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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and our subject

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Speaker 1: for today is known as being a paranoid tyrant in

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Speaker 1: a megalomaniac. He's rumored to have committed incest with his

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Speaker 1: sisters and to have elevated his horse to the consulship.

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Speaker 1: And he gets his nickname, which means little boots, because

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Speaker 1: his father used to dress him up in these cute

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Speaker 1: little army sandals and take him on campaign with him.

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Speaker 1: And this is actually relevant to some of the events

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Speaker 1: of today, as Sarah is taping her sandals back together

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Speaker 1: as they broke. Yes, I broke them on my way

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Speaker 1: into recording and was hobbling around, So I guess I'm

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Speaker 1: like Caligula in one respect. Caligula was the third Emperor

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Speaker 1: of Rome. His real name as Gaius Caesar, but none

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Speaker 1: of us call him that. But he was so unpopular

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Speaker 1: that it's hard to know what's really true and what

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Speaker 1: isn't about him because, guess what, the Roman historians really

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Speaker 1: didn't like him, so their accounts are almost completely unreliable.

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Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Britannica says accounts of his reign by ancient historians

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Speaker 1: are so biased against him that the truth is almost

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Speaker 1: impossible to disentangle, which is where we got our title.

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Speaker 1: That always makes it a little bit nervous, but it

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Speaker 1: also usually means it's going to be a fun podcast.

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Speaker 1: So let's see how it goes. To give a little

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Speaker 1: family history. Gaius Caesar was born in a d. Twelve,

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Speaker 1: the great grandson of Augustus, and he's actually related to

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Speaker 1: the emperor on both sides, and he was partly raised

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Speaker 1: in the household of Augustus's wife, Empress Olivia, And that's

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Speaker 1: where we're going to start this family history, because she's

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Speaker 1: known for her intrigues, and those very intrigues make his

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Speaker 1: rule possible in an indirect sort of way. So Olivia

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Speaker 1: is probably best known for plotting on behalf of her son,

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Speaker 1: who wasn't Augustus's son. It was her son by her

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Speaker 1: first marriage, Tiberius. And the thing is, even though Augustus

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Speaker 1: didn't have a legitimate son, he wasn't interested in making

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Speaker 1: his stepson Tiberius his air Now he wanted pretty much

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Speaker 1: anybody else. Yeah, but but Olivia wasn't going to have that,

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Speaker 1: and hey, the chosen heir is just kind of kept

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Speaker 1: on dying, and Olivia perhaps, yeah, thanks Olivia maybe, and um,

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Speaker 1: eventually Augustus is like, all right, well, I guess I'll

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Speaker 1: settle on Tiberius. And it's rumored that Olivia may even

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Speaker 1: have done in Augustus himself when it seemed that he

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Speaker 1: was wavering on his commitment to Tiberius as air. She

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Speaker 1: was a motivated woman, a devoted mother apparently. So Tiberius

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Speaker 1: does become emperor, and he's not terrible. He's a pretty

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Speaker 1: competent damning with faint prayer well, and he's a he's

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Speaker 1: a competent statesman as well. But he's uncomfortable in this

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Speaker 1: position that his mother's mock nations have forced him into,

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Speaker 1: and so as he gets older, he removes himself more

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Speaker 1: and more from public life and eventually spends the last

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Speaker 1: ten years of his life in this semi retirement in Capri,

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Speaker 1: which you've got to admit, that's a weird thing for

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Speaker 1: an emperor to do. Well, and that's not the only

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Speaker 1: weird thing he did. This is where all the Bizarro

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Speaker 1: rumors start, because Tiberius on capri this uh no holds barred.

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Speaker 1: He starts uh planning these things, planned, planning orgies with

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Speaker 1: men and women. There are girls and boys dressed up

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Speaker 1: as nude nymphs, and uh pan to wander around the woods.

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Speaker 1: We've got Egyptian pornography, and the part that I can't

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Speaker 1: say really terrible. He maybe hires little kids to act

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Speaker 1: as minnows and um swim around and nit bat him

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Speaker 1: under the water. So if you ever get asked to

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Speaker 1: play sharks and minnows, make sure it's not Tiberius's version.

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Speaker 1: But while Tiberius is off in this freaky retirement, he's

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Speaker 1: letting the guy he left in charge, the praetorian Prefect,

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Speaker 1: Lucius Elias Saanas, get a little too powerful. We have

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Speaker 1: a little note on names too. I think we're gonna

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Speaker 1: go with the um reconstructed classical names instead of the

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Speaker 1: modern pronunciations. But we might go back and forth to

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Speaker 1: warn you. But Sianas started thinking at some point that

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Speaker 1: he would do away with the airs and perhaps become

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Speaker 1: emperor himself. But Tiberius has got other problems, and he's

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Speaker 1: dealing with them in another kind of way. He's worried

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Speaker 1: that his nephew and heir. The general Grammaticus might be

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Speaker 1: having ideas kind of similar to say Trees, and this

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Speaker 1: idea yeah treason. This idea is thinking that he doesn't

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Speaker 1: want to wait around for the old emperor who's often

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Speaker 1: retirement to actually die. So mysteriously, Germanicus dies on campaign

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Speaker 1: in Syria in a d. Nineteen, likely on Tiberius's orders.

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Speaker 1: Then in twenty three Germanicus' son Drusus dies, and then

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Speaker 1: in thirty one his son Julius caesar Nero dies, and

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Speaker 1: in thirty three his widow Agrippina dies, So we've got

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Speaker 1: this whole family almost the whole family wiped out, so

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Speaker 1: there's just one son left, who is of course Gayus

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Speaker 1: or little Caligula. But back to our Sanus plotline, Tiberius

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Speaker 1: may have done away with one of his own heirs,

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Speaker 1: Germanicus himself, but Sayanas takes care of his other heir,

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Speaker 1: whose tiberius own son, Drusus, who died under strange circumstances.

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Speaker 1: So eventually Saianas only has three people in his way.

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Speaker 1: We have the Emperor Tiberius, Germanicus's surviving son Caligula, and

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Speaker 1: Drusus's son Tiberius. Gamalus, so the heirs of the original heirs,

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Speaker 1: and then the emperor himself. So Sayana's plots to kill

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Speaker 1: the whole family. He's going to wipe them all out.

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Speaker 1: But he's found out before he can execute his plan,

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Speaker 1: so he and the rest of the Praetorian prefect are

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Speaker 1: arrested and strangled and actually torn to pieces by a mob.

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Speaker 1: So no light punishment here for for plotters. So we've

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Speaker 1: got Caligula now as an heir to the emperor, and

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Speaker 1: with his position that as secure as it can be

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Speaker 1: in Imperial Rome. The young Caligula goes off to live

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Speaker 1: with his uncle at the kind of freaky Capri villa

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Speaker 1: in a d thirty one, And this is the point

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Speaker 1: where his cruelty may have made its first appearance. And

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Speaker 1: it's also when he may have started incestuous relationships with

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Speaker 1: his sisters. Again to those not entirely trustworthy accounts. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but by March thirty seven Tiberius dies. Of course, we've

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Speaker 1: got to throw in the possibility that Caligula himself did

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Speaker 1: Tiberius in and maybe mothered him with a pilly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is a cruel way to go, I guess. But um,

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Speaker 1: there's one little problem still for for our main guy here.

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Speaker 1: He's not the sole heir, and he's supposed to share

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Speaker 1: the throne with his cousin Tiberius Gimalists, but that's obviously

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Speaker 1: not going to work out, of course, not so the

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Speaker 1: praetorian Prefect Nevius Cortes Sutorius Macro and the Senate decide

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Speaker 1: that Caligula will be the sole ruler, and it's not

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Speaker 1: long before his cousin, Tiberius Gimalists winds up dead. So

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Speaker 1: people are pretty happy with their young emperor Caligula, though,

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Speaker 1: you know, they've had Tiberius, who's been this sort of

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Speaker 1: sour old man who lives in Capri all the time

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Speaker 1: and never really bothers much with things the average people

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Speaker 1: are gonna like, like circuses and games. So they had

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Speaker 1: this twenty year old new emperor, and he's a blood

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Speaker 1: real lative of Augustus, who obviously is popular guy, and

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Speaker 1: he seems like he's going to be a pretty fair

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Speaker 1: level headed ruler. I mean, the first thing he does

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Speaker 1: is reimburse Romans who had been financially crushed under Tiberius's

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Speaker 1: oppressive taxes. When he gets rid of the sales tax,

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Speaker 1: he offers amnesty for people who are imprisoned or exiled

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Speaker 1: under Tiberius, and he starts staging games and entertainment for

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Speaker 1: the people, which sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it.

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Speaker 1: But it sounds like a medici dec Yeah. Well, things

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Speaker 1: take a turn, though, and at about seven months into

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Speaker 1: his reign, Caligulu it's very very sick and the people

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Speaker 1: are really upset about this, and he recovers, and some

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Speaker 1: historians think that his illness drove him mad. Others say

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Speaker 1: that the evidence for that is really murky, and some

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Speaker 1: of it is just playing made up. You know, maybe

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Speaker 1: it's another sort of smear campaign by later historians. But

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Speaker 1: whatever happens, whether the illness drives him to insanity or

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Speaker 1: if his sort of cruel meglomaniac side just appears. Several

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Speaker 1: months into his rerain, things start to go downhill for Caligula. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it gets very very weird. And all of this stuff

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Speaker 1: happens or not in a very short span of time,

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Speaker 1: and it's almost easier to contemplate it thematically rather than chronologically,

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Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to do. He isn't loyal

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Speaker 1: to his supporters. He drives Macro, who was the prefect

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Speaker 1: we talked about to commit suicide, and this was the

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Speaker 1: man who had helped him secure his throne, a man

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Speaker 1: who'd taken risks for him. So that's a that's a

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Speaker 1: bad start already. If you're not um keeping the people

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Speaker 1: who are most loyal to you alive and close to you,

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Speaker 1: and you know you you'll need allies throughout your reign.

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Speaker 1: So that's our first bullet point, and our second one

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Speaker 1: is that he thinks he's divine, which, as we've learned

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Speaker 1: in previous podcasts, is a risky stance to take. He

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Speaker 1: replaces Olympian heads with his own. He almost provokes a

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Speaker 1: Jewish revolt by ordering in the year forty that he

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Speaker 1: be worshiped in the temple. Herod Agrippa persuades him to

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Speaker 1: recall the order. She's a pretty good call, and um,

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Speaker 1: we have some archaeological evidence to back this up to.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand three, excavations in the Roman Forum confirmed

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Speaker 1: that he had incorporated the ancient temple of Castor and

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Speaker 1: Pollox into his own palace, which is totally sacrilegious and uh,

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Speaker 1: it's probably refitted after his reign. Well, and now onto

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Speaker 1: perhaps the most persistent of the rumors about him, which

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Speaker 1: was this strange relationship with his sisters, especially Drusilla, and

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Speaker 1: it's possible that he was contemplating some sort of Ptolemy

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Speaker 1: style brothers sister alliance. Cleopatra yes, and three of his

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Speaker 1: sisters get huge public honors. They were included in the

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Speaker 1: soldiers Oath of Allegiance, and some very since nationalized rumors

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Speaker 1: have him impregnating Drusilla and then ripping out her womb

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Speaker 1: and his impatience to see the baby. But Drusilla does

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Speaker 1: die in thirty eight, probably not because of that um,

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Speaker 1: but when she dies, he consecrates her as a goddess,

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Speaker 1: so she's the first Roman woman to be declared of

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Speaker 1: a god by the emperor like this. It's a very

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Speaker 1: unusual thing to do and very strange honor. And he

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Speaker 1: banished his remaining two sisters in thirty nine after he

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Speaker 1: learned that one of their lovers and the widower of

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Speaker 1: Drusilla were involved in a plot against him. The Calicula

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Speaker 1: obviously has these strange personal inclinations which get him into

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Speaker 1: trouble down the road, but his politics also aren't anything.

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Speaker 1: They don't endear him to the public in any way.

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Speaker 1: He's a megalomaniac, as we've mentioned several times already, and

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Speaker 1: he basically rules part time because he's so busy staging

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Speaker 1: all these elaborate proofs of his own in importance. And

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Speaker 1: one example of this, a very famous example, is when

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Speaker 1: he builds a bridge of ships across the Bay of

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Speaker 1: Naples and thirty nine and then rides across them wearing

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Speaker 1: Alexander's breastplate, all to to disprove the prophecy that he

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Speaker 1: had as much of a chance of becoming emperors riding

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Speaker 1: a horse across the bay. So it's just this weird thing,

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe one of the made up stories about Caligula,

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Speaker 1: but just a good peek into his character. Yeah, very

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Speaker 1: very insecure. And he also wasted time concocting extraordinary methods

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Speaker 1: of torture, like covering someone in honey and releasing the

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Speaker 1: bees or feeding them to animals, or shutting them up

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Speaker 1: in tiny cages. And the other problem is that no

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Speaker 1: one was safe from his wrath, and he couldn't be

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Speaker 1: trusted and also couldn't trust anyone else. He got more

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Speaker 1: and more paranoid the farther into his rain that he got,

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Speaker 1: and the macro relationship proves this. Somebody who clearly should

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Speaker 1: have been a trusted ally of his done in He

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Speaker 1: supposedly made it an offense for anyone to look at him.

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Speaker 1: Another thing he was very insecure about. He was balding,

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Speaker 1: but very her suit on the rest of his body.

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Speaker 1: But you can't be a part time emperor, you know,

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Speaker 1: spending all your money on parties and torturing and not

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Speaker 1: go broke. Eventually a lesson. Yeah, it's a lesson for

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Speaker 1: any future emperors out there. So soon enough, Caligula has

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Speaker 1: nearly bankrupted the public treasury, so he starts doing some

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Speaker 1: pretty unpopular things like reinstating trees and trials for his

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Speaker 1: own financial benefit, confiscating the property of the elite citizens,

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Speaker 1: and bumping up the taxes. And according to the BBC,

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Speaker 1: he may have also figured that he needed some sort

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Speaker 1: of military glory to of validate his reign, but he

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Speaker 1: couldn't be bothered with it, either because of a lack

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Speaker 1: of funds, you know, he just had already spent spent

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Speaker 1: most of his money on other stuff, or because he

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Speaker 1: wasn't interested. In the year forty, he plundered gall and

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Speaker 1: headed north. But he must not have done too impressive

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Speaker 1: of a job because his triumph consisted solely of fake

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Speaker 1: Germans slaves dressed up like gals. And he was planning

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Speaker 1: on heading across the channel to invade Britain, but stopped

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Speaker 1: for some reason, and instead he had his men go

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Speaker 1: after Neptune. Yeah, he figured he had defeated Neptune somehow,

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Speaker 1: and his men were going to collect seashells, which they

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Speaker 1: considered spoils of the conquered sea God, So declaring war

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Speaker 1: on God's that's another major step for Caligula. I think,

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Speaker 1: despite his personal strangeness, his biggest mistakes were angering the

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Speaker 1: Senate and the Praetorian Guard. He didn't pay the guard,

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Speaker 1: and even if you don't have money, you still find

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Speaker 1: some way to pay your guard. It's a major major

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Speaker 1: Mista become Caligula's part, and he goes out of his

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Speaker 1: way to humiliate the Senate. And the best rumor about

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Speaker 1: him ever, in my opinion, is that he promotes his

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Speaker 1: horse in Catadas to the consulship. And we of course

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Speaker 1: talked about this in our battle Horse episode. Um in

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Speaker 1: Catadis was not, uh not going to make the list

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Speaker 1: just on his battle horse Stabbus alone, so we made

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Speaker 1: him a bonus horse, just because what other horses are senators?

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Speaker 1: So some of these senators and guard members start plotting,

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Speaker 1: and in January forty one, Caligula was killed at the

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Speaker 1: Palatine Games by a tribune of the Praetorian Guard and others.

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Speaker 1: He's stabbed in the genitals, if that gives you an

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Speaker 1: idea of what people thought of him, and his wife

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Speaker 1: and baby daughter were killed too, along with most of

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Speaker 1: his family. The Guard spares his uncle Claudius, who becomes

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Speaker 1: the next emperor, and only the common people really more

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Speaker 1: in Caligula because he has spent so much on games

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Speaker 1: and entertainments for them and uh, couldn't really bankrupt them.

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Speaker 1: But going back to that whole disentanglement idea, With few

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Speaker 1: reliable sources, it's been very difficult for historians to decide

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Speaker 1: what to make of him, this insane sounding, spoiled, paranoid man.

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Speaker 1: And one thing to consider is that he may have

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Speaker 1: had a really twisted sense of humor. Yeah. Historian Michael

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Speaker 1: Grant wrote that Caligula had an irrepressible, bizarre sense of

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Speaker 1: the ridiculous, deliberately designed to shock, but frequently taken by

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Speaker 1: his alarm subjects too seriously notoriously absurd traditions, such as

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Speaker 1: the story that he intended to give a consulship to

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Speaker 1: his favorite horse in Gatatas, no doubt originated from his

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Speaker 1: continual stream of jokes. Probably he remarked that Incatatas would

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Speaker 1: do the job as well as most of the recent incumbents.

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Speaker 1: And meanwhile he ordered silence in the entire neighborhood to

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Speaker 1: prevent the horse from being disturbed. So yeah, this shows

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Speaker 1: how maybe somebody who said these really weird off the

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Speaker 1: cuff things could build up this reputation as a complete

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Speaker 1: lunatic pretty quickly. And another account of his strange sense

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Speaker 1: of humor had him auctioning off public properties to make

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Speaker 1: money and taking a sleeping senators nods as bids for

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Speaker 1: thirteen expensive gladiators. But we also have probably the more

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Speaker 1: famous argument um, and we can go with Roman historian

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Speaker 1: Sweetonia's for this, who said that Caligula could not control

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Speaker 1: his natural cruelty and viciousness, but he was a most

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Speaker 1: eager witness of the tortures and executions of those who

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Speaker 1: suffered punishment, reveling at night, and gluttony and adultery disguised

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Speaker 1: in a wig and a long robe. So yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: definitely the Caligula who we're most familiar with, just the cruel,

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Speaker 1: vicious tyrant of an emperor. But either way, Caligula likely

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Speaker 1: foreshadowed certain cracks and a still relatively new imperial system,

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Speaker 1: and they pop up again and again as the system

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Speaker 1: keeps producing these young, unskilled rulers who are addled from

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Speaker 1: birth and show no aptitude for leadership. Caligula craved absolute power,

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Speaker 1: but he had none of the talent, responsibility, or respect

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Speaker 1: that he needed to back it up. And we're going

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Speaker 1: to close with a likely apocryphal quote of Caligula's, but

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Speaker 1: a very disturbing one, and one that sort of epitomizes

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Speaker 1: that the danger of the imperial system. He's supposed to

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Speaker 1: have said to his wife, off comes this beautiful head.

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Speaker 1: Whenever I give the word, if only Rome had one neck,

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Speaker 1: and uh yeah, putting all the power in in one

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Speaker 1: man's hand, essentially, even though it's not officially like that,

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Speaker 1: the emperor clearly has the power in this this time.

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Speaker 1: If you would like to pass judgment on Caligula, email

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Speaker 1: us at History Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com

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