Gaius Caligula

31 Aug 12AD - Caligula is born 28 Mar 37AD - Becomes the third Emperor of Rome 24 Jan 41AD - Assassinated by Praetorian Guard All classical accounts of Gaius "Caligula" (12-41) agree that I possessed elements of madness, cruelty, viciousness, extravagance and megalomania. I am described as a coarse and cruel despot with an extraordinary passion for sadism and a fierce energy. I could get extremely excited and angry. I was tall, spindly, pale and prematurely bald. I was so sensitive about my lack of hair that it was a capital crime for anyone to look down from a high place as I passed by. Sometimes I ordered those with a fine head of hair to be shaved. I made up for lack of hair on my head by an abundance of body-hair. About this too I could be equally sensitive; even the mention of "hairy goats" in conversation was dangerous. I used to grimace, which I practised in front of a mirror, and I was an impressive orator. An interesting detail is that my real nature was only gradually revealed. My great-uncle, the Emperor Tiberius (42 BC -37 AD), once said: "There was never a better slave nor a worse master than Caligula."
I was originally called Gaius. I grew up in a camp as a favourite of my father's soldiers. The troops nicknamed me "Caligula" after the child-size military boots I wore in camp. From the Emperor Augustus I inherited ambition and sensuality as well as the family affliction epilepsy. I was caught in bed with my sister Drusilla before I came of age. My famous father Germanicus (15 BC - 19 AD), my mother Agrippina the elder (14 BC-33 AD) and all my brothers were either killed or starved to death by order of the suspicious Emperor Tiberius and his ambitious Praetorian Prefect, Sejanus. During my adolescence, I was a virtual prisoner of Tiberius. By then Tiberius had largely withdrawn from active government and retreated to the island of Capri, where I kept him company and tried to play the part of a dutiful and upright young man. However, I could not fool Tiberius, who described me as a 'serpent'. Capri was ideally situated as a fortress and a refuge where Tiberius was free from fears of conspiracy and assassination. According to the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, at Capri Tiberius felt at liberty to indulge in all kinds of prolonged tortures and sexual perversities until he fell ill in March AD 37 and subsequently collapsed into a coma. The court officials thought he had died and began to congratulate me on his accession, when Tiberius awoke. It is said that the Emperor was smothered with his bedclothes by my chamberlain, Macro. Thus I came to power.
In the first months my reign was mild and my policies showed some political judgement. Even then, I took much pleasure in attending punishments and executions and I preferred to have them prolonged. In May my grandmother Antonia, who might have been a good influence, died. In October I fell seriously ill, and after my recovering I seemed to have changed for the worse. In a few months I entirely exhausted the treasury, which Tiberius had filled by years of economizing. In 38, while having an affair with Macro's wife, I accused Macro of being her pimp and ordered him to commit suicide. Tiberius' grandson and heir, Tiberius Gemellus, once drank a cough medicine that I mistook for an antidote to poison. When accused, the youth replied: "Antidote - how can one take an antidote against Caesar?" Soon afterwards Tiberius Gemellus was murdered. It became a capital crime not to bequeath the Emperor everything. In 39 I revived Tiberius' treason trials. People suspected of disloyalty were executed or driven to suicide. A supervisor of games and beast-fights was flogged with chains before me for days on end, and was not put to dead until I was offended by the smell of the gangrene in his brain. On one occasion, when there weren't enough condemned criminals to fight the tigers and lions in the arena, I ordered some spectators to be dragged from the benches into the arena. Another time, I decided to proclaim my mastery of the sea by building a three mile long bridge of boats across the Bay of Naples. I crossed them on horseback, wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great. Thus I claimed that, like the god Neptune, I had ridden across the waters. I gave my horse, Incitatus, jewelled necklaces, a marble stable with furniture and a staff of servants to itself and made it a priest of his temple and even proposed to make it a senator. I loved dressing up and used to dress in rich silk, ornamented with precious stones and I wore jewels on my shoes. Pearls were dissolved in vinegar, which I then drank, and I liked to roll on heaps of gold. Like my nephew, Nero(37 AD-68 AD), I appeared as athlete, charioteer, singer and dancer. To increase my revenues I introduced all possible forms of taxation and rich people who had involuntary willed me their estates were murdered. Once, when a supposedly rich man had finally died, but turned out to have left no money, Caligula commented: "Oh dear, he died in vain." I even opened a brothel in my palace where Roman matrons, their daughters and freeborn youths could be hired for money.
I was irresistibly attracted by every pretty young woman whom I did not possess. I am often accused of having sexual relations with my sisters, most notably my younger sister Drusilla, but there was never any concrete proof to support that. I would carefully examine women of rank in Rome and whenever I felt so inclined, I would send for whoever pleased me best. I debauched them and left them like fruit I had tasted and thrown away. Afterwards, I would openly discuss my bedfellow in detail. My first wife, Julia Claudilla, died young. In the first year of my reign I attended a wedding and ran off with the bride, Livia Orestilla, whom I divorced after a few days. I soon grew tired of my rich third wife, Lollia Paulina, too. I made the older Milonia Caesonia (5-41) my fourth wife in 38, when she was already pregnant. The sensual and immoral Caesonia was an excellent match for me. Caesonia gave birth to a daughter, Julia Drusilla, whom I considered my own child, because "she was so savage even in childhood that she used to attack with her nails the faces and eyes of the children who played with her". Whenever I kissed the neck of my wife or mistress, I used to say: "This lovely neck will be chopped as soon as I say so".
In addition, I had sexual relations with men like the pantomime actor Mnester, Valerius Catullus and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Lepidus was married to my favourite sister Drusilla and also engaged in affairs with my other sisters. Meanwhile, I forced Drusilla to live with me as my wife, following the practice of the Egyptian pharaohs. It was said that when Drusilla became pregnant, I couldn't wait for the birth of our god-like child and disembowelled her to pluck the unborn baby from her womb. True or not, Drusilla died and I had her deified. The next year I had Marcus Aemilius Lepidus murdered. In addition, I had my sisters Livilla and Agrippina the younger (to the right), Nero's mother, exiled to an island and confiscated their possessions.
I demanded that I be worshipped as a god. My self-indulgence in my supposed divinity deteriorated my insane behaviour. I was convinced that I was entitled to behave like a god. Thus, I set up a special temple with a life-sized statue of myself in gold, which was dressed each day in clothing such as I wore myself. As a sun god I courted the moon. I claimed fellowship with the gods as my equals, identifying myself in particular with Jupiter, but also with female gods like Juno, Diana or Venus. Standing near the image of Jupiter, I once asked the actor Apelles whether Jupiter or I were greater. When Apelles hesitated, I had him cut to pieces with the whip, praising his voice as he pled for mercy, remarking on the melodiousness of his groans. I justified himself by saying: "Remember that I have the power to do anything to anyone."
My behaviour, a splitting of emotions and thoughts, is nowadays diagnosed as schizophrenia. The absolute power that I enjoyed strengthened and developed the worst features of my character. My grandmother, Antonia, and my favourite sister, Drusilla, who could both have had a restraining influence on me, died during the first year of my reign. In my youth - as a favourite of the soldiers - I must have been thoroughly spoilt. The near-extinction of my family and the subsequent fear for my own life during my adolescent years will surely have marked my personality. However, my madness could have been organically influenced, because it was said to have become apparent after a serious illness which I had suffered in October 37.
If this disease was encephalitis, then it could very likely have been a contributory factor to the bizarre features of my behaviour, for encephalitis can cause a marked character change and give rise to impulsive, aggressive and intemperate activity, similar in its symptoms to those of schizophrenia. In addition, I had inherited epilepsy. Some forms of epilepsy have symptoms similar to those of both schizophrenia and the post-encephalitic syndrome. At times, because of sudden faintness, I was sometimes hardly able to move my limbs, to stand up, to collect my thoughts or to hold up my head. I suffered severely from sleeplessness, never sleeping for more than three hours a night and even for that length of time I did not sleep quietly; I was terrified by strange manifestations.
After a 4-year-reign the Praetorians stabbed me to death when I left the theatre. My fourth wife was stabbed to death too, while our infant daughter's head was smashed against a wall. One of the conspirators was Cornelius Sabinus, whose wife had been debauched and publicly humiliated by me. Another conspirator was Cassius Chaerea, who hated me, because he had remorselessly imitated his high, effiminate voice. Suetonius wrote that my reign of terror had been so severe that the Romans refused to believe that I was actually dead.