caesar novus Posted September 24, 2009 Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 Two years into the reign of young Caligula, he seemed to go from admirable to crazy (or at least extremely cruel). Was this a result of an illness at the time, or was it's roots in his scary and politically violent childhood? If the good part of his reign works against a victimology excuse, were his actions a seeking out of alternate forms of gravitas for the first emperor without military laurels or typical forms of power? Did he experiment with eastern styles of getting respect or at least fear within a potentially hostile and dangerous political circle, or what? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Primus Pilus Posted September 24, 2009 Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 Conditioning (ie being raised as an imperialist) and simply embracing the idea of supreme power, mixed with the extreme embellishment of aristocratic opposition (the historians). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sylla Posted September 24, 2009 Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 Really bad press? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rompe Posted September 24, 2009 Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 I personally think Caligula and his "Craziness" was a work in the making ever since his childhood and his childhood surroundings....and what happend to his family did not help at all either...but had so much that just added and added onto it to only make it worse. (Of course, this is all In My Opinion)...I think once he became Emperor, he wanted to do good...then he realized with the "powers" of being Emperor, he litterally was a "king of the world". That can really go to someones head! As Syllia said "Bad Press" can do it to someone as well. Somewhere in his mind, he may have wanted to have a little revenge for what happend to his family growing up, but also the pressures of being Emperor can take a strain on someones life as well. No one will ever know Exactly what Caligula had for an illness,,,but he may have been in a coma like state. While he heard people saying things like "I will give my life for the Emperor to get better", he had ideas come into his mind. Once he got better, he carried out those ideas. He figured out that he could, at this point, get away with it, and ran with that. I could keep going and going, but to sum it up, I think that his whole life wrapped up in a nutshell caused his "madness" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klingan Posted September 24, 2009 Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 Really bad press? I couldn't agree more. The life and doings of the first emperors has been reported to us by authors who disliked the new system very much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caesar novus Posted September 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 Hmm, I gather my video course professor isn't exactly mainstream. He advocates #3 for Caligula, Nero, Domitian(?) and someone else. He further says this became more the rule rather than the exception. Not so much craziness, but seeking respect less from military experience, but accomplishment in athletic and artistic ways, like games, hunts, theater, music and maybe debauchery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Primus Pilus Posted September 30, 2009 Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 Hmm, I gather my video course professor isn't exactly mainstream. He advocates #3 for Caligula, Nero, Domitian(?) and someone else. He further says this became more the rule rather than the exception. Not so much craziness, but seeking respect less from military experience, but accomplishment in athletic and artistic ways, like games, hunts, theater, music and maybe debauchery. I don't discount that. There is clearly a great deal of evidence to show that non-military/non-accomplished "emperors" focused a considerable amount of attention on grandiose campaigns or dramatic "showmanship". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rompe Posted September 30, 2009 Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 Really bad press? I couldn't agree more. The life and doings of the first emperors has been reported to us by authors who disliked the new system very much. It would be so wonderful to find out how the Emperors and such people that had been writen about, actually were without all the propoganda around them being written. There would more-than-likely (IMO) be a re-write of some if not a lot of history if people really knew the truth. I have a book on Caligula where the writer writes (or tries to to the best of his abilities) how Caligula really was without the "bad press" that he got. I am in the process of reading it. Allan Massie wrote it and it is simply titled "Caligvla". Of course it is told in a story styled manner, but its nice to read a book that focuses more on "truths" and less on propoganda. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centurion-Macro Posted October 4, 2009 Report Share Posted October 4, 2009 I am going to go with his illness. I do not know much about Caligula, but I think that he had something wrong with him. Either that, or he just went mad with power... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanista Posted October 5, 2009 Report Share Posted October 5, 2009 Being raised by Rome's own Gary Glitter couldn't have helped, but like Nero, Calligula was a bit of a rock-star at first. Of course, it went pearshaped in the end, but as others have said, both Emperors really got a lot of bad press, but I think in this case I think whatever psychological shackles he'd placed on his traumatic upbringing were broken after his illness and led to mania. Still, he did some cool things. Making horse a senator was a touch, and let's face it, the horse could do a better job than most of our politicians. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caesar novus Posted November 10, 2009 Author Report Share Posted November 10, 2009 Some new CATV series popped up last week about ancient notorious figures. Can't remember the name, but it spent an hour on Caligula. Gathered a bunch of "experts" who claimed to prove that Tiberious was killed by arsenic poisoning (by Caligula?). And that Caligula's sickness was caused by lead poisoning from his overindulgence in wine (they tested the method they used to boost the sugar content in wine which gave extreme lead levels). There was coverage of "new" caligula related archeo dig information from the last few years, esp by Darius Arya who is popping up all over in Roman documentaries as a swashbuckling expert. Kind of suspiciously young and model-like to be heading the institute he does, and there is gossip on the internet of an attempted coup that tried to remove him but resulted in mass resignations instead. More camera friendly tho. Well, they rated Caligula as over the top cruel, sort of from the gratuitous angle I brought up in the "atrocity" thread. I forget the details but on a 2 dimensional psychopathy grid he came near Himmler and the polar opposite of Gengis Khan, who was a darling in comparison despite mass killings. NOTE: none of the above is claimed to accurately represent the facts from the documentary or even the historical facts. It is simply a lazy pointer to media activity that you can catch in reruns if it sounds interesting... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maty Posted November 10, 2009 Report Share Posted November 10, 2009 A few years ago I did a count of Caligula's victims. As far as we know for sure he had 27 people killed which, as these things go is not a lot. (Augustus, for example, racked up a score in the low thousands and even Claudius managed about 500 or so). I'm sure that Caligula managed more than the 27, but the reports of his wanton killings are terribly unspecific. The thing is, Caligula was an enemy of the Roman senate, and Romans could say some cruel and hurtful things about their enemies. Look at what Cicero had to say about his. It's not as if Caligula's ghost was going to sue for libel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caesar novus Posted November 11, 2009 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2009 (edited) OK, so there is enough interest to refresh my memories of "Ancients Behaving Badly" Episode: Caligula http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=det...pisodeId=503012 . It broadcasts on Fridays, and if you can endure spurts of sensationalistic claims by the narrator, there are amazing tours of various sites in hi-def worthy of freeze framing every few moments. You may find the guest experts a little sensationalistic too, but I reckon that helps keep the peanut gallery watching thru the commercials. As for arsenic poisoning, they were going by stated symptoms of mouth foaming and blotchy skin. I think they lost enthusiasm in diagnosing it tho, after finding their favorite theory of syphilus was disproved. As for lead poisoning, I think it wasn't the normal exposure but a hyper exposure based on the method elite classes of wine were boosted by fancy additives (combined with extreme levels of consumption by Caligula). IIRC guest host Darius showed 2 sites he escavated related to Caligula. He's quite a TV character that has started showing up in place of the usual bespeckled academics; I think I lived nearly walking distance from him for several years. The very reason I am fuzzy on their arguments was because the program had such a sensationalist approach that didn't inspire trust (and thus retention). But the site walkthrus and some of the host comments woke up interest. Even when they contradicted; for instance they had new analysis of digs around Holland/Belgium indicating Caligula laid very wise foundations for Claudius having a good jumping off point (logistics and forts) for invasion of Britain. And a detailed walkthru of the same argument in my atrocity thread about the context of violence being far more important than the number of victims. That flag never seems to get saluted here though (victims would back me up if only they weren't dead, sigh) regardless of the orthogonal issue that the related facts have poor degree of certainty. Edited November 11, 2009 by caesar novus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sylla Posted November 11, 2009 Report Share Posted November 11, 2009 (edited) The rationale of this episode seems faulty from its very foundation; metabolic brain injury (including lead toxicity) is actually not so rare, and sadism is not listed as one of its regular (or even exceptional) manifestations; it simply makes little clinical sense. And of course, by the same measure a lot of metabolic brain injury would be required to explain either Auschwitz or the Gulags. Edited November 11, 2009 by sylla Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caesar novus Posted November 11, 2009 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2009 (edited) The rationale of this episode seems faulty from its very foundation; metabolic brain injury (including lead toxicity) is actually not so rare, and sadism is not listed as one of its regular (or even exceptional) manifestations; it simply makes little clinical sense. Did I say they were strictly supporting the "illness" option of this poll? That seems to conflict with what I described about them putting him on a 2d graph of (psychopathy X paranoia?) which to me implies a concious choice (but maybe not neccesary). I don't know if they were driving to a conclusion so much as fleshing out claims with show and tell demonstrations. I voted for the seeking gravitas option rather than the illness option anyway. I mainly wanted to raise this show as an entertainment resource rather then something to settle the poll question. It had cartoonish aspects needed to keep paying advertisers in the current downturn I guess. I think the most successful series on the History channel is now the rednecks-on-ice series "ice road truckers". Hopefully with a recovering economy they can get back to the proper balance of Hitler/Napoleon/Roman Empire. Edited November 11, 2009 by caesar novus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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