130 Facts About Caligula

Caligula had been named after Gaius Julius Caesar, but his father's soldiers affectionately nicknamed him "Caligula".

In 26, Tiberius withdrew from public life to the island of Capri, and in 31, Caligula joined him there.

Tiberius died in 37, and Caligula succeeded him as emperor, at the age of 24.

Caligula directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and public works to benefit Rome's ordinary citizens, including racetracks, theatres, amphitheatres, and improvements to roads and ports.

Caligula began the construction of two aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus.

Caligula had to abandon an attempted invasion of Britain, and the installation of his statue in the Temple in Jerusalem.

In early 41, Caligula was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy by officers of the Praetorian Guard, senators, and courtiers.

Caligula's death marked the official end of the Julii Caesares in the male line, though the Julio-Claudian dynasty continued to rule until the demise of Caligula's nephew, the Emperor Nero.

Caligula had two older brothers, Nero and Drusus, and three younger sisters, Agrippina the Younger, Julia Drusilla and Julia Livilla.

Caligula wore a miniature soldier's outfit devised by his mother to please the troops, including army boots and armour.

Caligula lived with his mother Agrippina in Rome, in a milieu very different from that of his earlier years.

Caligula forbade Agrippina to remarry, for fear that a remarriage would serve her personal ambition, and introduce yet another threat to himself.

The adolescent Caligula was sent to live with his great-grandmother, Livia.

Caligula was remanded to the personal care of Tiberius at Villa Jovis on Capri.

Caligula was befriended by Tiberius' Praetorian prefect, Naevius Sutorius Macro.

Philo, Jewish diplomat and later witness to several events in Caligula's court, writes that Macro protected and supported Caligula, allaying any suspicions Tiberius might harbour concerning his young ward's ambitions.

Caligula is described during this time as a first-rate orator, well-informed, cultured and intelligent, a natural actor who recognized the danger he was in, and hid his resentment of Tiberius' maltreatment of himself and his family behind such an obsequious manner that it was said of him that there had never been "a better slave or a worse master".

Caligula was given an honorary quaestorship in the, a series of political promotions that could lead to consulship.

Caligula would hold this very junior senatorial post until his sudden nomination as emperor.

In Philo's account, Tiberius was genuinely fond of Gemellus, but doubted his personal capacity to rule and feared for his safety should Caligula come to power.

Caligula probably owed his life to that and, as all the ancient sources agree, to Macro.

Until his first formal meeting with the Senate, Caligula refrained from using the titles they had granted him.

Caligula's studied deference must have gone some way to reassure the more astute that he should prove amenable to their guidance.

Caligula was now entitled to make, break or ignore any laws he chose.

Caligula dutifully asked the Senate to approve divine honours for his predecessor but was turned down, in line with senatorial and popular opinion regarding the dead emperor's worth.

Caligula did not push the issue; he had made the necessary gesture of filial respect.

Caligula doubled this, and took credit for its payment as an act of personal generosity; he paid bonuses to the city troops and the army outside Italy.

Thanks to Macro's preparations on his behalf, Caligula's accession was a "brilliantly stage-managed affair".

Now Caligula gave the miserly Tiberius a magnificent funeral at public expense, and a tearful eulogy, and met with an ecstatic popular reception along the funeral route and in Rome itself.

Suetonius writes that Caligula was loved by many, for being the beloved son of the popular Germanicus.

Caligula named his favourite sister, Drusilla, as heir to his imperium.

Caligula ordered that an image of his deceased mother, Agrippina, must accompany all festival processions.

Caligula made a public show of burning Tiberius' secret papers, which gave details of his infamous treason trials.

Caligula used a coin issue to advertise his claim that he had restored the security of the laws, which had suffered during Tiberius' prolonged absence from Rome; he reduced a backlog of court cases in Rome by adding more jurors and suspending the requirement that sentences be confirmed by imperial office.

In one, Gemellus was given the adult toga virilis then charged with having taken an antidote, "implicitly accusing Caligula of wanting to poison him", and forced to kill himself.

Several months later, in early 38, Caligula forced suicide on his Praetorian Prefect, Macro, without whose help and protection he would not have survived, let alone gained the throne as sole ruler.

Any link between the deaths is speculative, but it is possible that Silanus had conspired to make Gemellus emperor, should Caligula fail to recover; and Caligula might simply have tired of Macro's control and influence.

Caligula was deified and renamed Panthea ; the first mortal woman in Roman history to be made a diva.

Caligula shared many of the popular passions and enthusiasms of the lower classes and young aristocrats: public spectacles, particularly gladiator contests, chariot and horse racing, the theatre and gambling, but all on a scale which the nobility could not match.

Caligula trained with professional gladiators and staged exceptionally lavish gladiator games, being granted exemption by the senate from the sumptuary laws that limited the number of gladiators to be kept in Rome.

Caligula was openly and vocally partisan in his uninhibited support or disapproval of particular charioteers, racing teams, gladiators and actors, shouting encouragement or scorn, sometimes singing along with paid performers or declaiming the actors' lines, and generally behaving as "one of the crowd".

Caligula showed little respect for distinctions of rank, status or privilege among the senate, whose members Tiberius had once described as "men ready to be slaves".

Caligula seems to have built a loyal following among his own loyal freedmen, citizen-commoners, disreputable public performers on whom he lavished money and other gifts; and the lower nobility rather than the senators and nobles whom he clearly and openly mistrusted, despised and humiliated for their insincere simulations of loyalty.

Dio notes, with approval, that Caligula allowed some equestrians senatorial honours, anticipating their later promotion to senator based on their personal merits.

Caligula seems to have ignored trivial misdemeanours, and would have anticipated the creation of "new men", first of their families to serve as senators.

Dio claims that Caligula had more than 26 equestrians executed in a circus "fracas"; in Suetonius' biography "more than 20" lives were lost in what is almost certainly the same event, described as a violent but accidental crush.

Some sources claim that Caligula forced equestrians and senators to fight in the arena as gladiators.

When Caligula recovered, he insisted that they be taken at face value, to avoid accusations of perjury: "cynical, but not without wit of a kind".

In 38, Caligula lifted censorship, and published accounts of public funds and expenditure.

Caligula was quite capable of recognising his own plans and decisions as flawed, and abandoning, revising or reversing them when faced with opposition.

At some time, Caligula ruled that bequests to office-holders remain property of the office, not of the office-holder.

Caligula's inheritance included the deceased empress Livia's vast bequest, which Caligula distributed among its nominated public, private and religious beneficiaries.

Dio remarks the beginnings of a financial crisis in 39, and connects it to the cost of Caligula's extravagant bridge-building project at Baiae.

Suetonius has presumably the same financial crisis starting in 38; he does not mention a bridge but lists a broad range of Caligula's extravagances, said to have exhausted the state treasury.

Caligula abolished some taxes, including the deeply unpopular sales tax, but he introduced an unprecedented range of new ones, and rather than employ professional tax farmers in their collection, he made this a duty of the notoriously forceful Praetorian Guard.

Roman inheritance law recognised a legator's obligation to provide for his family; Caligula seems to have considered his fatherly duties to the state entitled him to a share of every will from pious subjects.

Suetonius appears to reverse the traditional aristocratic client-patron ceremonies of mutual obligation, and have Caligula accepting payments for maintenance from his loyal consular "friends" at morning salutations, evening banquets, and bequest announcements.

Caligula made loans available at high interest to those who lacked the necessary funds, to complete the humiliation of Rome's elite, especially the old Republican families.

Caligula's ruling that bequests made to any reigning emperor became property of his office, not himself as a private individual, was made constitutional under Antoninus Pius.

The sesterce with his three sisters was discontinued after 39, due to Caligula's suspicion regarding their loyalty.

Caligula made a sesterce celebrating the Praetorian cohorts as a mean to give them the bequest of Tiberius at the beginning of his reign.

Caligula's common coins are base metal types with Vesta, Germanicus, and Agrippina the Elder, and the most common is an as with his grandfather Agrippa.

Finally, Caligula kept open the mint at Caesarea in Cappadocia, which had been created by Tiberius, in order to pay military expenses in the province with silver drachmae.

Numismatists Harold Mattingly and Edward Sydenham consider that the artistic style of Caligula's coins is below those of Tiberius and Claudius; they especially criticize the portraits, which are too hard and lack details.

Caligula had a fondness for grandiose, costly building projects, many of which were intended to benefit or entertain the general population but are described in Roman sources as wasteful.

Caligula is said to have built a bridge between the temple of Castor and Pollux and the Capitol.

Caligula began an amphitheatre beside the Saepta Julia; he cleared the latter space for use as an arena, and filled it with water for a single naumachia.

Caligula supervised the extension and rebuilding of the imperial palace to include a gallery for his art collection.

Caligula built a large racetrack, now known as the Circus of Gaius and Nero.

Caligula pushed to keep roads in good condition throughout the empire, and extended the existing network: to this end, Caligula investigated the financial affairs of current and past highway commissioners.

Caligula planned to rebuild the palace of Polycrates at Samos, to finish the temple of Didymaean Apollo at Ephesus, and house his own cult and image there: and to found a city high up in the Alps.

Caligula intended to dig a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece and sent a chief centurion to survey the site.

Caligula accused them of servility, treachery and hypocrisy in voting honours to Tiberius and Sejanus while they lived, and rescinding those honours once their recipients were safely dead.

Caligula declared that it would be folly to seek the love or approval of such men: they hated him, and wanted him dead, so it would be better that they should fear him.

Caligula's diatribes exposed the idealised princeps or First Senator as illusion and imposture.

Caligula had not, after all, destroyed Tiberius' records of treason trials.

Caligula preferred to publicly humiliate his enemies in the senate, especially those of ancient families, by stripping them of their inherited honours, dignities and titles.

Suetonius and Dio outline Caligula's supposed proposal to promote his favourite racehorse, Incitatus, to consul, and later, a priest of his own cult.

David Woods believes it unlikely that Caligula meant to insult the post of consul, as he had held it himself.

Suetonius, possibly failing to get the joke, presents it as further proof of Caligula's insanity, adding circumstantial details more usually expected of the senatorial nobility, including palaces, servants and golden goblets, and invitations to banquets.

In 39 or 40, by Suetonius' reckoning, Caligula ordered a temporary floating bridge to be built using a double line of ships as pontoons, earth-paved and stretching for over two miles from the resort of Baiae, near Naples, to the neighbouring port of Puteoli, with resting places between.

Any practical purpose for the bridge is unclear; Winterling believes that it might have been intended to mark Caligula's attempted invasion of Britain.

Seneca and Dio claim that grain imports were dangerously depleted by Caligula's re-purposing of Rome's grain ships as pontoons.

Caligula's reign saw an increase of tensions between Jews native to their homeland of Judea, Jews of the diaspora, and ethnic Greeks.

Caligula had replaced the prefect of Egypt, Aulus Avilius Flaccus, with Herod Agrippa, who was governor of Batanaea and Trachonitis, and was a personal friend.

In 38, Caligula sent Agrippa to Alexandria unannounced to check on Flaccus.

Caligula held Flaccus responsible for the disturbances, exiled him, and eventually executed him.

Herod Antipas confessed, Caligula exiled him, and Agrippa was rewarded with his territories.

Caligula found this most unsatisfactory, and demanded that his statue be installed in the Temple of Jerusalem forthwith.

In some versions, Caligula proved amenable to rational discussion with Agrippa and Jewish authorities, and faced with threats of rebellion, destruction of property and loss of the grain-harvest if the plan went ahead, abandoned the project.

An even larger statue of Caligula-Zeus was ordered from Rome; the ship carrying it was still under way when news of Caligula's death reached Petronius.

Caligula's plan was abandoned, Petronius survived and the statue was never installed.

Philo reports a rumour that in 40, Caligula announced to the Senate that he planned to move to Alexandria, and rule the Empire from there as a divine monarch, a Roman pharaoh.

In late 39 or early 40, Caligula ordered the concentration of military forces and supplies in upper Germany, and made his way there with a baggage train that supposedly included actors, gladiators, women, and a detachment of Praetorians.

Caligula might have meant to follow the paths of his father and grandfather, and attack the Germanic tribes along the upper Rhine; but according to ancient historians he was ill-prepared, and retreated in a panic.

The ancient sources report that Caligula used the opportunity of his operations in Germany to seize the wealth of rich allies whom he conveniently suspected of treason, "putting some to death on the grounds that they were 'plotting' or 'rebelling'".

Caligula announced that he would only be returning "to those who wanted him back"; to the "Equestrians and the People"; he did not mention the Senate or senators, of whom he had grown increasingly mistrustful.

In late 39, Caligula wintered at Lugdunum in Gaul, where he auctioned off his sisters' portable property, including their jewellery, slaves and freedmen.

Caligula is said to have used intimidation and various auctioneer's tricks and tactics to boost prices.

Caligula recited their provenance during the auction, in an attempt to help ensure a fair return on objects intrinsically valuable, and seemingly much sought after by the wealthy for their Imperial associations.

Two legions had been raised for this purpose, both likely named Primigeniae in honour of Caligula's newborn daughter.

Ancient sources depict Caligula as being too cowardly to have attacked or as mad, but stories of his threatening a decimation of his troops indicate mutinies.

In 40, Caligula annexed Mauretania, a wealthy, strategically significant client kingdom of Rome, inhabited by fiercely independent semi-nomads who resisted Romanisation.

The usual fate of incompetent client kings was retirement and a comfortable exile, but Caligula ordered Ptolemy to Rome and had him executed, some time after the spring of 40.

Caligula's removal proved unpopular enough in Mauretania to provoke an uprising.

The rebellion of Tacfarinas had shown how exposed Africa Proconsularis was to its west and how the Mauretanian client kings were unable to provide protection to the province, and it is thus possible that Caligula's expansion was a prudent and ultimately successful response to potential future threats.

Caligula took his own impersonations less seriously than some, certainly less seriously than Philo did.

Dio claims that Caligula impersonated Jupiter to seduce various women; that he sometimes referred to himself as a divinity in public meetings; and that he was sometimes referred to as "Jupiter" in public documents.

Caligula seems to have taken his religious duties very seriously.

Caligula found a replacement for the aged priest of Diana at Lake Nemi, reorganised the Salii, and pedantically insisted that as it was nefas for Jupiter's leading priest, the Flamen Dialis, to swear any oath, he could not swear the imperial oath of loyalty.

Caligula wished to take over or share the half-finished but splendid Temple of Apollo in Greek Didyma for his own cult.

Simpson believes it likely that Caligula, voted a temple on the Palatine by the Senate, funded it himself.

Dio claims that Caligula sold priesthoods for his unofficial genius cult to the wealthiest nobles, for a per capita fee of 10 million sesterces, and made loans available to those who could not afford immediate full payment.

Caligula seems to have taken his own genius cult very seriously but his fatal offense was to willfully "insult or offend everyone who mattered", including the military officers who assassinated him.

In Josephus' account of Caligula's assassination, Chaerea was a "noble idealist", deeply committed to "Republican liberties"; he was motivated by resentment of Caligula's routine personal insults and mockery.

Suetonius and all other sources confirm that Caligula had insulted Chaerea, giving him watchwords like the ribald "Priapus" or "Venus", the latter said to refer to Chaerea's weak, high voice, and either his soft-hearted attitude when collecting taxes, or his duty to collect the tax on prostitutes.

Caligula was known to do Caligula's "dirty work" for him, including torture.

When Caligula's death was confirmed, the nobles and senators who had prospered through hypocrisy and sycophancy during his reign dared to claim prior knowledge of the plot, and share the credit for its success with their peers.

The killing of Caligula had been extralegal, tantamount to regicide, and those who carried it out had broken their oaths of loyalty to him.

Claudius, as a prospective replacement for Caligula, could acknowledge his predecessor's failings but could not be seen to condone his murder, or find fault with the principate as an institution.

Caligula had been popular with a clear majority of Rome's lesser citizenry, and the Senate could not afford to ignore the fact.

Caligula turned down a proposal to officially condemn all the Caesars and destroy their temples.

Caligula was a habitually light sleeper, prone to nodding off during banquets, sleeping no more than 3 hours in any one night, and subject to vivid nightmares.

Caligula grew stronger with age, but was probably never robust or athletic, despite his practise as a charioteer.

Suetonius and Dio claim that Caligula met Livia Orestilla at her marriage to Gaius Calpurnius Piso, and abducted her so that he could marry her instead and father a legitimate heir.

Seneca and Philo, moralising contemporaries of Caligula, do not mention these stories even after Caligula's death, when it would have been safe to do so.

Dio repeats, as fact, the rumour that Caligula had "improper relations" with his two older sisters, Agrippina and Livilla.

Cluvius Rufus was a senator involved in Caligula's assassination; his original works are lost, but he was a competent historian, used as a primary source by Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Plutarch.

Caligula seized the inheritance of Agrippina's son, the future emperor Nero.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History has a few brief references to Caligula, possibly based these on the accounts by his friend Suetonius, or an unnamed, shared source.