One summer, when I was a teenager, I had a job working construction for a thick party animal named Caligula<\/b>. Just kidding, his name was Phil. Mostly, the job was just about sanding things and filling bung holes (look it up, it\u2019s a thing). I barely remember the actual work. What I remember with crystal clarity, however, was the time that Phil told me he\u2019s done enough cocaine in his life to fill a tool shed. Or the times he veered the work truck into the left lane just to f*ck with oncoming traffic.<\/p>\n
Do these anecdotes tell the full story of my 2003 construction job? No way. Have I subconsciously embellished these stories over the last 15 years? Maybe. But it\u2019s the crazy sh*t that sticks with you longest, growing larger than life over time.<\/p>\n
Gaius Caesar Germanicus\u2014also known as the notorious emperor Caligula\u2014only ruled Rome from 37 AD to 41 AD. In the grand scheme of the history of the Roman Empire, this is just a blip, and Caligula isn\u2019t well known for his accomplishments as a sovereign. Despite that, Caligula\u2019s got a chariot-load of wild anecdotes to his name.<\/p>\n
Why? In the spirit of his legacy, I won\u2019t restrain myself: the dude was a real twisted f*ck who did a lot of crazy sh*t.<\/p>\n
That said, all of the wild stories about him can\u2019t be true\u2014the man\u2019s chroniclers hated him just as much as the Roman people did, so good luck finding any unbiased accounts. But hey, that\u2019s how most of history goes.<\/p>\n
Now that we\u2019ve got our expectations sorted out, here are six (alleged) reasons for why Caligula was stabbed by conspirators over 30 times and dumped in a shallow grave after ruling for only four years.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This actually sounds pretty endearing, until you consider that Caligula loved his horse as much as he hated other people (more on that later). Incitatus was Caligula\u2019s prize racehorse, and he got special treatment for it. If you lived near his stable, your whole neighborhood had to keep silent the day before each race so Incitatus could concentrate.<\/p>\n Caligula loved that horse so much he\u2019d invite him to dinner, drink to Incitatus\u2019 health from golden cups, and feed him oats cut with gold flakes\u2014Oatschl\u00e4ger, if you will. If peasants weren\u2019t sifting through Incitatus\u2019 sh*t for free gold while he and Caligula were off to the races, then I don\u2019t know why.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The most famous story about Incitatus is that Caligula made him a consul in the Roman Senate. Unfortunately, it\u2019s not true. Records say Caligula wanted <\/i>to appoint his equestrian bud to the Senate, but he was assassinated before he could make it happen. Plus, Incitatus\u2019 political platform was too weak on the economy.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Caligula had a legendary lust for valuables. For example, he loved swimming in gold. Not molten gold, mind you\u2014that would have saved his assassins a lot of work. He wasn\u2019t swimming in Oatschl\u00e4ger, either (that was Incitatus\u2019 special reserve). Instead, he did it Scrooge McDuck style, pouring coins on the ground and wallowing in them for hours at a time. He also liked to walk over them barefoot. I\u2019m not sure if that was a gold thing or a foot thing for him but, knowing Caligula, it was probably both.<\/p>\n And yeah, he drank pearls, but he wasn\u2019t gargling them like a gumball hopper\u2014that\u2019d be crazy. Instead, he had the pearls dissolved in vinegar, then<\/i> drank them. See? Not so crazy after all.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n OK, this one needs some parsing.<\/p>\n First, Caligula didn\u2019t like his real name, Gaius. He also didn\u2019t like his nickname, Caligula, which was given to him by the soldiers he met as a kid, during his father\u2019s campaigns in Germania. Caligula means \u201clittle boots\u201d\u2014it was a riff on the cute little soldier\u2019s outfit he wore. It stuck with him into adulthood, so, naturally, he hated that sh*t.<\/p>\n He instead declared himself \u201cJupiter.\u201d That\u2019s a bit like me saying \u201cDon\u2019t call me Alex. Call me God.\u201d Jupiter is, of course, the king of the gods in Roman mythology. As you can see, since this article is about Caligula, and not \u201cJupiter,\u201d the new nickname didn\u2019t stick. If Caligula really wanted a new nickname, he should\u2019ve transferred to a new high school and reinvented himself as a guy without tiny little soldier shoes.<\/p>\n He tried to make it work, though. In official documents and in the Senate, he went by Jupiter. He also ordered the great statue of Zeus (Jupiter\u2019s equivalent, in Greece) moved from Olympia to Rome so he could have its head swapped out for his own. Caligula also liked to cosplay as Jupiter, wearing his golden beard and carrying a (presumably fake) thunderbolt.<\/p>\n Caligula also believed he spoke to the gods, and saw himself as among their ranks. He\u2019d threaten Jupiter, or just chat with him (he ran both hot and cold on Jupiter, I guess), and claimed to be crowned by the goddess Victoria. He\u2019d also talk to the moon at night, trying to seduce her (the moon\u2019s a lady, by the way) into coming down to his bed for a little celestial-meets-terrestrial hookup. She wasn\u2019t into it.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Imagine, for a moment, that you\u2019re a Roman consular\u2014a senior-level politician, albeit one with little actual power under an emperor. Now imagine that your emperor is insane and wantonly cruel. You receive a summons in the middle of the night: the emperor wants to see you. Sounds like you\u2019re about to be tortured and executed.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what Caligula\u2019s consulars probably thought when that happened to them. They must have been somewhat relieved (though very uncomfortable) when a robed Caligula arrived and started to dance for them. I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m picturing that opening Buffalo Bill scene from Silence of the Lambs<\/i>. When Caligula was finished, he left. Weird, right? <\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Caligula was, apparently, an ugly dude. While he didn\u2019t live past the age of 28, he suffered from some congenital male pattern baldness. Rather than just becoming a hat guy, he passed some legislation barring Romans from standing above him or otherwise looking down at him while he walked by. If nobody can see a bald spot, is it really there?<\/p>\n And, like so many men before and after him, he suffered from a harsh conundrum: as his pate lost hair, his body gained it. Hairiness was frowned upon in Rome, and Nair didn\u2019t exist yet. So, naturally, Caligula made it illegal to talk about goats in his presence. Seems like a bit of a backfire, because now we pretty much have to assume Caligula looked a lot like a goat and had it up to here with all the goat jokes.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n While items one through five illustrate Caligula\u2019s insanity via narcissism pretty well, they don\u2019t really give you an idea of how malignant the guy was.<\/p>\n Caligula really enjoyed watching other people suffer. That includes a boilerplate fascination with torturing and murdering people, sure. But he was also a disturbed, antisocial prankster.<\/p>\n He\u2019d have new laws written in tiny letters, then hang them up very high, so people couldn\u2019t read them. He did this so he could punish people for breaking laws that were technically<\/i> posted, but that they could not have known about.<\/p>\n During games at the arena, on especially hot days, he\u2019d order the awnings retracted and forbid spectators from leaving, just so he could watch them sweat. Another favorite pastime: shuttering the granaries so he could watch his own people starve. As you can see, Caligula liked to punch down, probably so his victims couldn\u2019t see his bald spot.<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s hard to say, but he might have lost it following an illness. For the first six months of Caligula\u2019s reign, things seemed pretty good, or at least status quo. He even freed unjustly imprisoned political prisoners, which is far from his later M.O.<\/p>\n The sea change arrived after his six month as emperor, when Caligula became deathly ill. He spent a month teetering on the edge, but made a physical recovery. His mind, however, was rewired.<\/p>\n It looks like he suffered some kind of brain damage from this extended sickness\u2014maybe a prolonged high fever, but that\u2019s just my guess. He emerged a very different person and would wander his palace throughout the night, his head pounding.<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s unfortunate for Caligula\u2014and for everybody around him\u2014that he was so changed. Without the illness, maybe he would have been a great emperor?<\/p>\n Instead, he was numbed to empathy and tortured his people until they united to murder him. For Cassius Chaerea, in particular, his hatred for Caligula was personal.<\/p>\n Chaerea was a distinguished warrior and member of the Praetorian guard. Normally this would garner respect, but Caligula instead mocked Chaerea mercilessly over his voice and supposed \u201ceffeminacy.\u201d The chronicler Suetonius said that, when he would have Chaerea kiss his ring, Caligula would move his hand around in an \u201cobscene fashion,\u201d and would make him use degrading watch-words, like \u201cpriapus,\u201d meaning \u201cerection.\u201d<\/p>\nCaligula’s Best Friend was a Horse<\/h2>\n
Caligula Drank Pearls and Swam in Gold<\/h2>\n
Caligula Decided He Was Jupiter, Talked to the Gods, and Tried to F*ck the Moon<\/h2>\n
Caligula Once Made the Senate Watch Him Dance<\/h2>\n
Caligula Passed Laws to Prevent People from Seeing His Bald Spot<\/h2>\n
Caligula Was an Asshole, Generally Speaking<\/h2>\n
What Was Caligula\u2019s Problem?<\/h2>\n