Caligula

Tiberius’ successor, Gaius, often known by the nickname Caligula, ‘little boot, given him when he was a small boy with his popular father Germanicus in the army camps, proved to be in character closer to Trimalchio than to Pliny. He succeeded to the imperial throne as sole ruler and was granted full imperial powers by the senate within a day, a sign of how readily the senators were prepared to acquiesce in a transfer of power, once it was clear there was no alternative successor. (Tiberius Gemellus was awarded an honorary title and then pushed aside and murdered within a year.)

The senators were soon to regret their enthusiasm. Gaius was only 24 and untried. He had never had the sobering experience of commanding an army, for instance. Now he suddenly had the enormous but still loosely defined powers of an emperor together with a vast fortune (2,300 million sestertii, it was said). He clearly felt he had to make some kind of impact as emperor and so began such a vast spending spree that most of his inheritance was exhausted within a year. In one extraordinary instance he had a bridge of boats three Roman miles long built across the Bay of Baiae, seemingly to disprove a taunt that it was impossible. Favourites—a charioteer, for example—could suddenly find themselves 2 million sestertii richer.

There was more to Gaius’ behaviour than mere immaturity. He was certainly unstable with a particularly perverse sense of humour. The accounts suggest that he enjoyed dominating others, humiliating them or inflicting cruelty. He would order men to be killed ‘so that they could feel they were dying’ or, in one case, a famous actor to be flogged slowly so that he could hear his fine voice shrieking for longer. His power was so unlimited that he believed himself to have transcended mortal life. While Tiberius had turned down an offer from Spain to have a temple dedicated to him (‘I am a mere mortal, fulfilling the duties of a man. . . men will give my memory enough’ Tacitus reports him saying), Gaius appeared dressed as a variety of gods. He ordered his head to be placed on a statue of Zeus at Olympia and outraged the Jews by ordering a similar statue for the Temple at Jerusalem.

Extravagant antics were at first popular with the Roman crowds. It was good entertainment and inevitably some of the big spending trickled down to the poor, but as the money ran out and Gaius dreamed up new taxes which fell on the urban poor his popularity quickly slumped. The crowds resented his disdainful treatment of them when he attended the Circus Maximus. Among the senators disillusion had set in more quickly. Gaius treated the senate with contempt. Senators were arbitrarily accused of treason and forced to commit suicide. It soon became obvious that it was impossible to allow this perverse man in his twenties with possibly fifty years of life ahead to continue in power. With no constitutional means of removing an emperor, the only way was assassination. A conspiracy was organized by members of the Praetorian Guard with support from within the senate and in January 41 Gaius was set upon as he was leaving the games and stabbed to death.

In the constitutional hiatus that followed the old republican cry of the aristocracy, libertas, was briefly heard in the senate house. However, the republic was by now past restoration. Once again the senate simply acquiesced in events when the Praetorian Guard proposed as the new emperor Claudius, a brother of Germani-cus, whom, it was said, they had found cowering behind a curtain in the imperial palace. Whether this was true or not, Claudius recovered his composure quickly enough to reward the Guard with money, a precedent they were not to forget. That and the aura of his family name was enough to secure his succession.