The historian
Suetonius, writing two generations later, is our main source for the life of Gaius (Caligula) Caesar. His contemporary
Tacitus wrote about the same period but the sections relating to Caligula are no longer extant.
Caligula was born on 31 August 12, probably at Antium. Suetonius discusses a number of theories and analyses the evidence, and concludes that Antium is most likely. His care suggests that, however fantastic his stories about Caligula sound, there is likely to be a solid grounding in fact for most of them.
Gaius was the son of the immensely popular Germanicus, who died before he could be accepted as the successor of the tyrant Tiberius. Such was the popularity of all Germanicus' children, by association, that Tiberius ordered the deaths of Nero and Drusus, brothers of Gaius. The young Gaius Caligula meekly accepted these deaths and his life in his adoptive imperial family. He and another Tiberius were eventually decided on as joint heirs of the Emperor Tiberius, but with his death the acclamation in favour of Caligula was so great that he became emperor alone. That was on 16 March 37 (not 31 as stated in an earlier write-up). It is said that, with Tiberius rousing himself from his apparent death, Caligula ordered him smothered with a pillow. (Later he had the other Tiberius killed too, of course.)
Caligula was a good ruler at first, just and capable in many of his reforms, but destroyed by his increasing private vices: his vanity, cowardice, depravity, pride, etc etc. His public spectacles were lavish. He committed incest with all three of his sisters but loved Drusilla by far the most, and banished the others. He was assassinated by two guards on 24 January 41.
There are many many anecdotes I could take out of Suetonius, but let's take those that make him sound like someone invented by Monty Python.
- When Drusilla died he made it a capital offence to laugh, bathe, or dine with one's family.
- He liked to stir up trouble in the Theatre by scattering gift vouchers before the show began, so that commoners would scramble for the seats reserved for knights.
- He would make his senators run for miles beside his chariot.
- He would cancel regular gladiatorial shows and replace them with ones between honest but disabled citizens.
- When pet food for the animals in the shows became too expensive, he ordered all criminals in a row beginning with that bald one over there to be killed for them.
- Men were sawn in half for failing to swear by his Genius.
- A writer of farces was burned alive in the amphitheatre because of a witty double entendre.
- He bathed in hot and cold perfumes.
- After a theatrical show he auctioned off the props and drove the bidding up so high that respectable people were ruined and committed suicide.
- When one old senator fell asleep during this, Caligula ordered the auctioneer to count the nods of his head, and the senator woke up to find he had bought thirteen gladiators for 90 000 gold pieces.
- He opened a brothel in the palace and all the customers had to take out loans, which clerks duly recorded as "contributions to the imperial revenue".
- Once when playing dice he excused himself, arrested a couple of rich knights who were passing, confiscated all their property, and returned to the gaming table remarking how well his luck was holding up.
- He developed a taste for rolling around on piles of gold, like Uncle Scrooge.
- It was a capital offence to mention goats (because of what he looked like: see below).
He did not however make his horse
Incitatus a consul, though Suetonius says "it is said that he even planned" to. Incitatus had a marble
stable, an ivory
stall, purple
blankets, and a jewelled
collar, as well as a complete staffed establishment of its own.
His most famous saying was, when enraged with a mob, Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet!, "I wish the Roman people had only one neck!"
The Emperor Caligula was tall, with spindly legs, a pallid complexion, sunken eyes, hollow temples, a broad and forbidding forehead, a thin neck, a hairy and badly built body, and an almost completely bald head.
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