to proclaim his birthday, he deposed them and left the state for three days without its highest magistrates.​

His sleep was disturbed by the noise made by people who’d come in the middle of the night to get the free seats in the Circus, so he had them driven out with cudgels and in the melee more than twenty Roman knights were crushed to death, with as many matrons and a countless number of others.

He liked to scatter free tickets at the theatre in order to sow confusion.

At gladiatorial shows he ordered the awnings pulled back when the sun was hottest and give orders that no one be allowed to leave, leaving the audience to burn.

27. When cattle to feed the wild beasts which he had provided for a gladiatorial show were expensive, Caligula ordered them to be fed with criminals. He had prisoners lined up and selected on a whim those to be executed and fed to the animals.

He had many men of noble rank branded with hot irons then condemned to the mines, to work at building roads, or to be thrown to the wild beasts, or he had them up in cages on all fours, or sawn in half.

These punishments were not for serious offences, but having maybe having criticised one of his shows or not having sworn by his Genius.

He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death of his son and baiting him trying to with jokes and gaiety.

He had the manager of his gladiatorial shows and beast-baitings beaten with chains in his presence for several successive days until the stench of his putrefied brain prompted him to finish him off in disgust.

He burned a writer of Atellan farces alive in the middle of the arena of the amphitheatre, because of a humorous line of double meaning.

When a Roman knight on being thrown to the wild beasts loudly protested his innocence, he took him out, cut off his tongue, and threw him back again.

28. Caligula conceived the notion that exiles were conspiring against him and so sent emissaries from island to island to butcher them all.

He had one of the senators stabbed with quills then turned over to the mob. He wasn’t satisfied till he saw the man’s limbs, members and bowels dragged through the streets and piled up before him.

29. Caligula’s speech was full of threats. When his grandmother Antonia gave him some advice he replied: ‘Remember that I have the right to do anything to anybody.’

After banishing his sisters, he made the threat that he not only had islands, but swords as well.

An ex-praetor who had retired to Anticyra for his health, sent frequent requests for an extension of his leave, so Caligula had him put to death, joking that anyone who had not been helped by a long course of hellebore needed to be bled.

When he signed the list of prisoners who were to be put to death, he said that he was ‘clearing his accounts’.

30. Caligula seldom had anyone put to death except by numerous slight wounds, his constant order, which soon became well-known, being: ‘Strike so that he may feel that he is dying.’ He often uttered the familiar line of the tragic poet Accius:

‘Let them hate me, so they but fear me.’

He regularly castigated the senators for having informed against his mother (who Tiberius had exiled then killed on trumped-up charges).

He constantly tongue-lashed the equestrian order as devotees of the stage and the arena.

Angered at the rabble for applauding a faction which he opposed, he cried: ‘I wish the Roman people had but a single neck.’

31. Caligula lamented that there had been no great disaster during his rule, saying the reign of Augustus had been made famous by the Varus massacre,​ and that of Tiberius by the collapse of the amphitheatre at Fidenae, while his own was threatened with oblivion because of its prosperity. So he was heard wishing for famine, pestilence, fires or a great earthquake.

32. Even while feasting or at amusements, he was cruel, having people tortured in front of him as he ate, and employing a soldier who was adept at decapitation to cut off the heads of people brought from prison.

At the dedication of a bridge he’d had constructed at Puteoli, he invited members of the crowd to join him on the bridge, then ordered them all to be thrown into the water.

At a public banquet a slave was caught stealing a strip of silver from a couch so he ordered his hands to be cut off and hung round his neck and that he then be led about among the guests, preceded by a placard giving the reason for his punishment.

When he was training with a murmillo from the gladiatorial school who was using a wooden sword and fell out of deference to the emperor, Caligula stabbed him with a real dagger.

At a particularly sumptuous banquet he suddenly burst into a fit of laughter and when the consuls politely inquired why, he replied: ‘I was just thinking that at a single nod of mine both of you could have your throats cut on the spot.’

33. Caligula stood next to a statue of Jupiter and asked the tragic actor Apelles which of the two seemed to him the greater and, when he hesitated, had him flayed with whips.

Whenever he kissed the neck of his wife or sweetheart he would say: ‘And this beautiful throat can be cut whenever I please.’

He loved Caesonia but he sometimes playfully threatened to torture her to find out why he loved her so passionately.

34. Caligula made malicious attacks on men from every era. Augustus had moved some statues of famous men from the court of the Capitol to the Campus Martius. Caligula had them all destroyed, and thereafter forbade the erection of the statue of any living man anywhere, without his knowledge and consent.

He even considered destroying the poems of Homer, asking why he should not have the same privilege as Plato, who excluded Homer from his ideal commonwealth.

He came close to More than that, removing the writings and the busts of Vergil and Livy from all the libraries, calling Virgil talentless and Livy wordy and inaccurate.

He considered abolishing the legal profession altogether in order to prevent any opinions being given which contradicted his wish.

35. Caligula deprived the noblest families in Rome of their traditional emblems.

He invited King Ptolemy to Rome, entertained him lavishly and then had him put to death merely because, when giving a gladiatorial show, he noticed that Ptolemy on entering the theatre attracted general attention by the splendour of his purple cloak.

Whenever he ran across handsome men with fine heads of hair he ordered the backs of their heads shaved.

There was no one of such low condition or such abject fortune that he did not envy him whatever advantages he possessed.

36. Caligula had no respect for his own chastity or anyone else’s.

He is said to have had unnatural relations with Marcus Lepidus, the pantomime actor Mnester, and certain hostages.

Valerius Catullus, a young man of a consular family, publicly proclaimed that he had buggered the emperor and worn himself out in the process.

Beside incest with his three sisters and his passion for the concubine Pyrallis, there was scarcely any woman of rank whom he did not proposition.

He invited them to dinner with their husbands and, as they passed by the foot of his couch, inspected them critically as if buying slaves. Then he would leave the room, sending for the one who pleased him best, returning soon afterwards with evident signs of what had occurred, after which he would openly commend or criticise the woman, commenting on her body and performance.

37. Caligula’s extravagance was unparalleled. He invented new sort of baths and unnatural varieties of food. He bathed in hot or cold perfumed oils, drank pearls of great price dissolved in vinegar, and set before his guests loaves and meats of gold, declaring that a man ought either to be frugal or Caesar.

He scattered large sums of money among the commons from the roof of the basilica Julia for several days in succession.

He built galleys with ten banks of oars, with sterns set with gems, multi-coloured sails, spacious baths, colonnades and banquet-halls, and even a variety of vines and fruit trees. Then he would recline at table as they cruised up and down along the coast of Campania amid songs and choruses.

He built villas and country houses with utter disregard of expense.

He deliberately set out to achieve the impossible: he built moles out into the deep and stormy sea, tunnelled rocks of hardest flint, built up plains to the height of mountains and razed mountains to the level of the plain.

In sum, he squandered vast sums of money, including the 2.7 billion sesterces which Tiberius had amassed, in less than a year.

38. When he ran low on funds he devised a complicated system of false accusations, auction sales, and taxes. For example he demanded proof of Roman citizen­ship or payment.

He disallowed all returns of property from emperor to owner, if the owner had subsequently made any additions or improvements.

If any chief centurions since the beginning of Tiberius’ reign had not named that emperor or himself among their heirs, he set aside their wills on the ground of ingratitude.

With the result that hosts of people included Caligula as beneficiaries of their wills. But if he learned of this and the will-maker hadn’t died, he accused them of toying with him and sent them poisoned food.

He conducted trials of people like this himself, assigning fines at random, naming in advance the amount he intended to fleece them by.

At one sitting he condemned in a single sentence more than forty prisoners who were accused on different counts, boasting to Caesonia, when she woke after a nap, of the great amount of business he had done while she was taking her siesta.

He attended auctions and deliberately drove the bids as high as possible, forcing people to pay ridiculous sums, bankrupting bidders, forcing some of them to commit suicide.

39. When Caligula was in Gaul he had arranged to be sold for huge amounts the jewels, furniture, slaves, and even the freedmen of his sisters who had been condemned to death. He found this so profitable that he sent to Rome for all the paraphernalia of the old palace,​ seizing for its transportation public carriages and animals from the bakeries with the result that bread became scarce at Rome.

40. He levied new and unheard of taxes. There was no class of commodities or men on which he did not impose some form of tariff. On all eatables sold in any part of Rome he levied a fixed charge. On lawsuits and legal processes he demanded a fortieth part of the sum involved, on the daily wages of porters, an eighth, on the earnings of prostitutes, as much as each received for one trick.

41. He opened a brothel in his palace, setting aside a number of rooms where matrons and freeborn youths should stand exposed. Then he sent his pages​ about the fora and basilicas to invite young men and old to come and enjoy themselves, lending money on interest to those who attended and having clerks openly take down their names, as contributors to Caesar’s revenues.

42. When Caligula’s daughter was born he complained that, in addition to the burden of a ruler he now had to bear that of a father and asked for contributions for the girl’s maintenance and dowry.

He declared he would accept New Year gifts and on 1 January took his place in the entrance to the Palace, to receive the coins which a throng of people of all classes showered on him.

Finally, seized by with a mania for money, he would pour out huge piles of gold pieces, walk over them barefooted or wallow in them for a long time.

43. On a whim Caligula announced an expedition to Germany. It was a farce. He assembled legions and auxiliaries from all quarters, collecting provisions of every kind on an unheard of scale. Then he made a forced march for the border, while he himself was carried in a litter by eight bearers. He required the inhabitants of the towns through which he passed to sweep the roads for him and sprinkle them to lay the dust.

44. On reaching his camp, to overawe everyone, Caligula dismissed in disgrace the generals who were late in bringing in the auxiliaries. In reviewing his troops he deprived many of the chief centurions who were well on in years of their rank, in some cases only a few days before they would have served their time.

All that he accomplished was to receive the surrender of Adminius, son of Cunobelinus king of the Britons, who had been banished by his father and had deserted to the Romans with a small force. But he sent a letter back to Rome boasting as if he’d conquered the whole island.

45. Finding no one to fight with, he had a few Germans of his body-guard taken across the river and hidden and then word brought to him after lunch that the enemy were close at hand. This allowed him to rush out with his friends and flatterers, where they ‘captured’ these Germans and brought them back to the camp where he berated everyone else for their cowardice.

Another time he had hostages sent ahead and, again, suddenly left a banquet with some of the cavalry, galloped off and overtook these entirely quiescent friends, leading them back to the camp in fetters like a great hero.

Meanwhile, he rebuked the senate and people back in Rome for living the life of luxury while he exposed himself to untold dangers.

[If we compare this behaviour to the eight hard years fighting of Julius Caesar in Gaul, it really feels like history repeats itself, first as genuine struggle, then as pantomime.]

46. Caligula drew up his army on the coast (presumably the Channel coast) and then ordered them to…gather seashells and fill their helmets and the folds of their gowns with them.

As a monument of his victory he erected a lofty tower, from which lights were to shine at night to guide the course of ships, as from the Pharos.

47. Caligula then stage managed a triumph back in Rome in which he ordered various friendly Gauls to dye their hair red and pose as captured German chieftains.

He had the triremes in which he had sailed on the Channel carried overland to Rome. Imagine the effort of just this one act!

48. Before leaving Gaul Caligula conceived the insane idea of massacring all the legions there because, 20 years earlier they had, upon hearing of the death of Augustus, besieged the headquarters of his father Germanicus.

He was only just restrained from this order but insisted on decimating them i.e. killing every tenth one, so had them assembled without their weapons, but when he saw some sneaking off to get their swords, he panicked, and fled, travelling back to Rome and taking his fury out on the Senate.

49. Caligula entered Rome to an ovation (one step down from a formal triumph), meditating further crimes and atrocities, but four months later he was dead.

It is said that he intended to massacre all the best men of both orders (presumably senate and knights) and then move the capital of the empire to Antium or maybe to Alexandria. Two lists were found of the men to be executed.

50. Caligula’s physique He was very tall and extremely pale, with an unshapely body, but very thin neck and legs. His eyes and temples were hollow, his forehead broad and grim, his hair thin and entirely gone on the top of his head, though his body was hairy. Because of this to look upon him from a higher place as he passed by, or for any reason whatever to mention a goat, was treated as a capital offence.

While his face was naturally forbidding and ugly, he purposely made it even more savage, practising all kinds of terrible and fearsome expressions before a mirror.

He was sound neither of body nor mind. As a boy he was troubled with epilepsy and it recurred in manhood. During attacks he was hardly able to walk, to stand up, to collect his thoughts, or to hold up his head.

Some say his wife Caesonia gave him an aphrodisiac which had the effect of driving him mad.

He suffered from insomnia, never getting more than three hours sleep a night. He had bad nightmares and premonitions.

51. Caligula combined two mental faults: extreme assurance and excessive timorousness. He claimed to despise the gods but was terrified of lightning and thunder.

Panicked by rumour of a German attack, he deserted his troops, rode quickly back to the bridges, which were packed with troops, and so had himself passed from hand to hand over the men’s heads.

Hearing of an uprising in Germany he made preparations to flee Rome. His assassins played on this well-known fear when they claimed to the soldiery, after they’d murdered him, that he committed suicide after hearing of a defeat.

52. Caligula wore outlandish clothes. Instead of a plain toga, he often appeared in public in embroidered cloaks covered with precious stones, with a long-sleeved tunic and bracelets, sometimes in silk​ and in a woman’s robe, now in slippers or buskins, again in boots, such as the emperor’s bodyguard wear, and at times in the low shoes which are worn by women.

He frequently wore the uniform of a triumphing general, even before his campaign, and sometimes the breastplate of Alexander the Great, which he had had taken from Alexander’s tomb at Alexandria.

53. Caligula wasn’t very interested in literature but paid attention to oratory and very eloquent. When he was angry he let forth an abundant flow of words and thoughts, he paced up and down, and his delivery was such that he was clearly heard at a distance.

The Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (4 BC to 65 AD) was popular during his reign but Caligula accused him of writing ‘mere school exercises’ and of being ‘sand without lime’.

He liked to compose speeches for and against those he had brought to trial and often forced the senate and knights to listen to both addresses, before making a decision on a whim.

54. Caligula was very active. He appeared in the Circus as a Thracian gladiator, fighting with the weapons of actual warfare; as a charioteer; and even as a singer and dancer.

He fancied his talents so much that even at public performances he couldn’t refrain from singing with the tragic actor as he delivered his lines, or from openly imitating his gestures by way of praise or correction.

On the day he was assassinated he seems to have ordered an all-night vigil for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the licence of the occasion to make his first appearance on the stage.

On one occasion he summoned three senators of consular rank to the palace and when they arrived in fear of their lives, he seated them on a stage and then suddenly burst onto it amid a great din of flutes and clogs, dressed in a cloak and a tunic reaching to his heels, performed a song and dance and disappeared again.

Yet he could not swim.

55. Those Caligula loved he loved with a mad intensity. He used to kiss Mnester, the pantomime actor, even in the theatre, and if anyone made the slightest sound while his favourite was dancing, he had him dragged from his seat and scourged him with his own hand.

On the day before the games, in order to prevent his horse, Incitatus, from being disturbed, he sent his soldiers to enforce silence in the whole neighbourhood.

Besides a stall of marble, a manger of ivory, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, he gave this horse a house, a troop of slaves and furniture, for the elegant entertainment of the guests invited in his name. It said that he planned to make his horse consul.

56. There were many conspiracies, until two men succeeded in killing Caligula with the co-operation of his most influential freedmen and the officers of the praetorian guard.

They decided to kill him at noon as he left the Palatine games. The principal part was claimed by Cassius Chaerea, tribune of a cohort of the praetorian guard. Caligula used to taunt him, a man already well on in years, with voluptuousness and effeminacy and every form of insult. Whenever he asked for the watchword Gaius would give him ‘Priapus’ or ‘Venus’ and when Chaerea had occasion to thank him for anything, Caligula would hold out his hand to kiss, forming and moving it in an obscene fashion.

57. Caligula’s approaching murder was foretold by many prodigies:

• the statue of Jupiter at Olympia, which he had ordered to be taken to pieces and moved to Rome, suddenly uttered such a peal of laughter that the scaffoldings collapsed and the workmen took to their heels
• a man called Cassius turned up, who declared that he had been bidden in a dream to sacrifice a bull to Jupiter
• the Capitol at Capua was struck by lightning on the Ides of March, and also the room of the doorkeeper of the Palace at Rome
• he soothsayer Sulla, when Gaius consulted him about his horoscope, declared that inevitable death was close at hand
• the lots of Fortune at Antium warned him to beware of Cassius, and he accordingly ordered the death of Cassius Longinus, who was at the time proconsul of Asia, forgetting that the family name of Chaerea was Cassius
• the day before he was killed he dreamt that he stood in heaven beside the throne of Jupiter and that the god struck him with the toe of his right foot and hurled him to earth
• the day before his death, as he was sacrificing, he was sprinkled with the blood of a flamingo,
• the pantomimic actor Mnester danced a tragedy which the tragedian Neoptolemus had acted years before during the games at which Philip king of the Macedonians was assassinated
• in a farce called ‘Laureolus’, in which the chief actor falls as he is making his escape and vomits blood, several understudies​ so vied with one another in giving evidence of their proficiency that the stage swam in blood

58. On the ninth day before the Kalends of February, at about the seventh hour, he hesitated whether or not to get up for luncheon, since his stomach was still disordered from excess of food on the day before, but at length he came out at the persuasion of his friends.

In the covered passage through which he had to pass, some boys of good birth, who had been summoned from Asia to appear on the stage, were rehearsing their parts, and he stopped to watch and to encourage them and had not the leader of the troop complained that he had a chill, he would have returned and had the performance given at once.

From this point there are two versions of the story: some say that as he was talking with the boys, Chaerea came up behind, cried ‘Take this!’ and gave him a deep sword wound in the neck, and that then the tribune Cornelius Sabinus, who was the other conspirator and faced Caligula, stabbed him in the breast.

Others say that Sabinus, after getting rid of the crowd through centurions who were in the plot, asked for the watchword, as soldiers do, and that when Caligula gave him ‘Jupiter’, he cried ‘So be it’ and, as Caligula looked around, he split his jawbone with a blow of his sword.

As he lay writhing on the ground crying ‘I am still alive’ the other conspirators dispatched him with 30 wounds as the cry went around, ‘Strike again.’ Some even thrust their swords through his privates. At the beginning of the disturbance his bearers ran to his aid with their poles and then some of the Germans of his body-guard, who killed several of his assassins, as well as some innocent senators who happened to be nearby.

59. Caligula lived 29 years and ruled 3 years, 10 months and 8 days. His body was conveyed secretly to the gardens of the Lamian family, where it was partly consumed on a hastily erected pyre and buried beneath a light covering of turf. Later his sisters on their return from exile dug it up, cremated it, and consigned it to the family tomb.

Before this was done, it is well known that the caretakers of the gardens were disturbed by ghosts, and that, in the house where he was murdered, not a night passed without some fearsome apparition until at last the house itself was destroyed by fire.

With Caligula died his wife Caesonia, stabbed with a sword by a centurion, while his daughter’s brains were dashed out against a wall.

60. The atmosphere of fear and paranoia continued after his death. Not even after the murder was made known was it believed that Caligula was dead. People suspected that Caligula himself had staged his own death and would return to punish anyone who was celebrating.

The confusion was exacerbated because the conspirators had not agreed on a successor. The senate was unanimously in favour of re-establishing the republic and so called the first meeting, not in the senate house, because it bore the by-now hated name Julian Building, but in the Capitol.

Some wanted all memory of the Caesars obliterated and all their temples destroyed. Men commented that all the Caesars whose forename was Gaius had perished by the sword, beginning with the one who was slain in the times of Cinna. [Although Michael Grant tells us in a footnote that this is not factually correct, it indicates the terrible reputation the family had acquired.]

[Once Claudius was securely in power he had Caligula’s assassins, including Cassius Chaerea and Julius Lupus, the murderer of Caligula’s wife and daughter, put to death – to ensure Claudius’s own safety and to act as a deterrent against conspirators during his reign.]

Credit

Robert Graves’s translation of The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius was published by Penguin in 1957. A revised translation by Classicist Michael Grant, more faithful to the Latin original, was published in 1979. A further revised edition was published in 1989 with an updated bibliography. I read the Penguin version in parallel with the 1914 Loeb Classical Library translation which is available online.

Related links

• The Life of Tiberius by Suetonius online

Roman reviews

• Complete list of my Roman reviews