Transcript of 536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory. Com and join the club. That is therestishistory. Com. The enormity of his crimes was all the worse for the outrageous quality of the things he said. When his grandmother, Antonia, sought to give him some advice, he not only ignored it, but told her, Remember, I am allowed to do anything to anybody. When he out his sisters, he warned them that he had swords as well as islands. When he had someone killed, it was invariably by means of repeated delicate incisions so that, as he notoriously liked to express it, a man would die by knowing that he was being put to the blade. When a case of mistaken identity led to the wrong man being executed, he declared that the person put to death had no less deserved to die. He liked to quote the proverbial line from the tragedy let them hate, provided they fear. Once at an elegant banquet, he suddenly burst out laughing. And when the consuls who were reclining nearby politely inquired of him what had prompted such laughter, he I answered, Why?

Only that with a single nod, I could have either of your throats cut here and now. Angered when a crowd cheered on participants who were competing against his own favorites, he cried out, If only the Roman people had a single neck. That is from the biography by Suetonius of Gius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who many listeners will better know as Caligius, Caligula. Caligula's name, Tom, is one of the most notorious, not just in Roman history, but in all history, as a byword for sadism, tyranny, depravity, and debauchering. Today, we're going to find out how much of this is propaganda and how much of it is rooted in political reality. Let's put into context from the first century AD, Caligula is the third Emperor, and he succeeds Tiberius, who he did last time, in the year 37. He only rules for four He is, right?

That's right. Then he gets murdered by his own guards at the age of 28. In that time, he doesn't win any great military victories. He's not responsible for any great monuments. Yet, as you say, he has to be up there with Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Nero. Nero is one of the most famous Romans who's ever lived. As you say, right up to the present day, a complete byword for cruelty and also for sexual depravity because he was, what was it, that thing, that sub-porn film?

From the '70s.

Where John Gillget embarrassed himself by sitting in a bath. The flavor of scandal and depravity hangs over him. Some of the episodes from his life, they're very well known. He said to have slept with his sisters, turned his palace into a brothel. He likes to humiliate senators, so he'll have them run by his chariot or serve him at dinner dressed up as slaves. The consuls forget his birthday, and so he sacs them. Probably the most notorious story of all, at least this is how it's understood, is that he made his horse in Kittatas, a consul. Yes. Actually, that's not quite what Serotonia says, but we'll be looking at that and perhaps teasing out what that whole story might have been. When you were reading that, people on the YouTube will have been able to see that, but when you talked about having throats cut, you turned and grinned at me in a menacing way. I think there is a slight element of very dark comedy.

About me or about Caligula, or are we the same?

About you, about Suetonius's account and perhaps about Caligula himself, wouldn't you say? I mean, there's a quality of grand guinol.

About all three of these people.

I think Suetonius is clearly revealing. I think there's a certain quality of black humor there. Actually, when I was translating it, I felt it very, very vividly. But it's clear that this is often Caligula's as well. There was one particular account which I absolutely loved because it actually reminded me of the equivalent dwarf quilp in Charles Dickens' old curiosity shop. It's Suttone's description of Caligula standing in front of a mirror. Though he had a naturally off-putting and hideous face, he worked diligently in front of a mirror to make it even more so contorting it into all kinds of fearsome expressions.

Yeah, that's what I do.

People who've watched the YouTube will be able to see. I guess the question is, pretty much as it was where we were talking about Tiberius yesterday, is what is going on? How do we explain all the horrors and the depravities and these grotesque anecdotes that sometimes shade into the the blackest comedy Did they actually happen? If they did, what's the explanation? Was Caligula mad? Was he a sadist? Or is it a bit like we decided, I think, that Tiberius was? Has he been the victim of fake news.

Exactly. We are for Caligula, unusually dependent on one source, aren't we? Because we have Tacitus for Tiberius, but we don't have Tacitus for Caligula. There are fragmentary sources or smaller sources like Seneca or Josephus for Caligula, but Soutonius is the only full one. It's from Soutonius's biography. I mean, it is actually in many ways one of the great biographies in all literature.

I think it really is, yes.

It is from Soutonius's biography of Caligula really, arguably even more so than his biography of Nero, that we get the stereotypical image of the demented Roman Emperor who has been driven into total depravity by absolute power. I mean, that's what this is, isn't it? It's a model of absolute power corrupt.

Yeah, and I guess that that's why Suetonius's portrait of Caligula has been so influential, because it's absolutely that idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Caligula seems to be the model illustration of that. Since Suetonius is so important to our understanding of Caligula, and it's played such an important role in propagating the image of him as the ultimate mad, bad Emperor, I think it's important to trace in some detail exactly what it is that Suetonius has to say about his life and reign. One thing that will strike anyone who reads it immediately is how incredibly important in Suetonius's account of Caligula, the emphasis on his bloodline is, on his pedigree, on his ancestry. The reason for that, of course, most obviously, is that he comes to power. He becomes Emperor, he becomes Princeps, the first man in Rome, by virtue of his descent from Augustus, who is not just the first Emperor, but this point is a God. Caligula is descended from Augustus very much through the female line. His grandmother is Julia, who was Augustus' only child, and herself got destroyed in a sex scandal. His mother is Agrippina, who was Augustus's last surviving grandchild, who we heard about in the previous episode, falls out with Tiberius.

Tiberius imprisons her on an island. She goes on hunger strike and dies of starvation. But it's It's not just the female descent. It's not just the descent from his mother's line that amplifies Caligulus's status as the best-bred man in Rome. There's also his father. This is a guy who is so dashing, so heroic, that throughout his life and in the decades that follow, he is commemorated as the absolute darling of the Roman people. This is a guy who rejoices in the name of Germanicus. Su Suetonius tells us that when Tiberius dies, there is this great upsurge of public, almost ecstasy. It's not, Suetonius says, just because Tiberius had died, but because the none of Germanicus has come to power. He writes, The entire mass of the people classed the memory of his father, Germanicus, to their hearts. It matters who Germanicus is. Suetonius recognizes this, and in his biography, he gives us a very detailed account of Germanicus. It's almost a biography within the broader biography of Caligula. You could almost say he's the 13th Caesar.

He's a guy who never gets to become Emperor, but Suttonius really goes into his story. Tell us a little bit about Germanicus, because basically, Suetonius thinks that Germanicus is the best man who's ever lived, brilliant at everything, top of the class, brilliant speaker, brilliant scholar, all of this stuff.

He writes about Germanicus in the way that you, if you had a fake Reddit account, would write about yourself on the rest of his history, Reddit account.

I actually don't. Just to be clear, I don't have a fake Reddit account.

No, of course you don't. But just suppose. This is what Sirtonius has to say about Germanicus, who, as you say, he thinks he's absolutely brilliant. It is the broad consensus that no one has ever combined all the blessings of body and spirit to the degree that Germanicus did. Conspicuous equally for his good looks and his courage, he was brilliant, both as an orator and as a scholar in Greek as in Latin, celebrated for his in her osity of spirit and remarkably successful in his endeavors to secure people's devotion and inspire their affection.

I would write that at myself. I tell you, I think Theo, our producer, has a fake Reddit account, and I think he goes on to a Reddit and just slags us off. He would probably say this next thing, Because Soutonius says of Gemanicus that he has very spindly legs.

That's his only drawback.

Right. That's the thing Theo might say of us.

Although even then, Gemanicus bulks them up. It's a bit like me with my trainer. I've bulked my legs up.

It's uncanny.

I've bulked them up so much I'm ripping my trousers apart like the Incredible Hulk.

Right. Okay.

So Gemanicus, he also has a brilliant pedigree, which, of course, Caligula then inherits. He's the grandson of Livia, who marries Augustus, which makes him the nephew of Tiberius. As we said, he's the absolute golden boy. This is why Augustus marries him to his own granddaughter, Agrippina. Basically, Germanicus is being groomed to succeed Tiberius. The sense is certainly with Suetonius, but more generally with Roman historians, that if Germanicus had managed to live, then this would have been brilliant, the world would have been great, everyone would have been happy. Germanicus is deliberately trained to be schooled in all the arts required to be an Emperor. He is sent off by Augustus to succeed Tiberius as commander of the German legions, because obviously, to be a Caesar above all, you need to be able to command the loyalty of the legions. He does very well, or at least it seems that he does. His name, Germanicus, is a honorific. He gets it because he is marching out across the Rhine to exact vengeance on the German tribes for their massacre of Varus's three legions. He's endlessly burning villages and putting German tribes to the sword, and back in Rome, they think this is brilliant, so they call him Germanicus.

Although actually, it's evident that Tiberius thinks he's a bit of a show pony and thinks it's actually all a bit of a wasted effort. But the point is that it creates a stir back in Rome, and so makes people love him even more. He's popular not only with the Roman people, but with the legions themselves who are stationed on the Rhine. He's very charismatic. He's a very successful general. He clearly cares for the legions. One of the markers of that is that very unusually, and in fact, almost illegally, he has his wife, Agrippina, and their children with him. This includes the very young Gaias. Gaias is just a little toddler at this point. The soldiers, he's their little pet. They make him a legionary outfit, and he walks around, toddles around the camp in his armor and his military boots, which are Natana, a calagai. They call it Caligula, which are little boots. That's where the name Caligula comes from. In fact, when Augustus dies, there are mutinies all along the line of the Rhine because they're unsure what the political situation is. They're threatening essentially to reject Tiberius as Emperor. The only thing Suittonia says that stops them from launching a full-scale rebellion is the appearance of Caligula.

Schamanica says, If you don't calm down, I'm going to remove Caligula from the camp because I can't trust you to look after him. This, Suittonia says, shames them into behaving a bit better.

Do you think that story is true?

Well, there's a much fuller account of this in Tacitus, and it does seem a trifle more complicated..

Yeah, I was going to say it was a bit unlikely. If you're really serious about having a mutiny, the sight of a child is unlikely. They don't have the soul of hallmark, meetings card writers, do they?

They're clearly very sentimental about him. That vein of sentimentality about Caligula as this darling little boy is definitely a part of his public image when he becomes Emperor.

Going back to his childhood, he and his family, so Germanicus is sent out to the east by Tiberius to be the big man in the east, isn't he?

Right. So that's broadly He's broadening his range of experiences.

Yeah, and that's where it all goes wrong for Germanicus.

Again, very detailed account of this in Tacitus. Suetonius gives a much more truncated account, but essentially what happens is Germanicus is sent out to the east as Tiberius' plenipotentiary But Tiberius has also sent out one of his aristocratic mates, a guy called Paiso, to be governor of Syria, basically to keep an eye on Germanicus. The two of them have a spectacular bust up. Gemanicus falls ill, dies, and on his deathbed, accuses Paiso of having poisoned him. The news that their favorite has not only died, but quite possibly been poisoned when it reaches Rome, it has a devastating impact. A great rolling surge of sentimental grief completely takes Rome over, quite analogous to the Princess Diana situation, which Agrippina then massively ramps up by returning to Rome, holding the urn with Germanica's ashes in it, walking into Rome, clutching it with her tears-street face and her disheveled hair. Everyone in Rome just goes completely beserk with grief and anger because they blame Paiso for his death. This anger also involves Tiberius because they think that Tiberius isn't showing adequate grief. Like the queen. Rather like with the queen. Yeah, exactly. Paiso ends up committing suicide because he knows that basically he's doomed.

Tiberius, who is not a sentimental man at all, views it with utter contempt in a Duke of Edinburgh style perspective. It's no wonder that he and Agrippina don't get on having had that relationship. Of course, in due course, Agrippina ends up dead, and Caligula's two elders brothers end up dead, presumably on Tiberius's orders. The whole Germanica story ends very, very sadly. With Caligula's two elders brothers having been eliminated by Tiberius, he is now the sole surviving son of Germanicus and the sole surviving great grandson of Augustus, which makes him the obvious successor to Tiberius, which in turn makes his position very, very exposed and precarious.

Although at that point, if he's the obvious successor, the post of print caps of Emperor has clearly degenerated into a monarchy, hasn't it? If the obvious successor is the only person left from the dynasty, and the only thing that makes him an obvious successor is his bloodline.

Well, I think it's slightly more complicated than that, because essentially the idea is that it's perfectly legitimate for an aristocrat to succeed to the estate and the fortune and the titles and the story of his ancestors. No one has a problem with that. The pretense is that the August family, the family of Augustus, are just a family like any other, even though, obviously, what it brings is the rule of the world. There is a veiled hypocrisy democracy about it. You are right, of course, effectively, it is a monarchy, but nobody wants to admit that. Augustus hadn't wanted to admit it. Tiberius doesn't want to admit it. The Senate don't want to admit it. Everyone keeps it under a veil, and this will become important in explaining Caligula's policy as Emperor and why he becomes so unpopular with the Senate. But in the meanwhile, he is very exposed. Tiberius does have a grandson of his own who's a very little boy called Gamelius. But Caligula, he turns 18, he's summoned by Tiberius to Capri. Suetonius is predictably very retuberative about what Caligula gets up to on Capri. He writes, The island proved a treacherous place for him, rife with attempts either to trick or to pressure him into airing his grievances against Tiberius.

But refusing to take the bait, he behaved as though nothing had happened to his family and their ruin had quite slipped his mind, dismissed the wrongs done him with a straight face so convincing that it begged belief and was so He needed to cringe and crawl before his grandfather and his courtiers, that it has been said of him quite justifiably that never was there a better slave nor a worse master.

There's also this stuff about... So Soutonius has obviously painted a picture of Tiberius and Capri that is very damning, shall we say. And Soutonius also says that Caligula was able to suck up Tiberius because he shared his cruelty and deviant appetite, hasn't he? He likes watching people being tortured and he dresses up in drag and all of this thing, which I'm guessing you will say is part of the the fake news edifice that has been constructed around Tiberius.

How do we know? How can we rely on this? But again, the the resonance of the myth is so overwhelming that it becomes historically significant in its own right. So Tiberius watches Caligula, it is said, encourages him in joining in watching tortures or erotic floor shows or whatever, and is supposed to have said of Caligula that he was rearing someone fated to prove a viper to the Roman people. I mean, that's most improbable. Tiberius, he felt that he was a Patrick, he would not have wanted to rear a viper. But this is the perspective that will come to be put on it because, of course, Suetonius and other historians know what is going to happen, know the man that Caligula is going to be. So 16th of March 37, When Tiberius dies. Inevitably, there is what Suetonius describes as a plausible rumor that Caligula is responsible for it. Suetonius says that Caligula poisons Tiberius. When he doesn't die, he then smothers him with a pillow. Then when that doesn't work, he strangles him.

The death of Rasputin or something.

Exactly. But presumably, this is all taking place in an empty room, so how anyone would know? I mean, you don't know. Caligula then becomes Princeps. Effectively, there isn't anyone else who can take his place. Gamelius is still, I think he's eight or nine, something, so no way that he can succeed. He becomes Emperor. He does so as someone with very, very little experience of public life in Rome, of how the Senate functions, of the role played by the magistracies, all of these things, which, of course, both Augustus and Tiberius had absolutely been raised in before they became Emperor. He also has no military experience. He doesn't really have any friends or allies among the senatorial elite. You may wonder, Well, that being so, how could this very young man possibly succeed to the rule of the world? The answer is that Caligula clearly has a very unsentimental, and you might say, pittiless intelligence. The reason that he hasn't bothered working out how the Senate behave or the role of the consuls or anything is that he's recognized that that effectively doesn't really matter anymore, that there are much more significant centers of power in the state, of which the most obvious is this group of guards called the pritorians.

A pritorium is the military headquarters, and the pritorian guards are the guards that traditionally look after someone who is in military command. Augustus, in his role as Supreme Commander of the various legions across the empire, he has to have his own pritorium. So he has his pritorium guards, and Tiberius has them as well. He has built the pritorians a great military base and the walls of Rome. Caligula has recognized that this is what matters. He's made sure to square them, and particularly the head of the pritorians, a guy called Macro. He also, of course, has the blood of the deified Augustus in his veins. There's a touch the divine there. The people, as we've said, adore him because he is the son of Germanicus. When Caligula accompanies Tiberius's body to Rome, he is mobbed and cheered the whole way, and again, to quote S eotoneus, ecstatic crowds of well-wishes called him their shining light, their chick, their poppet, their baby boy. The senators, they're watching this and thinking, Oh, lordy. I mean, there's nothing we can do about this. And so they vote the 24-year-old Caligula, all the powers that it had taken Augustus a lifetime to accumulate.

And obviously, they're not particularly happy about that.

I'm a stick in their core.

Yeah, what can they do? They've got to suck it up.

Right from the start, Caligula proves himself a master, doesn't he, of playing to the people, to the gallery. He reminds me a bit of the guy who's the ruler of Chechnya, who's called Hamzaan Kaderow, who also succeeded. He succeeded his father. It's not really a monarchy, but he's always like wrestling bears and trying to hang out with Hollywood film stars and stuff. And Caligula is very much of that ilk, isn't he? He likes a sensational melodrama, crowd-pleasing gesture.

Yeah, he does. Again, I was thinking perhaps of Charles Spencer. That's not the first time.

Yeah, there's the three people who aren't often racketed together.

No. But in that speech that Charles Spencer gave at his sister's funeral, which really ratcheted up the sense of melodrama and emotional intensity. Calicula, he recognizes that his status as the son of Germanicus and of Agrippina is an important part of his mythos of his image. The moment he's arrived in Rome and become Emperor. No soon as he done that, then he's off on a ship off to the prison islands where his mother and his elder brother had died, and he scoops up their ashes, and he returns to Rome, and he sails up the Tiber. He's on this great ship with his standard fluttering proudly in the bow. He lands and he then walks, rather as his mother had walked with the ashes of Germanicus, he walks with the ashes of his mother and his brothers to the great mausoleum of Augustus on the campus Martius, where he lays them. He does this, Suittonia specifies, at midday when the city was at its busiest, so he wants everyone to see him. He then goes out of his way to issue proclamations, essentially saying, The grim age of Tiberius is over. It's a golden age has come.

I am a shining model of munificence and benignity. So he issues amnesties to all those who are facing trial on charges that had been brought against them while Tiberius was living. He revives the popular elections, so the elections for magistracies that Tiberius had abolished. This goes down well with the people. He gives a solemn promise that he will He will never do anything to make anyone hate him and will never give ear to informers. So this is his manifesto. Also in contrast to Tiberius, very pointed contrast to Tiberius, he lays on all kinds of spectacular shows. We talked in the previous episode how Tiberius despises the things that the mass of the people like. He has no time for gladiatorial shows. Tiberius's idea of a good time is to have a pub quiz. He likes setting quizzes on literary matters and things like that. That's his idea of a good time. Not Caligula's. There are gladiators, there are beast shows, there are chariot races, and Caligula particularly likes chariot races. He identifies very strongly with one of the particular teams, backs them very strongly. He loves scattering larges. He will do this thing where there are tokens, and he'll throw these tokens out into the crowd.

Depending on which token you pick up, you will get something. It might be, I don't know, just a barn or something, or it might be a villa. He likes to sit there and watch people scrabbling and elbowing each other out of the way to grab them. Etonia says, He was tireless in promoting shows of every description on stages across Rome, and sometimes even did so by night, making the whole city blaze with light.

I know we'll get onto this in the second half, but very quickly, he's obviously a natural populist, isn't he?

Yes, a popularis, as the Romans would call it.

Now, obviously, the issue there is then there are a lot of people in the Senate who are not natural populists for whom populism is anathema. They're looking at this bloke who's what? How old is he? Twenty-four. Twenty-four, has never held a senior command, has never held a senior office, and they must be thinking, This is mad. Why is this bloke ruling Rome? He's completely out of his depth. But also he's against everything that we stand for, which is tradition, integrity, seriousness, all of these things.

Yeah, and the Roman tradition, which has been manifested throughout the Republic is that it's brilliant to be old. That's why Republican portrait busts, they're always showing themselves with sagging jowels and crow's feet and everything like that. There's an instinctive sense that young people are just naturally violent and aggressive and haven't learned to temper their appetites. Caligula seems set on illustrating this. They resent the way that he makes He jokes and he sniggers loudly, which is obviously very off-putting if you're giving a grand erration in the Senate. They hate the way that he's always going on about chariot racing. Caligula has a thing. I mean, it's basically a bit like driving a very fast sports car. He has an insane number of horses that draw him on his chariot through the streets of Rome. He's cutting a dash in a way that they find very, very offensive. Of course, all these gladiator shows and stuff, I mean, it's expensive. Tiberius had been very, very abstemious and mean, so the treasury is quite full, but Caligula is burning through it at an absolute rate of knots. But they haven't really got any choice except to hold their breath and cross their fingers and trust that everything will be okay.

It is a good sign for them that along with all his other measures designed to make him look good, he said that there aren't going to be any more treason trials. We're not going to have them, so you can rely on that. The first eight months of his rule, they're were worrying signs, but there hasn't been any major confrontation between Caligula and the Senate. Then in October '37, so as you say, eight months after coming to power, Caligula falls ill. This is a very dangerous moment. Because this isn't a formal monarchy, there aren't set rules establishing how when one princeps dies, a new princeps comes to power. The moment Caligula falls ill, it looks like he's going to by all the heavyweights in his administration are scrambling around, trying to work out who his successor will be. The obvious successor is this young lad, Gamelius, 13 or 14 by this point, Tiberius's only grandson. So they are going off and paying court to him and preparing to elevate him to the throne. Meanwhile, there is this absolute toady, this Lick-Spittle, a guy called Atanius, who swears a solem oath that if only the gods will restore Caligula to health, then he will go into the arena and fight publicly as a gladiator.

And obviously, he doesn't expect that this would happen. It would be unthinkable for someone of his rank and age to go into the arena and fight a trained killer. But he's basically hedging his bets. If Caligula survives, then it'll be great. He'll approve of his loyalty, and if he doesn't, then no one will remember it. Caligula does recover, I think, against the odds, and he rises from his sickbed, and he's informed what Artanius has done, and also more significantly, what the captain of the Pratorians and his leading senatorial backers, what they've been up to, going around and paying court to Gamelias. He moves with absolute lethal dispatch. First off, he sends two soldiers to Gamelias, who sit the boy down and take out their knives and show Gamelias the best way to kill himself, and then stand there and watch while Gamelias kills himself, and that's the end of him. Gamelias' would be patrons, including the prefect of the Pratorians, are likewise ordered to commit suicide, which they do. And Atanius, this guy who has vowed that he will fight a gladiator if only Caligula recovers. Well, so this is what Suttonia says happened. Caligula takes him at his word, and he forces this poor guy.

I mean, he's not at all the person who is fitted either by background or, I think, by physique to face up to a trained gladiator out into the arena. Ateignus is killed very briskly. He's dragged off with a hook across the sand. His body is dumped, and Caligula's sense of humor has this bloody punchline. People in the arena undoubtedly found it funny. I mean, it's exactly the joke that would have appealed to a crowd of people gathered to watch blood sports. But it also sends a pretty chilling message to the Roman elites that there's more Mr. Nice guy. There's the definite sense that Killegula has been biding his time, and now that he has the evidence that some of the Senate have been conspiring against him as he sees it by going after Kamehlas, he is ready for the kill. Suetonius, he has this wonderful pivot in his biography. It's one of, I think, the single greatest line ever written in any biography ever, where he writes, enough of the print 'princaps', what remains to be described is the monster.

So the monster is coming, and we will be back after the break. Welcome back to the This is history. Enough of the printups. What remains to be described is the monster. Tom, you described this as your favorite line in the history of biography. We are moving now. Caligula has been clearly very shocked by the speed with which people move to associate themselves with a potential successor when he fell ill. And politically, that makes sense that he would be insecure and he would wish to... He's looking for enemies. But from this point on was in the biography, Soutonius is really going beyond that. And he is basically saying Caligula is a died in the wool, inveterate, debauched, depraved monster. Talk us through some of the examples, Tom, that he gives of this behavior.

Right. There are various examples that Suetonius gives of the character of a monster that he says Caligula has. Perhaps the most shocking is that Caligula demands worship as a God. Augustus is worshiped as a God, but not in his lifetime, Augustus had really stamped down against any thought of that. But Caligula, Suetonius says he's all in. Suetonius reports that Caligula orders some of the most famous statues of the gods from Greece, brought to Rome. He replaces the heads of the gods with his own head. Senators compete to serve him as priests. They offer up all kinds of sacrifices to him. So Soutonius specifies flamingos, peacocks, black grouse, two varieties of guinea hen, pheasants, There are times when Caligula will dress up as various gods, so sometimes as Jupiter, even shockingly as Venus. There are other times where he will claim to be talking to Jupiter. This is all clear evidence of either monstrousness or insanity or both. Yeah. So Etonia says that he essentially goes out of his way to humiliate the elites in every way he can. Obviously, the most humiliating thing that you can do to a senator is to treat him as a slave.

Soduotonius specifies that he would brand senators, equestrians who had offended him with branding ions, after which Duotonius writes, he would condemn them either to the minds or to the building of roads or to be thrown to wild beings or to to shut up in cages on all fours like animals or to be sawn in half. So none of that's fun. He takes his vendetta against the elites, even to the extent of toppling their ancestors. So statues of famous men from Rome's past, Suotonia says, are toppled and smashed the pieces. He also says that members of the aristocracy with famous names, they're told to get rid of these names. The Pompies, for instance, Pompie the Great, they have this name, Magnus. They're told they can't use that anymore. That would be the example. There's also very pointed sexual humiliations that he inflits on them. He will invite senators and their wives to dinner, and while they're lying there, Caligula will appraise the various wives of these senators. If there's one that he particularly feels drawn to, he'll take her away, sleep with her, and then send her back to her husband, all disheveled, and is making it very clear what's happened.

Caligula will then come back and offer a commentary on her performance, and the wretched husband just lies there looking a bit sick. This is where the detail comes in that Caligula sets up a brothel in his own great palace on the Palatine Hill above the Forum, and he staffs it with married women and boys, both of whom are of very high status. I mean, all good stuff.

Let's dig into this a little bit. Obviously, because we don't have many other sources, it's pretty hard for us to get a sense of how grounded in reality these accusations are. You make the point, don't you, that Suttonius doesn't present this as a continuous chronological narrative. It's just a bullet-pointed list of the bad things that Caligula is supposed to have done.

Yeah, that's right. It is difficult to get a sense of it as a narrative. But I think it's just about possible if you map Soutonius' account with the various other fragments of evidence that we have to get a narrative of Caligula's reign. He comes to power, first eight months, it's okay. There's nothing particularly shocking from the senatorial point of view that's happening, even though there is a sense of menace. Then he falls ill. When he recovers, he eliminates Gamelis, his inconceivable rival, and anyone who he thinks might be a particular figure of opposition to him. He continues in the wake of his recovery from that illness to pay lip service to his partnership with the Senate in the way that Augustus had done, in the way that Tiberius had done. But then it seems that two years into his reign, he's finally had enough, and there is this most spectacular showdown. He summons the Senate and addresses them and expresses to them in the most in a cold, uncompromising way his utter contempt for everything that they represent. He strips away all these hypocrises that we were talking about earlier, this pretense that the Senate in some way have any autonomy or power, that Rome is a partnership between the princeps and the Senate.

He says this is absolute nonsense. It's ludicrous. The idea that Rome is a Republic, madness. I am a monarch. I have complete authority over you. You are nothing. You are worms. Just for good measure, he then announces that he is reintroducing the treason trials that he had announced were canceled with such trumpeting two years before. The Senate are so stunned by this that they don't really know what to say. Caligula sweeps out and they all just sit there, ashen faced, as private eye would put it. The The following day, they all reconvene, and they pass a formal vote in which they formally thank Caligula for his sincerity and the intelligence of his comments. They praise him for his piety, and they say, such wonderful clemency from Caesar. Even though we're worms, we should offer him multiple sacrifices as a way of expressing our gratitude for his clemency and his general all-round decency. It's a massive grovel.

Crikey. My question to you, Tom. So I compared him with Ramzan Kaderow in the first half. You could compare him with Kim Jong Un in North Korea. Again, hereditary, but not in a monarchy, right? My question is, what's the power base for doing this? So he hasn't had a command. He doesn't have powerful allies or hasn't before he became Emperor, he didn't have powerful allies in the Roman establishment. How can he possibly do this? Stand up to these very powerful, prestigious patrician people and boss them around in this way?

He has the pritorians. He has lavished bribes on the pritorians. They are the only soldiers in Rome. So as long as he has the pritorians on board, there's nothing really that the Senate can do. He also has a lavished money on the legions because ultimately, one of the other many hypocrises that Caligula is ripping to shreds is the idea that the role of the princeps is as anything other than a military commander. He's not drawing attention to it deliberately, but he is making manifest that the underpinning of the entire system that Augustus has set up, which is supposed to be this partnership between the Emperor and the Senate, is actually founded on the support of the legions. That's what matters. It's not surprising that senatorial opponents of Caligula recognize this as well. Of course, the commanders of the legions are themselves senators. There is a conspiracy against him, and it's not surprising that it's focused not in Rome, but on the Rhine, which is where you have the highest concentration of legions in the entire empire. It seems to have involved numerous senators, two of Caligula's sisters, interestingly, and most dangerously of all, the guy who effectively has the command of the legions on the Rhine, who is a very seasoned general and a very experienced guy at negotiating all the various changes in regimes and things, a man called Gaitulicus.

Again, the accounts of this are very garbled, but you can piece together that Caligula is alerted to what's happening, and he moves with very, very impressive energy and speed, sets off from Italy for the Rhine. It's his first trip outside Italy as Emperor, descends and surprises Gaitulicus, who is arrested and executed. Caligula's sisters are sent to prison islands. That thing you read at the beginning about Caligula saying to them, I have swords as well as islands. In other words, stay on the island and stay put, or else I will have you hacked to death with swords. The Senate then endures this absolute reign of terror. Caligula goes to Germany. This is when he raises more legions. It's when he does that whole thing with the shells on the shore of the channel, which we talked about in our series on Roman Britain, and which I frankly said then, and repeat, I have no idea what's going on with that. There are so many theories, we don't know. It's an example, I think, of just how garbled lots of the stories that are told about Caligula becomes. But anyway, he then comes back from Germany in Gaul.

While he's in Gaul, he's met by various emissaries from the Senate, and Caligula tells them, I no longer acknowledge your authority. I despise you. I do not recognize that you have any role to play in the running of the Empire. It's on his return to Rome, it seems that the horrors and the outrages that Suetonius lists, which we just went through, that they seem to have been perpetrated. It's a reign of terror that works because the Senate is effectively left completely broken. They feel powerless before him. They grovel before him and just trying to avoid a bully's eye.

This is the moment, really, for the first time since really for the first time since Augustus inaugurated the Empire. It's the first time that somebody has torn away what Augustus had worked so hard to create, which was the veil of legality and tradition. And somebody has just said, That's all rubbish. This is a pure military dictatorship. I am the dictator, and I will humiliate you, I will torture you, and I will kill you if you step out of line.

And I think that that's why he has the Fame that he does. In recent times, he's become almost the existential hero.

Yeah, Albert Camus wrote a play about it.

This notion that politics is purely about power, and Calicula is perhaps the Emperor who most brutally demonstrates that, most brutally recognizes it. But having said that, he does make one terrible mistake. You ask, Well, what's the basis of his power? The basis of his power is his popularity with the Pratorians. It is foolish of him then that he can't... Caligula does seem to have loved a joke, and he can't resist making a joke even about pritorians. There is one pritorian in particular, a guy called Cassius Kyria, who's actually rather like me. He's huge, gym-toned body, enormous, rippling muscles, but has perhaps a slightly effeminate voice, a slightly soft voice. Calicula finds the combination of the the muscle man and the slightly female-sounding voice very confusing. So Zyratonia writes, Calicula would make praiapus or venus, the watchword. Sometimes when the tribune had reason to thank him for something, Calicula would hold out his hand to be kissed, then make an obscene gesture with his fingers. It's obviously very funny for all Caligula's hangers on. You do that with Theo. I do. The time will come where he will inflict a terrible vengeance, because what happens is that Caciquairea and various other pritorians organize a conspiracy, and this is much more fatal.

As is proven on the 24th of January, AD 41, Caligula is about to leave for Alexandria. If you're a conspirator, you need to get a move on. That day, he's staging a games in this great temporary theater on the Palatine. Caligula seems to be in an absolutely brilliant mood. He hasn't reserved any seats for the senators, so he sits there and enjoys watching them scrabble and try and get the best seat. Finds that very funny. Also finds it very funny when a flamengo is sacrificed and the blood of this flamengo splashes all over one of the senators blotting his robe. And so Clican has a good laugh about that as well. When lunch comes, he decides he'll go and eat in the privacy of his own palace. So he stands up and heads off towards his own private quarters. He's just about to go inside when he's approached by a courtier who tells him that some Greek boys of very noble background have been rehearsing a musical in his honor, and so Caligula turns aside to inspect them. Actually, I think that's the interesting example of Caligula not as a monster. He's told these boys have been rehearsing.

He breaks off from going to lunch to go and hear them because he clearly recognizes that they will appreciate that. He's walking down this passageway to go and listen to these Greek boys when he runs to Cassius Kyria. Cassius Kyria asks for the day's password, and as usual, it's an insulting one. I'm a massive girl's blouse, something like that. Cassius Kyria is not amused. He draws his sword and he strikes at Caligula's neck. It misses and hits the shoulder blade. Caligula stumbles, crashes down onto the ground, but he's still very much alive. He's followed by his litter bearers. They have great wooden poles, and they come to the rescue of Caligula. Again, illustration of the way in which he can command a degree of loyalty. But there's no prospect of them being able to defend Caligula because Cassius Caere is backed up with Praetorians who have hard steel. Caligula is soon on the ground being slashed to pieces by a hail of swords. He's dead. Cassius Kyria decapitates him. We're told that several of the Praetorians stab their swords through Caligula's genitals. Again, this idea of sexual humiliation, which Caligula had repeatedly practiced, and now it's inflicted on him.

There are even rumors that some of them pick up and eat his flesh, which I'm sure is exaggerated. This is where Josephus comes into his own, the great Judean historian. He has quite a detailed account that seems to draw on quite authoritative sources. Caligula perishes as he had lived, shadowed by horror, by horrific rumor, and by malevolent jokes. And that is the end of him. And so as we approach the end of this episode, it's probably time to just try and go through and work out what credibility can we put on this? How can we make sense of all these seemingly mad stories that are told about it?

So possibility number one, obviously, and this I'm sure is the case for some of the stories, is that they're just not true, that they're either propaganda or they're literally formerly Or they are folk urban myths, rather like there are loads of urban myths about politicians today that people believe, aren't there? I mean, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Donald Trump, whoever it might be. There are lots of stories that people tell and swap, but we know ourselves that there might be a metaphorical truth to them, but no literal truth.

Right. There is one obvious example of that. There's one The story that's told about him that we can be, I'd say, 99% sure isn't true. That's the story that he committed incest with his sisters. He has three sisters, and his favorite is called Drusilla. He is He's really devoted to her. When he falls ill, he names her as his heir, which is a striking thing for a woman in a society as patriarchal as Rome to be appointed the heir of a princeps. She then dies, and he does genuinely seem to have been crazed with grief, and he proclaims her as a God. We know that that happens because we have independent evidence for it. But the idea that he'd been sleeping with her or that he'd been sleeping with his other two sisters, we can be confident that that's not true, I think for two reasons. The first is that the notion that a powerful Claudian, and Caligula is as well as being a Julian, a Claudian, sleeps with his sisters is an absolute It's a stereotype. It's told about Claudian after Claudian after Claudian. It's an accusation that is just waiting to be served up.

You might still say, Well, that doesn't prove that it didn't happen in this case, but it does. I'll quote you a German scholar, Alois Wintling, who's written brilliantly about Caligula. He points out not only that Suetonius is the first to mention it, but also that there were contemporaries of Caligula who were familiar with aristocratic circles in Rome and well-informed and who heep in on the Emperor, they would hardly have failed to mention such a charge had it been in circulation then. So they would have mentioned it.

Yeah, that makes total sense.

Suetonius is the first person to mention it. Therefore, we can be fairly confident that that accusation isn't true. But that explanation doesn't wash with everything that is told about him, because there are substantiating reports that suggests that some, at least of these stories, are true. How do we explain them? Another possibility, which, again, Suetonius is the first to suggest, is that Caligula was mad. So Sio Tonius writes, It is my theory, and I have no doubt it is the correct one, very modestly, that his mental infirmity was due to the coexistence within his personality of twin but directly contradictory flaws, extreme self-confidence an abject timidity. But again, if he'd been mad, contemporaries would have pointed it out. They don't.

Is there not a claim that when he fell ill?

Yes, it's a popular theory. I don't think there's any evidence for that at all.

That's purely because of the order of Soutonius' biography, is it? That Soutonius basically says it's after that. But I suppose it's more likely, isn't it, that he's politically either emboldened or more insecure after he knows people have been floating with a successor.

Right. That's why Soutonius mentions that he's both extremely self-confident and abjectly timid. I think that's exactly the example that suggests it. But that could be true, but it doesn't mean he's mad. No. In fact, Caligula seems to have had considerable political acumen. What he does to the Senate is very, very brutal, but pretty effective. When there is that military uprising against him, he outsmarts a seasoned military commander. He may be malevolent, he may be pitiless, he may even be sadistic, but I don't think he's mad.

Which matches what we know of 20th century dictators, I mean, Hitler, Stalin, and so on. They may have been horrendous, but they're not clinically insane. It's too easy to say they're mad, basically. It lets them off the hook.

But I don't think you need it as an explanation because I think it's actually fairly clear where Caligula is coming from. We've already hinted at it in this episode, which is that Caligula is a populist, or to put it in Latin, a popularis. We've talked before, both in this series and in the podcast, more generally, about how politics in Rome is about vibes rather than about policy. It's about whether Whether you appeal to the traditional elites or whether you appeal over their heads to the masses. You got to remember that the autocracy established by Augustus has only been in existence for 60 years. The concrete hasn't set. People who are ruling as emperors are trying to work out what policy they should adopt, what role should be, and the people all around him are as well. Augustus had embodied the popularist tradition and theof the more Arist traditionalist perspective. Tiberius had been a traditionalist. Caligula, I think partly out of temperament and partly because he correctly recognizes the weakness of the Senate, goes all in with the popularist tradition. His instinct is to flatter and woo the people, to give them the entertainments that he himself enjoys.

Of course, the spectacle of his enjoyment makes him very, very popular with the people, and conversely, to turn against the Senate, and rather than to appease senators, to crush them. It's a strategy to which he brings very distinctive qualities. I think that one of them clearly is a certain relish for cruelty and domination. I think that the sources are just too insistent on that for us to whitewash it. I think he clearly was, in that sense, a completely terrifying man.

A nasty piece of work.

A very nasty piece of work. With a particular focus, I think, on sexual humiliation. Again, even if the story is about him sleeping with Senator's wives in dinner parties or setting up a brothel on the Palatine are exaggerated. The fact that these stories are told clearly are drawing on authentic memories of the trauma that senators were made to go through. For reasons, again, that we've talked in this series, striking at an aristocratic Roman sense of sexual self-respect is absolutely devastating to their whole sense of status. Caliculation correctly identifies that as the way to really break them.

Part of this is the assault on a series of conventions and taboos, presumably. You talked before about him, the stuff with the gods or demanding that he's worshiped as a god, or most obviously, the story that goes right back to when he was on Capri with Tiberius, that he dresses as a woman. This is about him taking the taboos that mean so much to the established senior, blue-blooded people and ripping them up and presumably delighting them, the mob, as it were, in doing so.

There's something almost punk about it. It's so shocking that obviously some of his supporters, some of the people who are prone to support him, just laugh in admiration at how far he has pushed things. This is a strategy that Nero will adopt as well. It was a strategy in a much more modulated sense that Julius Caesar had done, too, that you shock people and the shock becomes politically charged. Caligula obviously revels in experimenting with that, I think.

In that sense, Nero and Caligula are remarkably similar, aren't they? Because they're basically part of the same political classical tradition. They're playing to the same audience and they're kicking against the same taboos and the same class, the senatorial class.

Right. I think also it's the fact that they have the blood of a God in their planes, and so they can cast themselves as being somehow more than mortal. They're doing the things that gods would do or heroes in Greek mythology. This is very overt with Nero, but it's, I think, pretty clearly the same with Caligula. I think he is blazing that as a policy for an Emperor to follow. You have to basically be a descendant of Augustus to do it, which is why when Nero dies and there are no more descendants of Augustus to rule as Emperor, that tradition ends. But both of them are making play with it. He fuses that sense of essentially behaving like a God, behaving like a hero from Greek myth with a genius for spectacle and an eye for recognizing how to undercut the privileges and assumptions of the Senate. The single best example of this, again, a very well-known story, is that he builds this huge three-mile pontoon bridge in the Bay of Naples, or specifically in the Bay of Bayi. He then parades across it. First time, he rides on a horse, and then he rides in this great chariot.

Suetonius offers this not as an example of his monstrosities, but as one of the good things, one of the positives of his reign. In fact, Suetonius, his grandfather had watched it and had said how amazing it was. We don't know exactly when he does this, but I think the likeliest date is when he comes back from Germany and Gaul, because I think it's pretty clear that what he's doing is staging a triumph to upstage all triumphs, because to hold a triumph on the sea, that's the thing that God does. But also triumphs, there's a set route in Rome that you follow, and it's up to the Senate to license them. And Calicula is saying to the Senate, I don't need you. I am this Godlike figure. I can ride over water if I want to.

And then the final and most famous thing, making his horse a console. I know you have a very… Actually, I've heard you explain before. I think it's a very persuasive explanation of exactly what this is, because effectively, this is just a very… This is a satirical joke.

It's a joke. This is the last attribute that Caligula brings to his model of targeted terrorism, you might say, which is that he's funny. People like humor in a domineering political figure. There's contemporary evidence for that, I would say. Caligula is, we've said all along, that there is a vein of dark comedy in Suetonius's portrait that I think derives from Caligula himself in large part. Suetonius, I think, doesn't get the point of Caligula's joke about his horse. It's popularly said that Caligula made his horse a console. That's not what Suetonius says. Suetonius says that he planned to make Incartartus a console. He also claims that Suetonius loves Incartartus, which literally means hotspur. He gives Incartartus a stable fashioned out of marble, an ivory manger, purple saddlecloths and collars studded with jewels and he bestowed as well a fully furnished mansion. Now, all of these are basically the markers of senatorial status. It's what senators want and have. To be a council is the ultimate dream of any ambitious senator. Caligula, by giving in Cittatius a palace and by saying that he can make him a council, is effectively undermining all the pretensions of the senatorial class.

He's saying, I can make my horse a council or I can make you a It's very humiliating for the Senate. It's very funny for Caligula. But of course, in the long run, the joke is on him because actually, nobody today remembers the joke. It just confirms his reputation as a madman. The other example of the joke being on Caligula is the fact that Cassius Carriere ends up killing him. My own suspicion is that I mentioned, I went in and talked to the writers of succession, the Murdoch as the Caesar's, drama. I talked all about this period of Roman history. One of the markers is that Nero and Sporus are constantly being name-checked. But I think that the character of Roman Roy, I think, has quite a lot of Caligula in him. I haven't asked specifically whether it was an influence. But he is called Roman. He's the most Roman character. I mean, it's literally his name, and his character is quite Caligula. He's a Caligula who's still waiting in the wings, I think.

But for all Caligula's spectacle and his dark humor and his populist touch, I should say, he only lasts four years and he ends up dead in this extraordinary set piece, this great narrative set piece. He's been stabbed and stabbed again by Cassius Caeria and his men, abandoned in an alley. And what's going to happen next? Are they going to bring back the Republic? Is the Empire going to continue? If so, who Who on Earth could possibly succeed? Is there anybody left from the Imperial family? And Tom, we will be answering that question next time. But of course, there's only one way that people can hear that right now, isn't there? And that's if they're members of the Restes History Club. If they're members of our very own in God, they'll be able to hear it. If you're not and you'd like to join up, you can go to therestishistory. Com and hear right away what happens next after the assassination of Caligula, who comes next, and what Emperor he was. So Tom, thank you very much for that. On that bombshell, we'll be back next time with the story of the Emperor Claudius. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.