Caligula biography book
Caligula: A Biography
February 10, 2013
Gaius Caesar Germanicus became Roman Emperor in 37 CE at the age of 24, and was assassinated in 41 CE just as he was about to travel to Alexandria, possibly to set that city up as an alternative location from which to rule the Roman Empire. The son of the very popular and potential Emperor Germanicus (who died, some say in mysterious circumstances) he was as popular as his father, and was known to all as “Little Boots” a term which in Latin translates as Caligula, and he has gone down in history with that nickname. He has also been saddled throughout history as being one of the cruellest, monstrous, and possibly even insane Emperors, who thought he was God, was prone to sexual excesses and extravagance, building, among other things, a bridge some three miles long across the Bay of Baiae out of tethered double row of ships, covered in earth, over which he rode his horse across the Bay, to everyone’s amazement. He also apparently made his favourite horse Incitatus a Senator…
This negative view of Caligula has persisted through the ages: one of the ‘bad’ Emperors. The trouble with this assessment is that it is, in all probability, incorrect. In this book history professor Winterling examines what little historical information we have on Caligula together with the subsequent blackening of his name by later historians, in an attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff. His method of carefully picking through the various strands and attempting to isolate fact from fiction is done, a little too academically, perhaps, for some people’s taste, but consciously striving (and succeeding, in my opinion) to make this discipline more accessible to the general reader. This book is an excellent illustration of what modern historians have to go through when attempting to arrive at something more grounded in facts than in fictions (whatever the reasons for those fictions might be).
One thing appears certain: Caligula was extremely popular with the ordinary people. He was intelligent, no more ‘cruel’ than just about any other Roman Emperor, and seemed more than capable of ruling appropriately, as required. So why the animosity of the later historians? Winterling suggests that more than anything this was because he not only managed to reveal the general hypocrisy of the Senate and the Aristocracy (basically one and the same as far as power was concerned) but to gleefully rub their faces in it, both privately and publicly. The Aristocracy were the true powerbrokers, with the Senate their public face pretending to be serving the Republic when they were more interested in serving their own interests. Certainly they did not want a return to Monarchy (one of the main reasons for their assassination of Julius Caesar) nor did they really like the idea of an Emperor (too close to Monarchy, and to control over Aristocratic power).
Only Octavian as Augustus managed to run the Empire as Emperor, yet wily enough to ensure that the Senate believed it was in control. Tiberius, Augustus’s successor, so loathed dealing with the Senate that in the end he preferred to rule from Capri, letting the Senators more or less have their way in Rome. Caligula, on the other hand, apparently shared Tiberius’s loathing, but preferred to confront the Senate head-on: he, Caligula, was Emperor, and demanded to being treated as a god like Augustus, while they, the Senate, were there only to follow his commands and do his bidding. He relished ridiculing and humiliating Senators on a regular basis, making fun of them through some of his outrageous demands, yet ever ready to threaten severe punishments, even unto death, if they displeased him. Of course, this tended to result in Caligula’s increasing isolation from any benefactors he might have had in the ruling classes, and he even managed to antagonise family members to the extent that they conspired against him. In the end, he set the seeds for his own destruction.
History, we are told, is written by the winners, and this tends to contaminate their records as far as the truth is concerned. Here Winterling shows how, even after some 2000 years, it is possible to extract a few nuggets of golden facts from the mountain of dross that sometimes accompanies the records of those who either over-praise, or, as in the case of Caligula, over-condemn.
This negative view of Caligula has persisted through the ages: one of the ‘bad’ Emperors. The trouble with this assessment is that it is, in all probability, incorrect. In this book history professor Winterling examines what little historical information we have on Caligula together with the subsequent blackening of his name by later historians, in an attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff. His method of carefully picking through the various strands and attempting to isolate fact from fiction is done, a little too academically, perhaps, for some people’s taste, but consciously striving (and succeeding, in my opinion) to make this discipline more accessible to the general reader. This book is an excellent illustration of what modern historians have to go through when attempting to arrive at something more grounded in facts than in fictions (whatever the reasons for those fictions might be).
One thing appears certain: Caligula was extremely popular with the ordinary people. He was intelligent, no more ‘cruel’ than just about any other Roman Emperor, and seemed more than capable of ruling appropriately, as required. So why the animosity of the later historians? Winterling suggests that more than anything this was because he not only managed to reveal the general hypocrisy of the Senate and the Aristocracy (basically one and the same as far as power was concerned) but to gleefully rub their faces in it, both privately and publicly. The Aristocracy were the true powerbrokers, with the Senate their public face pretending to be serving the Republic when they were more interested in serving their own interests. Certainly they did not want a return to Monarchy (one of the main reasons for their assassination of Julius Caesar) nor did they really like the idea of an Emperor (too close to Monarchy, and to control over Aristocratic power).
Only Octavian as Augustus managed to run the Empire as Emperor, yet wily enough to ensure that the Senate believed it was in control. Tiberius, Augustus’s successor, so loathed dealing with the Senate that in the end he preferred to rule from Capri, letting the Senators more or less have their way in Rome. Caligula, on the other hand, apparently shared Tiberius’s loathing, but preferred to confront the Senate head-on: he, Caligula, was Emperor, and demanded to being treated as a god like Augustus, while they, the Senate, were there only to follow his commands and do his bidding. He relished ridiculing and humiliating Senators on a regular basis, making fun of them through some of his outrageous demands, yet ever ready to threaten severe punishments, even unto death, if they displeased him. Of course, this tended to result in Caligula’s increasing isolation from any benefactors he might have had in the ruling classes, and he even managed to antagonise family members to the extent that they conspired against him. In the end, he set the seeds for his own destruction.
History, we are told, is written by the winners, and this tends to contaminate their records as far as the truth is concerned. Here Winterling shows how, even after some 2000 years, it is possible to extract a few nuggets of golden facts from the mountain of dross that sometimes accompanies the records of those who either over-praise, or, as in the case of Caligula, over-condemn.
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