Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and our subject
Speaker 1: for today is known as being a paranoid tyrant in
Speaker 1: a megalomaniac. He's rumored to have committed incest with his
Speaker 1: sisters and to have elevated his horse to the consulship.
Speaker 1: And he gets his nickname, which means little boots, because
Speaker 1: his father used to dress him up in these cute
Speaker 1: little army sandals and take him on campaign with him.
Speaker 1: And this is actually relevant to some of the events
Speaker 1: of today, as Sarah is taping her sandals back together
Speaker 1: as they broke. Yes, I broke them on my way
Speaker 1: into recording and was hobbling around, So I guess I'm
Speaker 1: like Caligula in one respect. Caligula was the third Emperor
Speaker 1: of Rome. His real name as Gaius Caesar, but none
Speaker 1: of us call him that. But he was so unpopular
Speaker 1: that it's hard to know what's really true and what
Speaker 1: isn't about him because, guess what, the Roman historians really
Speaker 1: didn't like him, so their accounts are almost completely unreliable.
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Britannica says accounts of his reign by ancient historians
Speaker 1: are so biased against him that the truth is almost
Speaker 1: impossible to disentangle, which is where we got our title.
Speaker 1: That always makes it a little bit nervous, but it
Speaker 1: also usually means it's going to be a fun podcast.
Speaker 1: So let's see how it goes. To give a little
Speaker 1: family history. Gaius Caesar was born in a d. Twelve,
Speaker 1: the great grandson of Augustus, and he's actually related to
Speaker 1: the emperor on both sides, and he was partly raised
Speaker 1: in the household of Augustus's wife, Empress Olivia, And that's
Speaker 1: where we're going to start this family history, because she's
Speaker 1: known for her intrigues, and those very intrigues make his
Speaker 1: rule possible in an indirect sort of way. So Olivia
Speaker 1: is probably best known for plotting on behalf of her son,
Speaker 1: who wasn't Augustus's son. It was her son by her
Speaker 1: first marriage, Tiberius. And the thing is, even though Augustus
Speaker 1: didn't have a legitimate son, he wasn't interested in making
Speaker 1: his stepson Tiberius his air Now he wanted pretty much
Speaker 1: anybody else. Yeah, but but Olivia wasn't going to have that,
Speaker 1: and hey, the chosen heir is just kind of kept
Speaker 1: on dying, and Olivia perhaps, yeah, thanks Olivia maybe, and um,
Speaker 1: eventually Augustus is like, all right, well, I guess I'll
Speaker 1: settle on Tiberius. And it's rumored that Olivia may even
Speaker 1: have done in Augustus himself when it seemed that he
Speaker 1: was wavering on his commitment to Tiberius as air. She
Speaker 1: was a motivated woman, a devoted mother apparently. So Tiberius
Speaker 1: does become emperor, and he's not terrible. He's a pretty
Speaker 1: competent damning with faint prayer well, and he's a he's
Speaker 1: a competent statesman as well. But he's uncomfortable in this
Speaker 1: position that his mother's mock nations have forced him into,
Speaker 1: and so as he gets older, he removes himself more
Speaker 1: and more from public life and eventually spends the last
Speaker 1: ten years of his life in this semi retirement in Capri,
Speaker 1: which you've got to admit, that's a weird thing for
Speaker 1: an emperor to do. Well, and that's not the only
Speaker 1: weird thing he did. This is where all the Bizarro
Speaker 1: rumors start, because Tiberius on capri this uh no holds barred.
Speaker 1: He starts uh planning these things, planned, planning orgies with
Speaker 1: men and women. There are girls and boys dressed up
Speaker 1: as nude nymphs, and uh pan to wander around the woods.
Speaker 1: We've got Egyptian pornography, and the part that I can't
Speaker 1: say really terrible. He maybe hires little kids to act
Speaker 1: as minnows and um swim around and nit bat him
Speaker 1: under the water. So if you ever get asked to
Speaker 1: play sharks and minnows, make sure it's not Tiberius's version.
Speaker 1: But while Tiberius is off in this freaky retirement, he's
Speaker 1: letting the guy he left in charge, the praetorian Prefect,
Speaker 1: Lucius Elias Saanas, get a little too powerful. We have
Speaker 1: a little note on names too. I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: go with the um reconstructed classical names instead of the
Speaker 1: modern pronunciations. But we might go back and forth to
Speaker 1: warn you. But Sianas started thinking at some point that
Speaker 1: he would do away with the airs and perhaps become
Speaker 1: emperor himself. But Tiberius has got other problems, and he's
Speaker 1: dealing with them in another kind of way. He's worried
Speaker 1: that his nephew and heir. The general Grammaticus might be
Speaker 1: having ideas kind of similar to say Trees, and this
Speaker 1: idea yeah treason. This idea is thinking that he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to wait around for the old emperor who's often
Speaker 1: retirement to actually die. So mysteriously, Germanicus dies on campaign
Speaker 1: in Syria in a d. Nineteen, likely on Tiberius's orders.
Speaker 1: Then in twenty three Germanicus' son Drusus dies, and then
Speaker 1: in thirty one his son Julius caesar Nero dies, and
Speaker 1: in thirty three his widow Agrippina dies, So we've got
Speaker 1: this whole family almost the whole family wiped out, so
Speaker 1: there's just one son left, who is of course Gayus
Speaker 1: or little Caligula. But back to our Sanus plotline, Tiberius
Speaker 1: may have done away with one of his own heirs,
Speaker 1: Germanicus himself, but Sayanas takes care of his other heir,
Speaker 1: whose tiberius own son, Drusus, who died under strange circumstances.
Speaker 1: So eventually Saianas only has three people in his way.
Speaker 1: We have the Emperor Tiberius, Germanicus's surviving son Caligula, and
Speaker 1: Drusus's son Tiberius. Gamalus, so the heirs of the original heirs,
Speaker 1: and then the emperor himself. So Sayana's plots to kill
Speaker 1: the whole family. He's going to wipe them all out.
Speaker 1: But he's found out before he can execute his plan,
Speaker 1: so he and the rest of the Praetorian prefect are
Speaker 1: arrested and strangled and actually torn to pieces by a mob.
Speaker 1: So no light punishment here for for plotters. So we've
Speaker 1: got Caligula now as an heir to the emperor, and
Speaker 1: with his position that as secure as it can be
Speaker 1: in Imperial Rome. The young Caligula goes off to live
Speaker 1: with his uncle at the kind of freaky Capri villa
Speaker 1: in a d thirty one, And this is the point
Speaker 1: where his cruelty may have made its first appearance. And
Speaker 1: it's also when he may have started incestuous relationships with
Speaker 1: his sisters. Again to those not entirely trustworthy accounts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but by March thirty seven Tiberius dies. Of course, we've
Speaker 1: got to throw in the possibility that Caligula himself did
Speaker 1: Tiberius in and maybe mothered him with a pilly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a cruel way to go, I guess. But um,
Speaker 1: there's one little problem still for for our main guy here.
Speaker 1: He's not the sole heir, and he's supposed to share
Speaker 1: the throne with his cousin Tiberius Gimalists, but that's obviously
Speaker 1: not going to work out, of course, not so the
Speaker 1: praetorian Prefect Nevius Cortes Sutorius Macro and the Senate decide
Speaker 1: that Caligula will be the sole ruler, and it's not
Speaker 1: long before his cousin, Tiberius Gimalists winds up dead. So
Speaker 1: people are pretty happy with their young emperor Caligula, though,
Speaker 1: you know, they've had Tiberius, who's been this sort of
Speaker 1: sour old man who lives in Capri all the time
Speaker 1: and never really bothers much with things the average people
Speaker 1: are gonna like, like circuses and games. So they had
Speaker 1: this twenty year old new emperor, and he's a blood
Speaker 1: real lative of Augustus, who obviously is popular guy, and
Speaker 1: he seems like he's going to be a pretty fair
Speaker 1: level headed ruler. I mean, the first thing he does
Speaker 1: is reimburse Romans who had been financially crushed under Tiberius's
Speaker 1: oppressive taxes. When he gets rid of the sales tax,
Speaker 1: he offers amnesty for people who are imprisoned or exiled
Speaker 1: under Tiberius, and he starts staging games and entertainment for
Speaker 1: the people, which sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like a medici dec Yeah. Well, things
Speaker 1: take a turn, though, and at about seven months into
Speaker 1: his reign, Caligulu it's very very sick and the people
Speaker 1: are really upset about this, and he recovers, and some
Speaker 1: historians think that his illness drove him mad. Others say
Speaker 1: that the evidence for that is really murky, and some
Speaker 1: of it is just playing made up. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's another sort of smear campaign by later historians. But
Speaker 1: whatever happens, whether the illness drives him to insanity or
Speaker 1: if his sort of cruel meglomaniac side just appears. Several
Speaker 1: months into his rerain, things start to go downhill for Caligula. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets very very weird. And all of this stuff
Speaker 1: happens or not in a very short span of time,
Speaker 1: and it's almost easier to contemplate it thematically rather than chronologically,
Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to do. He isn't loyal
Speaker 1: to his supporters. He drives Macro, who was the prefect
Speaker 1: we talked about to commit suicide, and this was the
Speaker 1: man who had helped him secure his throne, a man
Speaker 1: who'd taken risks for him. So that's a that's a
Speaker 1: bad start already. If you're not um keeping the people
Speaker 1: who are most loyal to you alive and close to you,
Speaker 1: and you know you you'll need allies throughout your reign.
Speaker 1: So that's our first bullet point, and our second one
Speaker 1: is that he thinks he's divine, which, as we've learned
Speaker 1: in previous podcasts, is a risky stance to take. He
Speaker 1: replaces Olympian heads with his own. He almost provokes a
Speaker 1: Jewish revolt by ordering in the year forty that he
Speaker 1: be worshiped in the temple. Herod Agrippa persuades him to
Speaker 1: recall the order. She's a pretty good call, and um,
Speaker 1: we have some archaeological evidence to back this up to.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, excavations in the Roman Forum confirmed
Speaker 1: that he had incorporated the ancient temple of Castor and
Speaker 1: Pollox into his own palace, which is totally sacrilegious and uh,
Speaker 1: it's probably refitted after his reign. Well, and now onto
Speaker 1: perhaps the most persistent of the rumors about him, which
Speaker 1: was this strange relationship with his sisters, especially Drusilla, and
Speaker 1: it's possible that he was contemplating some sort of Ptolemy
Speaker 1: style brothers sister alliance. Cleopatra yes, and three of his
Speaker 1: sisters get huge public honors. They were included in the
Speaker 1: soldiers Oath of Allegiance, and some very since nationalized rumors
Speaker 1: have him impregnating Drusilla and then ripping out her womb
Speaker 1: and his impatience to see the baby. But Drusilla does
Speaker 1: die in thirty eight, probably not because of that um,
Speaker 1: but when she dies, he consecrates her as a goddess,
Speaker 1: so she's the first Roman woman to be declared of
Speaker 1: a god by the emperor like this. It's a very
Speaker 1: unusual thing to do and very strange honor. And he
Speaker 1: banished his remaining two sisters in thirty nine after he
Speaker 1: learned that one of their lovers and the widower of
Speaker 1: Drusilla were involved in a plot against him. The Calicula
Speaker 1: obviously has these strange personal inclinations which get him into
Speaker 1: trouble down the road, but his politics also aren't anything.
Speaker 1: They don't endear him to the public in any way.
Speaker 1: He's a megalomaniac, as we've mentioned several times already, and
Speaker 1: he basically rules part time because he's so busy staging
Speaker 1: all these elaborate proofs of his own in importance. And
Speaker 1: one example of this, a very famous example, is when
Speaker 1: he builds a bridge of ships across the Bay of
Speaker 1: Naples and thirty nine and then rides across them wearing
Speaker 1: Alexander's breastplate, all to to disprove the prophecy that he
Speaker 1: had as much of a chance of becoming emperors riding
Speaker 1: a horse across the bay. So it's just this weird thing,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe one of the made up stories about Caligula,
Speaker 1: but just a good peek into his character. Yeah, very
Speaker 1: very insecure. And he also wasted time concocting extraordinary methods
Speaker 1: of torture, like covering someone in honey and releasing the
Speaker 1: bees or feeding them to animals, or shutting them up
Speaker 1: in tiny cages. And the other problem is that no
Speaker 1: one was safe from his wrath, and he couldn't be
Speaker 1: trusted and also couldn't trust anyone else. He got more
Speaker 1: and more paranoid the farther into his rain that he got,
Speaker 1: and the macro relationship proves this. Somebody who clearly should
Speaker 1: have been a trusted ally of his done in He
Speaker 1: supposedly made it an offense for anyone to look at him.
Speaker 1: Another thing he was very insecure about. He was balding,
Speaker 1: but very her suit on the rest of his body.
Speaker 1: But you can't be a part time emperor, you know,
Speaker 1: spending all your money on parties and torturing and not
Speaker 1: go broke. Eventually a lesson. Yeah, it's a lesson for
Speaker 1: any future emperors out there. So soon enough, Caligula has
Speaker 1: nearly bankrupted the public treasury, so he starts doing some
Speaker 1: pretty unpopular things like reinstating trees and trials for his
Speaker 1: own financial benefit, confiscating the property of the elite citizens,
Speaker 1: and bumping up the taxes. And according to the BBC,
Speaker 1: he may have also figured that he needed some sort
Speaker 1: of military glory to of validate his reign, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't be bothered with it, either because of a lack
Speaker 1: of funds, you know, he just had already spent spent
Speaker 1: most of his money on other stuff, or because he
Speaker 1: wasn't interested. In the year forty, he plundered gall and
Speaker 1: headed north. But he must not have done too impressive
Speaker 1: of a job because his triumph consisted solely of fake
Speaker 1: Germans slaves dressed up like gals. And he was planning
Speaker 1: on heading across the channel to invade Britain, but stopped
Speaker 1: for some reason, and instead he had his men go
Speaker 1: after Neptune. Yeah, he figured he had defeated Neptune somehow,
Speaker 1: and his men were going to collect seashells, which they
Speaker 1: considered spoils of the conquered sea God, So declaring war
Speaker 1: on God's that's another major step for Caligula. I think,
Speaker 1: despite his personal strangeness, his biggest mistakes were angering the
Speaker 1: Senate and the Praetorian Guard. He didn't pay the guard,
Speaker 1: and even if you don't have money, you still find
Speaker 1: some way to pay your guard. It's a major major
Speaker 1: Mista become Caligula's part, and he goes out of his
Speaker 1: way to humiliate the Senate. And the best rumor about
Speaker 1: him ever, in my opinion, is that he promotes his
Speaker 1: horse in Catadas to the consulship. And we of course
Speaker 1: talked about this in our battle Horse episode. Um in
Speaker 1: Catadis was not, uh not going to make the list
Speaker 1: just on his battle horse Stabbus alone, so we made
Speaker 1: him a bonus horse, just because what other horses are senators?
Speaker 1: So some of these senators and guard members start plotting,
Speaker 1: and in January forty one, Caligula was killed at the
Speaker 1: Palatine Games by a tribune of the Praetorian Guard and others.
Speaker 1: He's stabbed in the genitals, if that gives you an
Speaker 1: idea of what people thought of him, and his wife
Speaker 1: and baby daughter were killed too, along with most of
Speaker 1: his family. The Guard spares his uncle Claudius, who becomes
Speaker 1: the next emperor, and only the common people really more
Speaker 1: in Caligula because he has spent so much on games
Speaker 1: and entertainments for them and uh, couldn't really bankrupt them.
Speaker 1: But going back to that whole disentanglement idea, With few
Speaker 1: reliable sources, it's been very difficult for historians to decide
Speaker 1: what to make of him, this insane sounding, spoiled, paranoid man.
Speaker 1: And one thing to consider is that he may have
Speaker 1: had a really twisted sense of humor. Yeah. Historian Michael
Speaker 1: Grant wrote that Caligula had an irrepressible, bizarre sense of
Speaker 1: the ridiculous, deliberately designed to shock, but frequently taken by
Speaker 1: his alarm subjects too seriously notoriously absurd traditions, such as
Speaker 1: the story that he intended to give a consulship to
Speaker 1: his favorite horse in Gatatas, no doubt originated from his
Speaker 1: continual stream of jokes. Probably he remarked that Incatatas would
Speaker 1: do the job as well as most of the recent incumbents.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile he ordered silence in the entire neighborhood to
Speaker 1: prevent the horse from being disturbed. So yeah, this shows
Speaker 1: how maybe somebody who said these really weird off the
Speaker 1: cuff things could build up this reputation as a complete
Speaker 1: lunatic pretty quickly. And another account of his strange sense
Speaker 1: of humor had him auctioning off public properties to make
Speaker 1: money and taking a sleeping senators nods as bids for
Speaker 1: thirteen expensive gladiators. But we also have probably the more
Speaker 1: famous argument um, and we can go with Roman historian
Speaker 1: Sweetonia's for this, who said that Caligula could not control
Speaker 1: his natural cruelty and viciousness, but he was a most
Speaker 1: eager witness of the tortures and executions of those who
Speaker 1: suffered punishment, reveling at night, and gluttony and adultery disguised
Speaker 1: in a wig and a long robe. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: definitely the Caligula who we're most familiar with, just the cruel,
Speaker 1: vicious tyrant of an emperor. But either way, Caligula likely
Speaker 1: foreshadowed certain cracks and a still relatively new imperial system,
Speaker 1: and they pop up again and again as the system
Speaker 1: keeps producing these young, unskilled rulers who are addled from
Speaker 1: birth and show no aptitude for leadership. Caligula craved absolute power,
Speaker 1: but he had none of the talent, responsibility, or respect
Speaker 1: that he needed to back it up. And we're going
Speaker 1: to close with a likely apocryphal quote of Caligula's, but
Speaker 1: a very disturbing one, and one that sort of epitomizes
Speaker 1: that the danger of the imperial system. He's supposed to
Speaker 1: have said to his wife, off comes this beautiful head.
Speaker 1: Whenever I give the word, if only Rome had one neck,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, putting all the power in in one
Speaker 1: man's hand, essentially, even though it's not officially like that,
Speaker 1: the emperor clearly has the power in this this time.
Speaker 1: If you would like to pass judgment on Caligula, email
Speaker 1: us at History Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
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