To begin with, Caligula’s abrupt departure for the North clearly accomplished his primary purpose. Gaetulicus was taken by surprise and had no time to prepare his legions for an open uprising against the emperor. He was executed, presumably in Mainz, and replaced by Servius Sulpicius Galba, a capable general who was to become emperor himself briefly a few decades later. The full scope of the conspiracy apparently came to light only at this point, perhaps because Gaetulicus betrayed the others in an attempt to save his own skin. Lepidus, Agrippina, and Livilla were found guilty as accessories to the plot to assassinate the emperor; Lepidus was executed, and the two sisters were banished to the Pontine Islands. Caligula forced Agrippina to take an urn with the ashes of her lover Lepidus back to Rome, carrying it against her body for the whole journey. The emperor divulged documents in their own hands revealing their share in planning the conspiracy. He also distributed money to the soldiers as a reward for their continued loyalty to him, and sent the three swords with which the plotters meant to murder him to Rome, where they were placed in the Temple of Mars Ultor (“Mars the Avenger”) as dedicatory offerings. Last, he informed the Senate in a letter about the assassination he had narrowly escaped and forbade the senators to vote honors for any of his relatives in the future. The dating of these events can be reconstructed from a fragmentary inscription of the priestly college known as the Arval Brethren. On 27 October 39 they performed a sacrifice to offer thanks that “the nefarious plans of Gnaeus Lentulus Gaetulicus against Gaius Germanicus were detected.” It can thus be inferred that reports of the general’s disloyalty had reached Rome by then, but the guilt of Lepidus and the emperor’s sisters had not yet been made public.
What went on in the young emperor’s mind in these days is not reported, but it is not difficult to imagine. This time it was not high-ranking senators in Rome who had plotted to take his life, as at the beginning of the year — but members of his innermost circle. Even his own sisters, the people who were undoubtedly closest to him personally, had joined in a conspiracy to assassinate him. The comparatively mild treatment they received probably points to the close relationship that once existed among the siblings. In view of what had occurred, Romans would certainly not have considered it an overreaction if both of them had been put to death — a step, incidentally, that would have prevented Nero from ever becoming emperor. In whom could the emperor place any trust from then on? That was the overriding question of the moment. Relatives — his uncle Claudius, for example — were out of the question, as his prohibition of new forms of honor for any members of the imperial family made abundantly clear. Could he trust senators? That was unthinkable after what had taken place earlier in the year.
In Rome, too, at the center of the Empire, the dramatic events led to a general sense of uncertainty. Legal proceedings were taken against individuals who could be shown to have had conspiratorial contacts with Caligula’s sisters or the men who had been executed. In addition to the consuls, who had already been removed from office, several aediles and praetors had to resign from office and stand trial. Many who had not taken part in the plot must have felt uneasy as well. The disclosure of the conspiracy appears to have launched a wave of denunciations, not unlike what had occurred under Tiberius. Thus, for example, we know from the biography of the later emperor Vespasian, who was a praetor at the time, that ambitious men of modest origins took advantage of the situation to display their loyalty to the emperor. This group included Vespasian himself, who made a motion in the Senate to leave the corpses of the conspirators executed in Rome unburied — a proposal not in the best of taste, but indicative of the atmosphere in that period.
The Senate voted an ovation for the emperor, just as it had done after the first conspiracy at the start of the year, and sent a legation to inform him of their action and to demonstrate their support. To lead the group, they chose none other than Claudius, the man who possessed the greatest dynastic prestige after the emperor himself since the banishment of Agrippina and Livilla, and who would in fact later succeed Caligula on the throne. The emperor was outraged. The Senate had violated his express prohibition against honoring members of his family when they put Claudius in charge of the mission. Caligula also seems to have feared further plots. He sent most of the legation back to Rome before it even reached him, because he believed their real purpose was to spy on him and wished to prevent them from having any contact with members of his personal or military retinue. Only a few chosen delegates were permitted to continue on and meet with him, including Claudius, whom Caligula allegedly humiliated and threatened after the mission arrived.
Given this volatile situation of fear and mutual distrust, Caligula must have decided first and foremost to stabilize the military, since in the end his position of power rested on the army. His sudden departure for Germania had upset the original plans for war. It was now the beginning of November, and the season alone made a military campaign on the right bank of the Rhine unfeasible. In addition, the Rhine legions were in such a miserable state that they would not have been capable of carrying out a rapid strike.
Caligula’s first measures were thus aimed at reorganizing the troops there. A large number of centurions — key officers in the Roman military forces — were discharged on the grounds of age and poor physical condition, and the customary payments on retirement were reduced. Several commanders of forces redeployed to Germany from other provinces of the Empire received dishonorable discharges because they had arrived on the scene too late. Evidently they were suspected of having held back intentionally, waiting to see if Gaetulicus’s uprising would succeed. Galba, on the other hand, who had not stinted with his active support, received a special commendation. As the new supreme commander he was charged with making the army of the upper Rhine fit for action again. He refused soldiers’ requests for leave, and re-accustomed them to military discipline by constant maneuvers and forced marches in which he took part himself. Suetonius cites a saying that circulated among the troops and reflected the new conditions: “Soldier, learn to play the soldier; ’tis Galba, not Gaetulicus” (Galba 6.2). On the lower Rhine near Cologne and Xanten, where four further legions were stationed, another military reorganization appears to have taken place about the same time. There Lucius Apronius was relieved of his command and replaced with Publius Gabinius Secundus. The families of Apronius and Gaetulicus were connected, and Apronius had been responsible for several catastrophic defeats in battles against Frisian tribes.
In his Life of Galba, Suetonius reports that during that autumn the new governor repelled “barbarians” who had advanced even into Gaul, and in the Life of Vespasian he writes that the later emperor, then a praetor, proposed in the Senate among other things that special games be held to mark the emperor’s victory over the tribes in Germania. Dio’s account states that the emperor had himself acclaimed imperator a number of times. Thus it is apparent that several military engagements occurred in the fall of the year 39 and ended successfully for the Romans. In his Life of Gaius Caligula, however, the same Suetonius relates some bizarre stories depicting the military actions carried out under the emperor’s command as pure farce. He reports, for example, that Caligula gave orders to some men from his Germanic bodyguard to cross the Rhine and hide there. Then he arranged for a report to be brought to him after breakfast with a great to-do that the enemy had arrived, and he rushed off with some friends and cavalrymen from the Praetorian Guard to a nearby wood, where they chopped down trees and dressed them up to look like trophies. In the evening the emperor returned by torchlight and rebuked the men who had stayed behind, calling them cowards; to the participants in his “victory,” however, he awarded a new kind of military decoration. Since Suetonius himself included passages in his biographies of other emperors about very serious military engagements on the upper Rhine, which were at least partly successful despite the condition of the troops, the story about the game of hide-and-seek can easily be recognized as a military exercise in which the emperor personally took par
t. Suetonius has taken the event out of context and distorted it.
Tacitus elsewhere briefly reports the vast scale of the preparations, but no extensive military action could be carried out before winter began. Caligula therefore left the front along the Rhine and spent the winter in Lyon, capital of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis, which at that time was also the site of the sole imperial mint for coining precious metals. Clearly tax assessments were calculated here in order to finance the huge war effort, as is reflected in Dio’s claim that the emperor had the tax rolls of Gaul brought to him and gave instructions for the richest inhabitants to be executed. It is doubtful, however, that he actually selected this particular way to raise revenue, for at the same time the emperor put his sisters’ entire sumptuous household effects up for auction, including their slaves and even freedmen. Since the auction was a great success, Caligula afterwards ordered much of the valuable inventory accumulated in other households of the imperial family during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius to be sent from Rome and auctioned off as well. The shipments were reportedly so large that the government had to seize private vehicles; the transportation of grain to Rome was affected and there was a shortage of bread. Dio states that Caligula conducted the auctions personally, and that “the finest and most precious heirlooms of the monarchy” came under the hammer (Dio 59.21.5).
Dio writes that people attending the auction were forced to buy, but this, again, seems quite unlikely. The wealthy residents of the cities in Gaul probably sought to furnish their houses with luxurious objects like the aristocracy in Rome, and “the objects of the old court” (Suet. Cal. 39.1) would no doubt have seemed extremely attractive to them. Dio says that in auctioning off the objects the emperor was simultaneously selling “the reputation” attached to them (Dio 59.21.6). Both the interest of the Gallic nobility in acquiring prestige through some connection with the emperor and the group’s economic power are documented in an anecdote from Suetonius: A rich man in the province wanted to attend one of Caligula’s banquets and had paid the servants a bribe of 200,000 sesterces to smuggle him in — a sum, it should be recalled, equal to half the minimum amount required for a Roman to qualify for membership in the equestrian order. When the emperor heard of it, he arranged for the man to purchase some small object for the price of 200,000 sesterces at auction the next day and sent a message that he might now attend the emperor’s banquet at his personal invitation. Yet Caligula did not just take in money at Lyon; he also spent it on a grand scale. He sponsored splendid festivities befitting an emperor visiting a provincial city, including theatrical performances, games, and a contest for orators in both Greek and Latin. In addition he granted Roman citizenship to the inhabitants of the town of Vienna (modern Vienne).
Meanwhile the atmosphere in Rome was less festive. The aristocracy feared that the emperor would take further measures, as became evident on 1 January 40, when the absent Caligula began his third consulate. His co-consul had died shortly before. The praetors and tribunes of the people, whose task it would have been to call the Senate into session in the consuls’ absence, did not dare to proceed, fearing to give the impression that they were acting in the place of the emperor, without instructions from him. All political business of the Senate thus halted until 12 January, when a message arrived from Caligula that he was resigning from the consulate. Thereupon the senators in a body climbed the steps to the Capitol, offered sacrifices in the temple there, and performed the act of proskynēsis, prostrating themselves before an empty throne. Following that, they assembled in the Curia without any official summons and spent the day giving speeches praising Caligula and offering prayers on his behalf, “for since they had no love for him nor any wish that he should survive, they went to greater lengths in simulating both these feelings, as if hoping in this way to disguise their real sentiments” (Dio 59.24.6). When the two new consuls had assumed office, it was decided inter alia henceforth to celebrate the birthdays of Tiberius and of Drusilla with the same ceremonies as that of Augustus, and in consequence of a letter from Caligula statues of Drusilla and himself were erected and dedicated.
In Gaul an important military decision was made at about this time, to abandon the campaign in Germania in favor of an attempt to conquer Britain. Given the state of the sources we can only speculate about what was behind this move, as about other military events of that time. In all likelihood there were protracted discussions; considering the more or less complete failure of Roman policy in Germania since Varus’s catastrophic defeat in the Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9, disagreement would hardly have been surprising. The emperor was probably looking for a quick military victory as well, since the situation in Rome was extremely tense after exposure of the conspiracy. The spur for the change of plans seems to have been a dispute over the succession to the throne of Cynobellinus (Cymbeline), king of the Britons. Furthermore, the Romans would have regarded a successful conquest of the distant island as a highly prestigious achievement. Since Julius Caesar’s expeditions in 55 and 54 B.C., no other Roman general had set foot in the country; and two years after the death of Caligula, Claudius would demonstrate that a conquest of Britain was entirely possible and a suitable enterprise for stabilizing the emperor’s position.
Once again the sources are scarce and unclear. On the one hand, the British king’s son Adminius is said to have left the island with a small force and surrendered to Caligula, whereupon the emperor wrote a boastful letter to the Senate implying that the prince had handed over the whole island to him. On the other hand, it is also reported that when Caligula reached the ocean, presumably the English Channel, he drew up his soldiers in battle formation and set to sea himself in a warship, but only briefly. Then he returned and gave the legions an order to collect shells on the beach. As a symbol of victory they constructed a tall light; the soldiers received the amount of 400 sesterces each, and Caligula concluded the maneuver by announcing, “Go your way happy; go your way rich” (Suet. Cal. 46).
Perhaps the most plausible explanation of the events was suggested by the English scholar Dacre Balsdon. He bases it on the reports about Claudius’s expedition to Britain in 43. At that time the Roman legions mutinied, declaring that the island lay outside the bounds of the oikoumenē, the civilized world, and refusing to cross the Channel to Britain. Only after several weeks could they be persuaded to embark for a campaign. Something similar could have happened at the start of 40. In that case the order to collect seashells and the bonus payment should be interpreted as the emperor ridiculing the cowardice of mutinous troops, who had assembled at the edge of the sea but refused to fight.
There is no knowing what actually happened in any detail, but Suetonius, after describing the scene at the water’s edge, adds an odd incident further suggestive of a mutiny: Before leaving the province Caligula was said to have intended to order a massacre of two legions. After he had been dissuaded from this extremely dangerous plan, he wanted at least to decimate them, that is, to use the traditional method to punish cowardice in the Roman army, in which every tenth man in a legion that had been cowardly in the face of the enemy was killed, regardless of how he had behaved himself. The plan failed, Suetonius says, because the legionaries realized what was afoot and rushed to get their weapons. Thereupon the emperor hastily fled from the assembly.
Suetonius accounts for Caligula’s inclination to punish the men by mentioning that the legions involved were the same ones that had mutinied after the death of Augustus in A.D. 14. At that time his father, Germanicus, had been their commander and Caligula, then a small child, had been present in the camp himself. It is obvious how little credence should be given to this account: The usual period of military service for an ordinary legionary was twenty years; centurions could serve longer. After twenty-six years, in other words, hardly any of the participants in the original mutiny would have been left in the legions. In any case, carrying out a punishment at that critical juncture would have been a completely senseless act on the emperor’s part. It corr
esponds precisely, however, to the portrait of Caligula that Suetonius consistently seeks to draw.
It seems, then, that the campaign against the Britons may have failed because of a mutiny in which legions I and XX took part; both had refused to fight in A.D. 14 and had now joined Caligula’s forces from their original station on the Rhine. This conclusion is supported by Anthony Barrett’s analysis of circumstances within Britain. In his view, the general conditions would definitely have favored an aspiring conqueror at that time, if Caligula and his troops had only mounted an attack.
Looking at the enormous expense and effort Caligula’s military campaigns required, Tacitus characterizes them as ludicrous and attributes their failure to the emperor’s capricious nature. In fact Caligula achieved no conquests worth mentioning. An impartial assessment must record, however, that he quelled a revolt by the governor of one of the militarily most important provinces in the Empire and corrected deficiencies in the troops along the Rhine that had gone unaddressed for years. Much evidence suggests that Caligula created the conditions in which Claudius was able to conquer Britain three years later. It should also be kept in mind that all long-term planning for military campaigns had to be tossed overboard once the great conspiracy was uncovered, and that the expeditions all were attempted while the situation in Rome was highly uncertain.
Last, there are various indications that the abrupt end of the mission and Caligula’s swift return were prompted by new threats against him from aristocratic circles. In connection with events at the English Channel, Dio mentions that Caligula showed “no little vexation at his commanders who won some slight success” (Dio 59.21.3). This remark points to conflicts between the emperor and the commanding officers of the military, who all came from the senatorial order. Such tensions can hardly have arisen if the officers’ successes were in carrying out the emperor’s orders. Furthermore, the close of military actions coincided with a great intensification of the emperor’s hostility toward the aristocracy as a whole, for which the sources provide no other convincing explanation. On his way back to Rome Caligula encountered another delegation from the Senate asking him to hurry, which suggests there was an urgent need for him to take action in the capital. Thereupon, the account runs, Caligula shouted at the top of his voice, “I will come; I will come, and this will be with me,” tapping the hilt of the sword at his side. At the same time he proclaimed in an edict that “he was returning, but only to those who desired his presence, the equestrian order and the people, for to the Senate he would never more be fellow citizen nor princeps” (Suet. Cal. 49.1). He also gave up plans to celebrate a triumph, and forbade any senators to come out to meet him en route; in other words, he announced that he would have no further social contact with his fellow aristocrats.
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