Was Caligula Mad?

[Lost_Warrior]

I actually think that Caligula *wasn't* as crazy as everyone seems to think...most of it, it seems stems from misinterpreted texts, which became exhadgerated Hollywood films, which became "historical fact" (btw am I the *only* one who thinks that horse as consul thing actually WAS funny?)

 

BTW welcome Phil, excellent first posts I hope to see more of them

[Germanicus]

I don't think he was mad, just a sociopath, not insane though.

[alekandros]

really new here, but love the topics.

As for my first post here, hm.

Caligula mad....all that has been said, is what really need be said about him. I read a book a year ago that pushed my previous thinking about Caligula, due to class studies. Most of my courses leaned towards the notion that he was, well, mad, insane, crazy. The book made me realize, well maybe there was a different way of looking at him. The reformist that is misunderstood, and has been said, the craziness was all an act. From all that I've read, now, I can't say for sure where he landed on the crazy scale when it comes to Roman Emperors. As it said in that book (a quote that stuck in my head about Caligula) "power corrupts, absolute power...well, that's more fun."

Edited December 19, 2005 by alekandros

[AEGYPTUS]

Some reformist he was trying to get his horse elected as Consul. Definitely mad with out a doubt. What sane person would try and get an animal elected to a seat in the senate?

[Rameses the Great]

Created two huge monstracities called the Nemmey ships. Was obsessed with the gladitorial fights and killed defenseless disabled men, so he seemed like a hero. Threw his civilians to be eaten by lions...yup he was mad.

Edited April 30, 2006 by Rameses the Great

[Lost_Warrior]

Some reformist he was trying to get his horse elected as Consul. Definitely mad with out a doubt. What sane person would try and get an animal elected to a seat in the senate?

 

One with a very unique sense of humor! He probably did that as a joke.

[AEGYPTUS]

A rather bizarre sense of humor unique does not quite do it. Although he is not the only ruler through out the course of world history who has had unusual tendencies. Elizabeth Tudor is said to have watched people getting executed while eating her meal!! So Caligula looks well quite normal in comparison lol

[Lost_Warrior]

I've heard it suggested (was it someone here who said it? I can't remember it's been too long) that Caligula tried to get his horse the position of consul because he was angry with the other Consuls, and was trying to make a point that his horse could do a better job then they, currently, were doing.

[Horatius]

This is probably old hat to most of the people here but this Gaius assasination always interested me and I never read this account before by Flavius Josephus, http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-19.htm Supposedly it is partly based on an eyewitness account by a Senator named Cluvius Rufus. It is hostile of course but gave me at least a different perspective on this whole deal. It seems to me that some in the Senate just had a hostillity towards the julio-claudians that wouldn't rest until they were exterminated. Gaius seems to be young and smart (and a smart-ass too!) but maybe too young for the position he held. Like Caesar he was loved by the soldiers and people but not the Senate. He might have evolved into a good Princeps but he was no Augustus for sure. His constant taunting of Chaerea provided his enemies in the Senate with an opportunity, without it I really wonder what would have happened. Probably way off base here but seeing how the Senate was so quickly cowed and the military held firm for the most part for Claudius you have to wonder what his legacy would have been if he had just been a little kinder to Chaerea.

Edited May 20, 2006 by Horatius

[phil25]

Re-reading this thread, I realised that two points were never really tackled.

 

First, Gaius did NOT make his horse, Incitatus, consul. There is no record of it, and the whole story is perfectly well explained - as has been said above - as a sarcastic remark.

 

Secondly, the Nemi ships were far from monstrosities. The remains discovered early in the C20th and destroyed in the 1939-45 war, suggest that these were wonderful floating palaces, with mosaics, gilding and heating as well as marble-clad walls. Extravagant and unique they may have been. Monstrous? I doubt it.

 

I have argued elsewhere that Gaius was far from mad, though he may have had personality problems, associated with his very troubled and difficult up-bringing.

 

I see in him a young man, born under the principiate, who had time to think about how monarchy might work, and to observe his great-uncle Tiberius at work. To me, his actions suggest a young man who saw the disguised monarchy of Augustus' creation as a worthless sham. If you were going to have autocracy, why not be open and bold about it. Thus he embarked on a regal style of principiate.

 

This, I argue, was Hellenistuic in style and was based on policies and practices descended from Gaius' paternal great-grandfather, Antonius the tiumvir, who in turn derived them from Ptolemaic Egypt.

 

This involved a semi-divine ruler, greater ostentation and separateness, (perhaps an association or even official incest/marriage with siblings) and a different style of etiguette, quite apart from any detailed differences of policy from the Augustan precedent.

 

Gaius was thus not mad, but far-sighted, foreseeing the way the empire would go in the C2nd. His problem was in being mis-understood - and not only by political rivals in the Senate. Pioneers are often subject to a lack of appreciation or understanding of their aims and motives. But Gaius had grasped that what Rome needed was a firm hand and a single hand on the tiller, that republican forms were moribund and would never return - could never be allowed to return.

 

Gaius needs reassessing. We need to plunge beneath the rather banal scandal of Suetonius and the senatorial bias of Tacitus, to see a genuinely revolutionary and visionary politician doing effective and necessary work.

 

Discuss (as exam paper used to say!!

 

Phil

[Neos Dionysos]

Discuss (as exam paper used to say!!

 

Phil

 

Don't remind me... LoL

 

 

Now, Phil I have a question here. Because of the adoption then of Hellenic style rule and of the adoption of mainly Ptolemaic which copied the Egyptian Gods, do you think Gaius chose this style also becuase of how Isis and Osirus were both husband and wife but also full brother and sister? Hence his close relationship with his own sister, (whether or not it was sexual he was still very close to her), and why he may have emulated it and this style of rule?

[phil25]

Frankly, ND, I don't know.

 

I just think I detect a possible coherent pattern that might suggest alternative (sensible) explanations for Gaius' actions. Further than that, I don't think the evidence would allow me to go.

 

But Gaius' grandmother Antonia (Antonius' daughter) could certainly have been brought up with some Egyptian influences, and almost certainly with a pride in the father she never met. Gaius knew Antonia well and lived with her for a time. The possibility of influence is there.

 

As for Ptolemaic models for Gaius' relationship with his sisters - it strikes me as more plausible than the traditional kinky incest interpretation.

 

What do you think?

 

Phil

[Neos Dionysos]

Frankly, ND, I don't know.

 

I just think I detect a possible coherent pattern that might suggest alternative (sensible) explanations for Gaius' actions. Further than that, I don't think the evidence would allow me to go.

 

But Gaius' grandmother Antonia (Antonius' daughter) could certainly have been brought up with some Egyptian influences, and almost certainly with a pride in the father she never met. Gaius knew Antonia well and lived with her for a time. The possibility of influence is there.

 

As for Ptolemaic models for Gaius' relationship with his sisters - it strikes me as more plausible than the traditional kinky incest interpretation.

 

What do you think?

 

Phil

 

 

I always thought that many of Caligula's "madness" were added after his demise, but given his very harsh upbringing and experiences as a child I don't see it necessarilly that his relationship with his sister, even if intimate, was in his eyes wrong. As has been stated, the Egyptian Gods were consanguinous with themselves and the Ptolemies copied this to make themselves 'more God-like' and the idea of consanguinous marriages by the common people was a common event which continued until the 3rd Century AD when Rome finally banned the practice. So I think a couple takes could be placed on this.

 

1). If we assume Gaius was intimate with his sister, then he emulating the Gods of the Egyptians and ruling as a Ptolemaic monarch would shows that he was giving legitimacy to his relationship and conveying to Rome that it is not a 'taboo' but something that the Gods themselves do.

 

...or...

 

2). If we assume Gaius was not intimate with his sister but still very close to her, then his emulation of the Egyptian Gods and of the Ptolemaic monarchs is that both brother and sister, being so close and as one, is right and like the Gods and perhaps he was going to imitate the rulerships of some of the Ptolemaics where the Pharoah and his sister, (though married), ruled jointly and both were 'divine'.

 

In either case, it gives credance and support to the idea that Gaius was pushing for the Hellenistic type of rulership in Rome, not the hidden rulership of the Princeps, but direct monarchal rule like that of the Hellenic Kingdoms.

 

So I pose to you now, what do you think given these perceptions?

[phil25]

ND

 

I think, on balance, that the latter (an innocent but "official" relationship) is more likely than an incestuous one.

 

We know that Roman historians tended to assume that a person's character as determined at the end of their life, was the same (even if hidden) throughout it. Tiberius is the archetype. Thus, with Gaius, it would be easy to take gossip and unsupported supposition at the end of his life and read that back to - Caligula must have slept with his sisters even when they were adolescents.

 

But I am unconvinced by this. Antonia's household would have been an old-style one; Agrippina Major was hardly a complacent mother. She saw her children as a royal family. That is not to say, of course, that the difficult years following Germanicus' death, with Sejanus persecuting the mother and elder sons, might not have driven Gaius and his sisters into a close bond. But that is something different.

 

To me, Gaius is a man seeking to reform the state and introduce a new autocratic model. He was an intelligent and perceptive man, with a quick wit (demonstrated by his sharp and precise humour). I think he would have learned from Caesar the Dictator and Augustus that frightening public opinion with things too alien could have dire consequences. Incest would have been a step too far, but an association with his sisters in a celibate "marriage of state" might have been a future step - this would explain why he was content with a woman of fairly humble origins as a consort.

 

If the princeps had discussed this idea with his close advisers, it would also provide a basis for the later scandalous gossip. A "marriage" to Drusilla might lead to a supposition that children would follow, then to the idea that in fact they had had one and that caused her death. Supposition without evidence, I know. But in my experience, gossip often has some basis in fact, however remote (that's what makes it believeable to others) and often relates to misunderstanding or relies on partial information.

 

I'd love to see a thorough re-examination of Gaius life and reign by an expert, which sought to look at him as a sane (if troubled) young ruler trying out innovative ideas. A novelist who keeps close to facts might also explore the material well.

 

But it is all supposition, I underline that. Just looking at the evidence we have through a different lens.

 

Phil

[Neos Dionysos]

Well, it is easy to see how scholars of the past took what was written by the ancient sources and just retranslated it, thuse the accounts by Suetonius become 100% fact though I beleive he has been shown to not be very truthful himself and with an axe to grind against the Julio-Claudians... (correct me if I am wrong with that).

 

I take it you give no credence to the account that Gaius got her pregnant and in his 'madness' tore the fetus from her womb to prevent it from challenging his position? Which I myself find very hard to comprend.

 

Now, as you stated the idea of a 'marriage' publicly for reasons of rulership like that of the Hellenic kingdoms but correctly keeping it non-intimate because over reaching would lead to his downfall, was his actions then in this regard perhaps too far for Rome at the time? Would it be wrong to possibly take into account that he had discussed this idea with advisors or high officials but they were disgusted with the idea of a Hellenic style rule and so rumors were spread that he was having incest with Drusilla, and when he died of an illness, it was then all the more easy for them to claim she died because of the incestous relations of having a child, thus destroying Gaius politically? Or was this all done after the fact to cement thier true reasonings?

 

I must say, it would be a great read to have an expert re-examine Gaius without the preconceived tales of Suetonius filling his research.