by Suetonius
66. Vrebant insuper anxiam mentem uaria undique conuicia, nullo non damnatorum omne probri genus coram uel per libellos in orchestra positos ingerente. quibus quidem diuersissime adficiebatur, modo ut prae pudore ignota et celata cuncta cuperet, nonnumquam eadem contemneret et proferret ultro atque uulgaret. quin et Artabani Parthorum regis laceratus est litteris parricidia et caedes et ignauiam et luxuriam obicientis monentisque, ut uoluntaria morte maximo iustissimoque ciuium odio quam primum satis faceret.
67. postremo semet ipse pertaesus, tali[s] epistulae principio tantum non summam malorum suorum professus est: “quid scribam uobis, p. c., aut quo modo scribam, aut quid omnino non scribam hoc tempore, dii me deaeque peius perdant quam cotidie perire sentio, si scio.”
(2) Existimant quidam praescisse haec eum peritia futurorum ac multo ante, quanta se quandoque acerbitas et infamia maneret, prospexisse; ideoque, ut imperium inierit, et patris patriae appellationem et ne in acta sua iuraretur obstinatissime recusasse, ne mox maiore dedecore impar tantis honoribus inueniretur. (3) quod sane ex oratione eius, quam de utraque re habuit, colligi potest; uel cum ait: similem se semper sui futurum nec umquam mutaturum mores suos, quam diu sanae mentis fuisset; sed exempli causa cauendum esse, ne se senatus in acta cuiusquam obligaret, quia aliquo casu mutari posset. et rursus: (4) “Si quando autem,” inquit, “de moribus meis deuotoque uobis animo dubitaueritis,—quod prius quam eueniat, opto ut me supremus dies huic mutatae uestrae de me opinioni eripiat—nihil honoris adiciet mihi patria appellatio, uobis autem exprobrabit aut temeritatem delati mihi eius cognominis aut inconstantiam contrarii de me iudicii.”
Gaius Caligula
MAKE YOUR HORSE A CONSUL
Gaius Caligula (A.D. 12–41)
To say that Caligula—the most notorious of Suetonius’ twelve Caesars—had a difficult childhood is to put it mildly. His father Germanicus died when Caligula was seven, and his mother Agrippina the Elder fell out with Tiberius a few years later. Caligula was shunted from his great-grandmother Livia’s house to his grandmother Antonia’s before finally being summoned, at the age of eighteen, to live with Tiberius on Capri. According to Suetonius, Caligula enjoyed watching the tortures and executions that took place on the island and cavorted at all-night parties dressed in a wig and long robe.
Yet none of that was widely known at the time. When Caligula gained power in A.D. 37, the whole empire rejoiced. The population of Rome, provincials, and soldiers alike all remembered his father fondly. As Caligula escorted the body of the dead Tiberius to Rome, he was met by rapturous crowds, who called him their “star,” their “chick,” their “baby doll.”
Over time, though, Caligula came to seem far worse than Tiberius, especially to senators, as the following two selections from Suetonius’ biography show. In the first, Suetonius describes how Caligula acted less like a princeps (first citizen) and more like an eastern monarch, demanding that he be worshipped as a god and treating the Senate in ways that made Julius Caesar look mild. The second passage adds further details of Caligula’s propensity to give into every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.
“Remember, I can do whatever I want to whomever I want,” Caligula told his grandmother once. While Tiberius felt shame at his shortcomings and tried to hide them from the public, Caligula flaunted his brutality. This was the secret to power, he decided, perhaps not surprisingly given his upbringing. But he died with no major achievements and a reputation for sadism that has few parallels in history.
22. So far the discussion has been of the emperor; the rest must tell of the monster.
After he had assumed several extra names—he was called “Dutiful,” “Child of the Camps,” “Father of the Armies,” and “the Greatest and Best Caesar”—he happened to hear some kings who had come to Rome to pay their respects competing over dinner about the superiority of their descent. “Let there be one prince, one king!” he cried out.1 He came close to immediately putting on a crown and changing what could be passed off as a principate into the reality of a monarchy.
(2) Advised that he had risen above the eminence of emperors and kings alike, he began from then on to claim for himself divine majesty. He commissioned some men to remove from Greece statues of gods particularly well-known for their religious power and artistry, including the Zeus of Olympia; their heads were to be taken off so Caligula could attach his own. He extended part of the Palatine Hill all the way to the Forum and turned the Temple of Castor and Pollux into an entry-court; he would often sit between the two brothers, presenting himself for adoration to all who came as suppliants.2 Some men hailed him as Jupiter Latiaris.
(3) He also set up a temple for his own godhead with priests and the most exquisite sacrificial victims. Within the temple stood a golden statue that looked just like him and every day it was dressed in the same outfit that he was wearing. The wealthiest men gained priestly offices in turn, fiercely competing for them with the highest bids. The sacrificial victims were flamingoes, peacocks, grouse, guinea fowls, and pheasant: each type was offered on its own specific day.
(4) At night, when the moon was full and bright, he would continuously invite her to lie in his embrace. During the day he would secretly talk with Jupiter Capitolinus, sometimes whispering to him and then offering his ear in turn, sometimes speaking loudly and abusively. He was heard to say threateningly “Either lift me up or I will!” until finally he was prevailed upon by requests (so he claimed anyway) to share Jupiter’s dwelling. Throwing up a bridge over the Temple of the Divine Augustus, he joined the Palatine and Capitoline Hills. Later, so he could be even closer, he started building a new house in the area in front of the Temple of Jupiter.
23. He did not want to be thought or called the grandson of Agrippa, because of that man’s undistinguished birth, and he grew angry if anybody in a speech or poem included Agrippa among the ancestors of the Caesars.3 He even proclaimed that his mother was conceived by an act of incest, committed by Augustus with his daughter Julia. And not content with this attack on Augustus, he forbade the victories of Actium and Sicily to be celebrated with annual festivals, claiming they had brought ruin and death on the Roman People.4
(2) He repeatedly called his great-grandmother Livia Augusta “Ulysses in a dress.” He even dared, in a letter to the Senate, to accuse her of undistinguished birth, claiming that her paternal grandfather was a town councilor from Fundi. In fact, it is clear from official documents that Aufidius Lurco held political offices in Rome. When his grandmother Antonia sought a private audience he refused her unless the prefect Macro was present. Indignities of this kind and the disgust she felt led to her death, although some say that Caligula also poisoned her. After she died, he bestowed no honor on her and watched her pyre burn from his dining room.
(3) He suddenly and unexpectedly turned on his brother Tiberius, unleashing a military officer on him.5 He also forced his father-in-law Silanus to kill himself by cutting his throat with a razor. He gave a reason for each action. For Silanus it was that he had not followed Caligula onto a stormy sea but had stayed behind in the hope of seizing Rome if anything should happen to Caligula. For Tiberius it was that he smelled of a remedy taken to prevent poisoning by Caligula. In fact, what Silanus was avoiding was his inability to put up with seasickness and the trouble sea travel caused him, and Tiberius was using the medication because of a persistent cough which was growing worse.
His uncle Claudius he kept alive only to make fun of him.
24. With all of his sisters he was in the habit of having illicit sexual intercourse.6 At a crowded party, he placed each of them in turn below him on the couch while his wife was lying on the couch above.7 Drusilla he is believed to have violated when she was a virgin and he was still underage. He even once was caught having intercourse with her by his grandmother Antonia, at whose house they were being raised. Later, after Drusilla had been given out in marriage to Lucius Cassius Longinus, a former consul, he snatched her away and openly treated her as his legal w
ife. During an illness he made her the heir of his property and the empire. (2) When she died, he declared a period of mourning, in which it was a capital crime to laugh, to bathe, or to dine with parents, spouse, or children. Unable to bear his grief, he suddenly left the city of Rome by night, crossed through Campania, and made it to Syracuse, from where he then quickly came back, his beard and hair grown out. Nor did he ever afterward make an oath on any matter however small, not even before an assembly of the people or the soldiers, except by the godhead of Drusilla.
(3) On his other sisters he did not lavish very much desire or esteem: he often made them available to his male prostitutes. So that he could convict them more easily, in the trial of Aemilius Lepidus, of adultery and of abetting Lepidus in the plot against him, he not only made public all of the documents he had obtained through trickery and sexual favors, he also dedicated to Mars the Avenger three swords prepared to kill him, adding a dedicatory inscription.
25. Whether he contracted, ended, or maintained his marriages with greater shame is difficult to decide. When Livia Orestilla was marrying Gaius Piso and Caligula had come to pay his respects, he ordered that she be brought to him but then within a few days he divorced her and two years later banished her because it appeared that in the meantime she had once again sought the enjoyment of her former husband. Others say that when he was invited to the wedding dinner, he instructed Piso, reclining opposite him, “Don’t force yourself on my wife!”; he then immediately dragged her from the party and the next day said that he had obtained a marriage for himself following the example of Romulus and Augustus.
(2) Then there was Lollia Paulina, married to Gaius Memmius, the former consul who governed armies. When mention was made of how beautiful her grandmother had once been, he suddenly summoned her from the province where she was, made her husband pimp her, married her, and then after a brief interval let her go, although he forbade her ever again to sleep with anyone.
(3) Caesonia he loved passionately and steadfastly. It was not because of her conspicuous beauty or her young age—she was already the mother of three daughters from another man—but she was a woman of utter extravagance and looseness. He often put her in a military cape, shield, and helmet and would show her, riding next to him, to the soldiers. He even showed her to his friends naked. He did not deem her worthy of the name of wife until she had given birth: on the very same day he declared himself her husband and the father of the baby girl born to her. (4) The baby, however, named Julia Drusilla, he carried through the temples of all the goddesses and placed in the lap of Minerva, entrusting her to be brought up and instructed. He did not think there was any stronger sign of the little girl’s paternity than her fierceness, which even then was very great. With her dangerous little fingers she would attack the faces and eyes of the other young children playing with her.
26. It would be of little importance and interest to add to this account how he treated his other relatives and friends: Ptolemy, the son of King Juba, and his cousin (since Ptolemy was the grandson of Marcus Antonius through Antonius’ daughter Selene); and especially Macro himself, along with Ennia, who helped him into power.8 On all of them, as recompense for their family connection and the good services they had done, a bloody death was inflicted.
(2) To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined. When he had secretly killed some others, he still persisted in sending for them as if they were alive, but a few days later lied and said they had taken their own lives. (3) After the consuls forgot to make a proclamation about his birthday, he removed them from office, and the state was without the top magistracy for three days. When his own quaestor was implicated in a conspiracy, he flogged him, stripping off the man’s clothes and laying them under the feet of the soldiers so that they would have a firm footing when they beat him.
(4) He treated the other groups in Roman society with similar arrogance and violence. Disturbed in the middle of the night by a loud roar in the Circus made by men grabbing free seats, he drove them all back with clubs: over twenty equestrians were struck in the fray, just as many high-ranking women, and a vast crowd besides. He sowed dissension between the people and the equestrians at theatrical shows by opening the seats early, so that all the lowest people would grab the equestrian section. (5) At gladiatorial contests he sometimes would draw back the awnings when the sun was burning most intensely and refuse to let anyone leave; he also got rid of the usual elaborate arrangements and substituted emaciated animals, the sorriest, most worn-out gladiators, and, for mock-combat, heads of households of good reputation but who had some notable bodily deformity. Sometimes, moreover, he would seal up the granaries and inflict famine on the people.
27. He showed his savage nature through the following actions especially. When cattle to feed the beasts being readied for the games was selling at a rather high price, he selected some criminals for butchering. Inspecting a lineup of those under guard, he did not bother to look at what they had been charged with. He just stood in the middle of the portico and ordered them led away, “from baldhead to baldhead.”9
(2) He required a man who had promised to fight as a gladiator in exchange for the emperor’s recovery to keep his word; he watched him slug it out and did not let the man go until he had won and had made many pleas to be kept alive. Another man had, for the same reason, made a vow to die but then was dawdling in carrying it out; Caligula handed him over to the slaves, with orders to drag him through the neighborhoods of Rome decked out with sacred boughs and ribbons, while demanding he fulfill his vow, and then throw him from the rampart.
(3) He disfigured many men of honorable rank with a mark from a branding iron and then condemned them to the mines, road-building, or the beasts, or he enclosed them in cages on all fours like animals, or he cut them in half with a saw. Not all of these men were punished for serious reasons—but for being critical of his games, or for never swearing by his guardian spirit.
(4) He forced fathers to be present at the execution of their sons. When one pleaded poor health, he sent a litter; another he invited to a feast immediately after the public execution and with every kindness invited him to joke and be merry.
He had his overseer of shows and beast hunts whipped with chains for days on end in his own presence and only stopped when he became disgusted with the odor of the man’s putrefying brain. In the middle of the amphitheater’s arena he burnt alive the author of an Atellane farce for writing a verse that had a humorous subtext. When a Roman equestrian, thrown to the beasts, proclaimed that he was innocent, Caligula pulled him out, cut his tongue off, and then threw him back into the arena.
28. He asked a man, restored after an old sentence of exile, what he had been in the habit of doing there and the man responded flatteringly: “I always prayed to the gods that Tiberius should die and you should rule, which is exactly what happened!” Concluding that all of the men he had exiled were wishing for his death too, he sent agents around the islands to kill them all. Longing for a senator to be torn to pieces, he pressured some men to attack him as he entered the Senate-house, declare him a public enemy, stab him with their writing styluses, and then turn him over to the others to rip apart. Nor was he satisfied until the man’s arms, legs, and vital organs were dragged through the streets and heaped up in front of him.
29. He aggravated his truly monstrous deeds with the harshness of his language. He would say that there was nothing in his nature that he admired and approved of more than his—I shall use his own word—adiatrepsia, that is, his shamelessness.10 When his grandmother Antonia gave him some advice, it was not enough for him just to disregard her. “Remember,” he said, “I can do whatever I want to whomever I want.” When he was about to kill his brother, whom he suspected was taking medicine as a precaution because he feared poisoning, he said: “Do you have an
antidote against Caesar?” When he banished his sisters, he said menacingly that he not only had islands, he also had swords. (2) A man serving as a praetor had gone to Anticyra because of his poor health and sent from there several times a request that his leave of absence be extended; Caligula ordered him to be killed and added: “Bloodletting is necessary for one who has taken hellebore for such a long period and did not get better.”11 When he signed the sentences of those in prison who were to be put death after the ten-day waiting period, he would say that he was clearing his accounts. After condemning several Gauls and Greeks at once, he triumphantly exclaimed, “I have conquered Gallograecia!”
30. He seldom allowed anyone to be executed except by frequent small jabs of a knife; his instruction never changed and became famous: “Strike so that he feels he is dying.” When a man other than the one he intended was punished—there was a mix-up over names—he said, “This one deserved it just as much.” He often tossed around that well-known line from tragedy: “Let them hate me, so long as they’re afraid!”12
(2) He attacked all the senators together, saying they were the clients of Sejanus, the accusers of his mother and his brothers. He brought out the papers that he had pretended to have burned and he defended Tiberius’ savagery as necessary on the grounds that he had no choice but to believe the large number of accusers. He constantly lashed out at the equestrian order for their devotion to acting and gladiatorial combat. Angry with the people because they supported a different team than he did, he shouted: “I wish the Roman People had a single neck!” When there was a demand for the robber Tetrinius, he said that those making the demand were Tetriniuses. (3) Five net-fighting gladiators who wore just tunics were fighting as a group and they yielded without a struggle to the same number of lightly-armed opponents; when they were ordered to be killed, one of them grabbed his trident and killed all of the winners. Caligula, in an edict, mourned this as a most cruel massacre and he cursed those who had been able to stand watching it.