Early reign , 1647. Tiberius died on 16 March AD 37, a day before the
Liberalia festival. He was 77 years old. Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio repeat variously elaborated rumours which held that Caligula, perhaps with Macro, was directly responsible for his death.
Philo and
Josephus, the latter a Romano-Jewish writer who served Vespasian a generation later, describe Tiberius' death as natural. On the same day, Caligula was hailed as emperor by members of the Praetorian guard at
Misenum. His leadership of the
domus Caesaris ("Caesar's household") as its sole heir and
pater familias was ratified by the senate, who acclaimed him
imperator two days after the death of Tiberius. Caligula entered Rome on 28 or 29 March, and with the consensus of "the three orders" (senate, equestrians and common citizens) the Senate conferred on him the "right and power to decide on all affairs". Caligula was the first emperor to acquire all of his powers at once rather than over the course of his reign like Augustus and Tiberius.
Princeps In a single day, and with a single piece of legislation, the 25-year-old Caligula, previously a virtual unknown in Rome's political life, and with no military service, was thus granted the same trappings, authority and powers that Augustus had accumulated piecemeal, over a lifetime and sometimes reluctantly. Until his first formal meeting with the Senate, Caligula refrained from using the titles they had granted him. His studied deference must have gone some way to reassure the more astute that he should prove amenable to their guidance. Some must have resented the political manipulations that led to this extraordinary settlement. Caligula was now entitled to make, break or ignore any laws he chose. Augustus had shown, and Tiberius had failed to realise, that the roles of
primus inter pares ("first among equals") and
princeps legibus solutus ("a princeps not bound by the laws") required the exercise of personal responsibility, self-restraint, and above all, tact; as if the Senate still held the power they had voluntarily surrendered. In the words of scholar
Anthony A. Barrett, "Caligula would be restrained only by his own sense of discretion, which became in lamentably short supply as his reign progressed". Caligula dutifully asked the Senate to approve divine honours for his predecessor but was turned down, in line with senatorial and popular opinion regarding the dead emperor's worth. Caligula did not push the issue; he had made the necessary gesture of filial respect. Tiberius' will named two heirs, Caligula and Gemellus, but the latter was still a minor, and could not hold any kind of office. The will was annulled with the standard justification that Tiberius must have been insane when he composed it, incapable of good judgment. Although Tiberius' will had been legally set aside, Caligula honoured many of its terms, and in some cases, improved on them. Tiberius had provided each praetorian guardsman with a generous gratitude payment of 500
sesterces. Caligula doubled this, and took credit for its payment as an act of personal generosity; he also paid bonuses to the city troops and the
army outside Italy. Every citizen in Rome was given 150 sesterces, and heads of households twice that amount. Building projects on the Palatine hill and elsewhere were also announced, which would have been the largest of these expenditures. Thanks to Macro's preparations on his behalf, Caligula's accession was a "brilliantly stage-managed affair". The legions had already sworn loyalty to Caligula as their imperator. Now Caligula gave the miserly Tiberius a magnificent funeral at public expense, and a tearful eulogy, and met with an ecstatic popular reception along the funeral route and in Rome itself. Among Caligula's first acts as emperor was the provision of public games on a grand scale. Philo describes Caligula in these early days as universally admired. Suetonius writes that Caligula was loved by many, for being the beloved son of the popular Germanicus. Three months of public rejoicing ushered in the new reign. Philo describes the first seven months of Caligula's reign as a "
Golden Age" of happiness and prosperity. Josephus claims that in the first two years of his reign, Caligula's "high-minded... even-handed" rule earned him goodwill throughout the Empire. Caligula took up his first consulship on 1 July, two months after his succession. He accepted all titles and honours offered him except
pater patriae ("father of the fatherland"), which had been conferred on Augustus. Caligula refused it, protesting his youth, until 21 September 37. He commemorated his own father, Germanicus, with portraits on coinage, adopted his name, and renamed the month of September after him. He granted his sisters and his grandmother
Antonia Minor extraordinary privileges, normally reserved for the
Vestals, and female priesthoods of the deified Augustus; their powers were entirely ceremonial, not executive, but their names were included in the standard formulas used in the senate house to invoke divine blessings on debates and proceedings, and the annual prayers for the safety of emperor and state. Caligula named his favourite sister, Drusilla, as heir to his
imperium. Oaths were sworn in the name of Caligula, and his entire family. One of his sesterces not only identifies each sister by name, but associates her with a particular imperial virtue; "security", "concord" or "fortune". Caligula ordered that an image of his deceased mother, Agrippina, must accompany all festival processions. He made his uncle
Claudius his consular colleague, tasked with siting statues of Caligula's two dead brothers, and occasionally standing in for Caligula at games, feasts and ceremonies. Claudius' own family found his limp and stammer "something of a public embarrassment"; he mismanaged the statue commission and his first consulship ended soon after, alongside Caligula's but his appointment elevated him from mere equestrian to senator, and eligible for consulship. Barrett and Yardley describe Claudius' consulship as an "astonishingly enlightened gesture" on Caligula's part, not one of Caligula's attempts to court popularity, as Suetonius would have it. Caligula made a public show of burning Tiberius' secret papers, which gave details of his infamous treason trials. They included accusations of villainy and betrayal against various senators, many of whom had willingly assisted in prosecutions of their own number to gain financial advantage, imperial favour, or to divert suspicion away from themselves; any expression of dissatisfaction with the emperor's rule or decisions could be taken as undermining the State, and lead to prosecution for
maiestas (treason). Caligula claimed – falsely, as it later turned out – that he had read none of these documents before burning them. He used a coin issue to advertise his claim that he had restored the security of the laws, which had suffered during Tiberius' prolonged absence from Rome; he reduced a backlog of court cases in Rome by adding more jurors and suspending the requirement that sentences be confirmed by imperial office. Stressing his descent from Augustus, Caligula retrieved the remains of his mother and brothers from their places of exile for interment in the Mausoleum of Augustus. Caligula began work on a temple to
Livia, widow of Augustus; she held the honorific title of
Augusta while still living, and when she died was eventually made a
diva (goddess) of the Roman state under Claudius. The temple had been vowed in her lifetime, but not constructed.
Illness and recovery Between approximately mid-October and mid-November 37, Caligula fell seriously ill through unknown causes and hovered for a month or so between life and death. Rome's public places filled with citizens who implored the gods for his recovery, some even offering their own lives in exchange. By late October, their emperor had recovered, and embarked on what might have been a purge of suspected opponents or conspirators. Caligula's relations with his senate had been congenial but were now sullied by the forced suicide, for reasons unknown, of the eminent senator Silanus, formerly Caligula's father-in-law.
Gemellus, Caligula's adopted son and heir, now 18 years old and legally adult, was also disposed of. Suetonius offers several versions of Gemellus' death. In one, Gemellus was given the adult
toga virilis then charged with having taken an antidote, "implicitly accusing Caligula of wanting to poison him", and forced to kill himself. Several months later, in early 38, Caligula forced suicide on his Praetorian Prefect, Macro, without whose help and protection he would not have survived, let alone gained the throne as sole ruler. Any link between the deaths is speculative, but it is possible that Silanus had conspired to make Gemellus emperor, should Caligula fail to recover; and Caligula might simply have tired of Macro's control and influence. In 38, Caligula nominated
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus as his heir, and married him to his beloved sister Drusilla, but on 19 June that year, Drusilla died. She was deified and renamed Panthea ("All Goddesses"); the first mortal woman in Roman history to be made a
diva (goddess of state). Caligula, bereft, declared a period of compulsory, universal mourning. Drusilla's death is one of several events approximate to the time of Caligula's illness, besides the death of Antonia and any unreported effects of the illness itself, thought by some to contribute to a fundamental change in Caligula's attitudes. Purges so early in Caligula's reign suggest to Weidemann that "the new emperor had learnt a great deal from Tiberius" and "that attempts to divide his reign into a 'good' beginning followed by unremitting atrocities [...] are misplaced".
Public profile Caligula shared many of the popular passions and enthusiasms of the lower classes and young aristocrats: public spectacles, particularly gladiator contests, chariot and horse racing, the theatre and gambling, but all on a scale which the nobility could not match. He trained with professional gladiators and staged exceptionally lavish gladiator games, being granted exemption by the senate from the
sumptuary laws that limited the number of gladiators to be kept in Rome. He was openly and vocally partisan in his uninhibited support or disapproval of particular charioteers, racing teams, gladiators and actors, shouting encouragement or scorn, sometimes singing along with paid performers or declaiming the actors' lines, and generally behaving as "one of the crowd". In gladiator contests, he supported the
parmularius type, who fought using small, round shields. In chariot races, he supported the
Greens, and personally drove his favourite racehorse,
Incitatus ("Speedy") as a member of the Green faction. Most of Rome's aristocracy would have found this an unprecedented, unacceptable indignity for any of their number, let alone their emperor. Caligula showed little respect for distinctions of rank, status or privilege among the senate, whose members Tiberius had once described as "men ready to be slaves". Among those whom Caligula recalled from exile were actors and other public performers who had somehow caused Tiberius offence. Caligula seems to have built a loyal following among his own loyal
freedmen, citizen-commoners, disreputable public performers on whom he lavished money and other gifts; and the lower nobility (equestrians) rather than the senators and nobles whom he clearly and openly mistrusted, despised and humiliated for their insincere simulations of loyalty. Dio notes, with approval, that Caligula allowed some equestrians senatorial honours, anticipating their later promotion to senator based on their personal merits. To reverse declining membership of the equestrian order, Caligula recruited new, wealthy members empire-wide, and scrupulously vetted the order's membership lists for signs of dishonesty or scandal. He seems to have ignored trivial misdemeanours, and would have anticipated the creation of "new men" (
novi homines), first of their families to serve as senators. They would owe him a debt of gratitude and loyalty for their advancement. Barrett describes some of the supposed equestrian offences punished by Caligula as "decidedly trivial", and their punishments as sensationalist. Dio claims that Caligula had more than 26 equestrians executed in a circus "fracas"; in Suetonius' biography "more than 20" lives were lost in what is almost certainly the same event, described as a violent but accidental crush. Some sources claim that Caligula forced equestrians and senators to fight in the arena as gladiators. Condemnation to the gladiator arena as a combatant was a standard punishment, doubling as public entertainment, for non-citizens found guilty of certain offences. Laws of AD 19 by Augustus and Tiberius banned voluntary participation of the elite in any public spectacles, but the ban was never particularly effective, and was broadly ignored in Caligula's reign. During Caligula's illness two citizens, one of whom was an equestrian, offered to fight as gladiators if only the gods would spare the emperor's life. The offers were insincere, intended to flatter and invite reward. When Caligula recovered, he insisted that they be taken at face value, to avoid accusations of perjury: "cynical, but not without wit of a kind".
Public reform and finance celebrating the abolition of a tax in AD 38 by Caligula. The obverse of the coin contains a picture of a
Pileus which symbolizes the liberation of the people from the tax burden. Caption: . In 38, Caligula lifted censorship, and published accounts of public funds and expenditure. Suetonius congratulates this as the first such act by any emperor. Very soon after his succession, he restored the right of the popular assembly (
comitia) to elect magistrates on behalf of the common citizenry, a right that had been taken over by the Senate under Tiberius and Augustus. The
aediles, elected officials who managed public games and festivals, and maintained the fabric of roads and shrines, would now have incentive to spend their own money on lavish, high-profile spectacles and other
munera (gifts to the state or people), to win the popular vote. Dio writes that this, "though delighting the rabble, grieved the sensible, who stopped to reflect, that if the offices should fall once more into the hands of the many... many disasters would result". When the Senate outright refused to accept this, Caligula restored control of elections to them. Either way, the emperor ultimately chose which candidates stood for election, and which were elected. Caligula was quite capable of recognising his own plans and decisions as flawed, and abandoning, revising or reversing them when faced with opposition. He was open to good advice, but could just as easily take its offering as an insult to his youth or understanding – Philo quotes his warning "Who dares teach me?" Caligula abandoned his plan to convert the Temple of Jerusalem to a temple of the Imperial cult, with a statue of himself as Zeus, when warned that the plan would arouse extreme protests, and injure the local economy. He gave funds where they were needed; he helped those who lost property in fires, and abolished a deeply unpopular tax on sales, but whether his extravagant gifts to favourites during his earliest reign – be they actors, charioteers or other public performers – drew on his personal wealth or state coffers is not known. Personal generosity and magnanimity, coupled with discretion and responsibility, were expected of the ruling elite, and the emperor in particular. At some time, Caligula ruled that bequests to office-holders remain property of the office, not of the office-holder.
Tax and treasury Suetonius claims that Caligula squandered 2.7 billion
sesterces in his first year and addressed the consequent treasury deficit by confiscating the estates of wealthy individuals, after false accusations, fines or outright seizure, even the death penalty, as a means of raising money. This seems to have started in earnest around the time of Caligula's confrontation with the senate (in early 39). Suetonius's retrospective balance sheet overlooks what would have been owed to Caligula, personally and in his capacity as emperor, on Tiberius' death, and the release of the former emperor's hoarded wealth into the economy at large. Caligula's inheritance included the deceased empress
Livia's vast bequest, which Caligula distributed among its nominated public, private and religious beneficiaries. Barrett in
Caligula: The Abuse of Power asserts that this "massive cash injection would have given the Roman economy a tremendous boost". Dio remarks the beginnings of a financial crisis in 39, and connects it to the cost of Caligula's extravagant bridge-building project at Baiae. Suetonius has presumably the same financial crisis starting in 38; he does not mention a bridge but lists a broad range of Caligula's extravagances, said to have exhausted the state treasury. To Wilkinson, Caligula's uninterrupted use of precious metals in coin issues does not suggest a bankrupt treasury, though there must have been a blurring of boundaries between Caligula's personal wealth, and his income as head of state. Caligula's immediate successor,
Claudius, abolished taxes, embarked on various costly building projects and donated 15,000 sesterces to each
Praetorian Guard in 41 as his own reign began, which suggests that Caligula had left him a solvent treasury. In the long term, the occasional windfall aside, Caligula's spending exceeded his income. Fund-raising through taxation became a major preoccupation. Provincial citizens were liable for direct payment of taxes used to fund the military, a payment from which Italians were exempt. Caligula abolished some taxes, including the deeply unpopular sales tax, but he introduced an unprecedented range of new ones, and rather than employ professional tax farmers (
publicani) in their collection, he made this a duty of the notoriously forceful Praetorian Guard. Dio and Suetonius describe these taxes as "shameful": some were remarkably petty. Caligula taxed "taverns, artisans, slaves and the hiring of slaves", edibles sold in the city, litigation anywhere in the Empire, weddings or marriages, the wages of porters "or perhaps couriers", and most infamously, a tax on prostitutes (active, retired or married) or their pimps, liable for "a sum equivalent to a single transaction". Citizens of provincial Italy lost their previous tax exemptions. Most individual tax bills were fairly small but cumulative; over Caligula's brief reign, taxes were doubled overall. Even then, the revenue was nowhere near enough, and the imposition was deeply resented by Rome's commoners. Josephus claims that this led to riotous protests at the Circus. Barrett remarks that stories of consequent "mass executions" there by the military should "almost certainly" be dismissed as "standard exaggeration". Property or money left to Tiberius as emperor but not collected on his death would have passed to Caligula as office-holder. Roman inheritance law recognised a legator's obligation to provide for his family; Caligula seems to have considered his fatherly duties to the state entitled him to a share of every will from pious subjects. The army was not exempt; centurions who left nothing or too little to the emperor could be judged guilty of ingratitude, and have their wills set aside. Centurions who had acquired property by plunder were forced to turn over their spoils to the state. Stories of a brothel in the Imperial palace, staffed by Roman aristocrats, matrons and their children, are taken literally by Suetonius and Dio; McGinn believes they could be based on a single incident, extended to an institution in the telling. Similar allegations would be made in the future against
Commodus and
Elagabalus. Winterling, citing Dio 59.28.9, traces the outline of the story to Cassius Dio's account for AD 40, and his allegation that the noble tenants of newly built suites of rooms at the palace were compelled to pay exorbitant rents for the privilege of living so close to Caligula, and under the protection of the praetorians. No brothel is mentioned in this account. Suetonius appears to reverse the traditional aristocratic client-patron ceremonies of mutual obligation, and have Caligula accepting payments for maintenance from his loyal consular "friends" at morning salutations, evening banquets, and bequest announcements. The sheer numbers of "friends" involved meant that meticulous records were kept of who had paid, how much, and who still owed. His agents would then visit the very same consuls who had been involved in conspiracies against him, rail against the Senate's treachery
en masse but ask for "gifts" from individuals to express their loyal friendship in return. A refusal was unthinkable. Winterling describes the families who occupied these rooms as hostage, under the supervision of the Praetorians; some paid up willingly, some reluctantly, but all paid. Caligula made loans available at high interest to those who lacked the necessary funds, to complete the humiliation of Rome's elite, especially the old Republican families. Despite his biographers' attempts to ridicule Caligula's taxes, many were continued after his death. The military remained responsible for all tax collection, and the tax on prostitution continued up to the reign of
Severus Alexander. Caligula's ruling that bequests made to any reigning emperor became property of his office, not himself as a private individual, was made constitutional under
Antoninus Pius.
Coinage Caligula did not change the structure of the monetary system established by Augustus and continued by Tiberius, but the contents of his coinage differed from theirs. The location of the imperial mint for the coins of precious metals (gold and silver) is a matter of debate among ancient numismatists. It seems that Caligula initially produced his precious coins from
Lugdunum (now
Lyon, France), like his predecessors, then moved the mint to Rome in 37–38, although it is possible that this move occurred later, under Nero. His
base metal coinage was struck in Rome. Unlike Tiberius, whose coins remained almost unchanged throughout his reign, Caligula used a variety of types, mostly featuring
Divus Augustus, as well as his parents Germanicus and Agrippina, his dead brothers
Nero and
Drusus, and his three sisters
Agrippina,
Drusilla, and
Livilla. The reason for the extensive emphasis on his relatives was to highlight Caligula's double claim to the Principate, from both the Julian and Claudian sides of the dynasty, and to call for the unity of the family. The sesterce with his three sisters was discontinued after 39, due to Caligula's suspicion regarding their loyalty. He also made a sesterce celebrating the Praetorian cohorts as a mean to give them the bequest of Tiberius at the beginning of his reign. Caligula minted a
quadrans, a small bronze coin, to mark the abolition of the
ducentesima, a 0.5% tax on sales. The output of the precious metal mints was small and his sesterces were mostly made in limited quantities, which make his coins now very rare. This rarity cannot be attributed to Caligula's alleged
damnatio memoriae reported by Dio, as removing his coins from circulation would have been impossible; besides,
Mark Antony's coins continued to circulate for two centuries after his death. Caligula's common coins are base metal types with
Vesta, Germanicus, and Agrippina the Elder, and the most common is an
as with his grandfather
Agrippa. Finally, Caligula kept open the mint at
Caesarea in
Cappadocia, which had been created by Tiberius, in order to pay military expenses in the province with silver
drachmae. Numismatists
Harold Mattingly and
Edward Sydenham consider that the artistic style of Caligula's coins is below those of Tiberius and Claudius; they especially criticize the portraits, which are too hard and lack details.
Construction Caligula had a fondness for grandiose, costly building projects, many of which were intended to benefit or entertain the general population but are described in Roman sources as wasteful. In the city of Rome, he completed the
temple of Augustus and the reconstruction of the
theatre of Pompey. He is said to have built a bridge between the temple of Castor and Pollux and the Capitol. Barrett (2015) believes that this bridge existed only in Suetonius' account, and should perhaps be dismissed as a fantasy, with possible origins in some jocular remark by Caligula. Caligula began an
amphitheatre beside the
Saepta Julia; he cleared the latter space for use as an arena, and filled it with water for a single
naumachia (a sham naval battle fought as entertainment). He supervised the extension and rebuilding of the imperial palace to include a gallery for his art collection. Philo and his party were given a tour of the gallery during their diplomatic visit. Barrett (2015) considers Philo's description of Caligula as a "would-be connoisseur and aesthete" as "probably not very wide of the mark." To help meet Rome's burgeoning demand for fresh water, he began the construction of aqueducts
Aqua Claudia and
Anio Novus, which
Pliny the Elder considered to be engineering marvels. He built a large racetrack, now known as the
Circus of Gaius and Nero. In its central spine he incorporated an Egyptian obelisk, now known as the
Vatican obelisk, which he had brought by sea on a gigantic, purpose-built ship, which used 120,000 modi of lentils as ballast. At
Syracuse, he repaired the city walls and temples. He pushed to keep roads in good condition throughout the empire, and extended the existing network: to this end, Caligula investigated the financial affairs of current and past highway commissioners. Those guilty of negligence, embezzlement or misuse of funds were forced to repay what they had dishonestly used for other purposes, or fulfil their commissions at their own expense. Caligula planned to rebuild the palace of
Polycrates at Samos, to finish the temple of Didymaean Apollo at
Ephesus, and house his own cult and image there: and to found a city high up in the
Alps. He intended to dig a canal through the
Isthmus of Corinth in Greece and sent a chief centurion to survey the site. None of these plans came to fruition.
Treason trials In the course of 39, Caligula's increasingly tense relationship with his Senate deteriorated into outright hostility and confrontation. This is one of Dio's more confusing accounts, involving conspiracies, denunciations and trials for treason (
maiestas), following Caligula's launch of invective at the entire senate, reviewing and condemning their current and past behaviour. He accused them of servility, treachery and hypocrisy in voting honours to Tiberius and Sejanus while they lived, and rescinding those honours once their recipients were safely dead. He declared that it would be folly to seek the love or approval of such men: they hated him, and wanted him dead, so it would be better that they should fear him. Caligula's diatribes exposed the idealised
princeps or First Senator as illusion and imposture. When the senate returned next day, they seemed to confirm his suspicions, and voted him a special guard of armed pretorians to protect him and guard his statues. Apparently seeking to please him and assure his safety, the Senate proposed that his senatorial chair be raised "on a high platform even in the very Senate house". They offered a thanksgiving to Caligula, as to a monarch, expressing gratitude for allowing them to live when others had died. Winterling suggests that Caligula's three subsequent consulships, sworn at the
Rostra, were vain attempts to make amends, public statements of respect for the senators as his equals. Barrett perceives these later consulships as symbolic of Caligula's continued intention to dominate the senate and the state; Barrett describes the change in Caligula's rule as a gradual unravelling, a "descent into serious mismanagement and impenetrable mistrust" – and, latterly, into "arbitrary terror"; but Dio's claim that in fact, "there was nothing but slaughter" is undermined by evidence that most senators managed to survive Caligula's reign with their persons and fortunes intact. Caligula had not, after all, destroyed Tiberius' records of treason trials. He reviewed them and decided that numerous senators discharged from Tiberius' court hearings seemed to have been guilty of conspiracy all along, against emperor and state – the worst form of
maiestas (treason). Tiberius' treason trials had encouraged professional
delatores (informers), who were loathed by the populace, but many of the accused had testified against each other, and against Caligula's own family, even to the point of initiating the prosecutions themselves. If they had acted against Caligula's family, they might act against Caligula himself. New investigations were launched; Dio names five once-trusted, consular senators tried for
maiestas, but his allegation that senators or others were put to death in "great numbers" is unsupported. Two of the five prospered under his rule, and beyond. Caligula preferred to publicly humiliate his enemies in the senate, especially those of ancient families, by stripping them of their inherited honours, dignities and titles. In early September, he dismissed the two suffect consuls, citing their inadequate, low-key celebration of his birthday (31 August) and excessive attention to the anniversary of
Actium (2 September). This was the last battle in a damaging civil war between two of Caligula's close ancestors, which he found no cause for celebration. One of the dismissed consuls killed himself: Caligula may have suspected him of conspiracy.
Incitatus Suetonius and Dio outline Caligula's supposed proposal to promote his favourite racehorse,
Incitatus ("Swift"), to
consul, and later, a priest of his own cult. This could have been an extended joke, created by Caligula himself in mockery of the senate. A persistent, popular belief that Caligula actually promoted his horse to consul has become "a byword for the promotion of incompetents", especially in political life. It may have been one of Caligula's many oblique, malicious or darkly humorous insults, mostly directed at the senatorial class, but also against himself and his family. Winterling sees it as an insult to the consulars themselves. An aristocrat's highest ambition, the consulship, could be laid open to ruinous competition and at the same time, to ridicule. David Woods believes it unlikely that Caligula meant to insult the post of consul, as he had held it himself. Suetonius, possibly failing to get the joke, presents it as further proof of Caligula's insanity, adding circumstantial details more usually expected of the senatorial nobility, including palaces, servants and golden goblets, and invitations to banquets.
Bridge at Baiae In 39 or 40, by Suetonius' reckoning, Caligula ordered a temporary
floating bridge to be built using a double line of ships as
pontoons, earth-paved and stretching for over two miles from the resort of
Baiae, near
Naples, to the neighbouring port of
Puteoli, with resting places between. Some ships were built on site but grain ships were also requisitioned, brought to site, secured and temporarily resurfaced. Any practical purpose for the bridge is unclear; Winterling believes that it might have been intended to mark Caligula's attempted invasion of Britain. A two-day ceremonial was performed, with offerings to the sea-god
Neptune and
Invidia (Envy), and a satisfactory result, in that the sea remained completely calm. The bridge was said to rival the Persian king
Xerxes' pontoon bridge across the
Hellespont. For the opening ceremony, Caligula donned the supposed breastplate of
Alexander the Great, and rode his favourite horse,
Incitatus, across the bridge, perhaps defying a prediction, attributed by Suetonius to Tiberius' soothsayer
Thrasyllus of Mendes, that Caligula had "no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Bay of Baiae". On the second day, he rode the bridge from end to end several times "at full tilt", accompanied by the soldiery, famous nobles and hostages.
Seneca and Dio claim that grain imports were dangerously depleted by Caligula's re-purposing of Rome's grain ships as pontoons. Barrett finds these accusations absurd; if the bridge was finished in 39, that was far too early to have had any effect on the annual grain supply, and "a genuine grain crisis was simply blamed on the most outlandish episode at hand." Dio places this episode soon after Caligula's furious denunciation of the Senate; Barrett speculates that Caligula may have intended the whole event as an object lesson on how completely he was in charge: it may also provide "the most striking example of his wasteful extravagance"; its pointlessness might have been the whole point.
Provinces Judaea and Egypt Caligula's reign saw an increase of tensions between Jews and ethnic Greeks. The two groups had settled throughout the Roman Empire and Judaea was ruled as a Roman client kingdom. They settled in Egypt following its conquest by Macedonian Greeks, and remained there after its conquest by Rome. While the Alexandrian Greeks held citizen status, Alexandrian Jews were classified as mere settlers, with no statutory or citizen rights other than those granted them by their Roman governors. The Greeks feared that official recognition of Jews as citizens would undermine their own status and privilege. Caligula had replaced the prefect of Egypt,
Aulus Avilius Flaccus, with
Herod Agrippa, who was governor of
Batanaea and
Trachonitis, and was a personal friend. Flaccus had conspired against Caligula's mother and had connections with Egyptian separatists. In 38, Caligula sent Agrippa to Alexandria unannounced to check on Flaccus. According to Philo, the visit was met with jeers and mockery from the Greek population who saw Agrippa as a gimcrack "king of the Jews.” In Philo's account, a mob of Greeks broke into synagogues to erect statues and shrines of Caligula, against Jewish religious law. Flaccus responded by declaring the Jews "foreigners and aliens", and expelled them from all but one of Alexandria's five districts, where they lived under dreadful conditions. Philo gives an account of various atrocities inflicted on Alexandria's Jews within and around this ghetto by the city's Greek population. Caligula held Flaccus responsible for the disturbances, exiled him, and eventually executed him. In 39, Agrippa accused his uncle
Herod Antipas, the
tetrarch of
Galilee and
Perea, of planning a rebellion against Roman rule with the help of
Parthia. Herod Antipas confessed, Caligula exiled him, and Agrippa was rewarded with his territories. Riots again erupted in Alexandria in 40 between Jews and Greeks, when Jews who refused to venerate the emperor as a god were accused of dishonouring him. In the Judaean city of
Jamnia, resident Greeks built a shoddy, sub-standard altar to the
Imperial cult, intending to provoke a reaction from the Jews; they immediately tore it down. This was interpreted as an act of rebellion. In response, Caligula ordered the erection of a statue of himself in the Jewish
Temple of Jerusalem, a political, rather than a religious act for Rome, but a blasphemy for the Jews, and in conflict with Jewish monotheism. In this context, Philo wrote that Caligula "regarded the Jews with most especial suspicion, as if they were the only persons who cherished wishes opposed to his". In May of 40, Philo accompanied a deputation of Alexandrian Jews and Greeks to Caligula, and a second deputation after 31 August that year, during the worst of the Alexandrian riots. Neither of these encounters proved decisive. Both gave Caligula ample opportunity for casual, friendly banter, which seems to have included humiliating levity, always at the Jewish delegation's expense; but he made no claims of divinity, either in his dress nor his speech, merely asking at the second encounter, more or less rhetorically, why Jews found his veneration so difficult. Philo and Josephus each saw Caligula's behaviour as driven by his claims to divinity, which for a Jew would have virtually defined him as fundamentally insane, despite appearances otherwise. The ethnically Greek population of Alexandria had already made their loyalty to the new emperor clear, with displays of his image as focus for his cult. The destruction of the altar at Jamlia and, presumably, removal of "idolatrous" images placed in synagogues by Greek citizens, might have been intended as an expression of Jewish religious fervour, rather than a response aimed at one tyrant's offensive claims of personal godhood. Philo seems to have loathed Caligula from the start, but his belief that Caligula hated the Jews and was preparing their destruction has no basis in evidence. To place Caligula's statue in Temple precincts, showing him dressed as Jupiter, would have been consistent with the Empire-wide religious phenomenon known as
Imperial cult, from whose full expression Jews had so far been exempted; they could offer prayer
for the emperor, rather than
to him; far from a perfect compromise but the highest honour that Jewish tradition permitted in honour of a mortal. Caligula found this most unsatisfactory, and demanded that his statue be installed in the Temple of Jerusalem forthwith. The
Governor of Syria,
Publius Petronius, ordered a statue from
Sidon, then postponed its installation for as long he could, rather than risk a serious Jewish rebellion. In some versions, Caligula proved amenable to rational discussion with Agrippa and Jewish authorities, and faced with threats of rebellion, destruction of property and loss of the grain-harvest if the plan went ahead, abandoned the project. In more hostile versions Caligula, being demonstrably insane, and incapable of rational discussion, impulsively changed his mind once again, and reissued the order to Petronius along with the threat of enforced suicide if he failed. An even larger statue of Caligula-Zeus was ordered from Rome; the ship carrying it was still under way when news of Caligula's death reached Petronius. Caligula's plan was abandoned, Petronius survived and the statue was never installed. Philo reports a rumour that in 40, Caligula announced to the Senate that he planned to move to Alexandria, and rule the Empire from there as a divine monarch, a
Roman pharaoh. Very similar rumours attended Julius Caesar's last days, up to his assassination and very much to his discredit. Caligula's ancestor
Mark Antony took refuge in Egypt with Cleopatra, and Augustus had made it a so-called "
Imperial province", under his direct control. It was the main source of Italy's
grain supply, and was administered by members of the equestrian order, directly responsible to the ruling emperor. Egypt was, more or less, Caligula's property, to dispose of as he wished. Roman knowledge of pharaonic brother-sister marriages to maintain the royal bloodline would have shored up the many flimsy, scandalised allegations of adolescent incest between Caligula and Drusilla, supposedly discovered by Antonia but reported as rumour, and only by Suetonius. Barrett finds no further evidence for these allegations, and advises a skeptical attitude.
Germany and the Rhine frontier In late 39 or early 40, Caligula ordered the concentration of military forces and supplies in upper Germany, and made his way there with a baggage train that supposedly included actors, gladiators, women, and a detachment of Praetorians. He might have meant to follow the paths of his father and grandfather, and attack the Germanic tribes along the upper Rhine; but according to ancient historians he was ill-prepared, and retreated in a panic. Modern historians, however, suppose that he had a valid political reason for his Germanic operation, and might even have been successful with that. But the exact locations and enemies of his campaign cannot be determined; possibilities include the
Chatti in and around modern-day
Hesse or the
Suebi east of the
Upper Rhine. The ancient sources report that Caligula used the opportunity of his operations in Germany to seize the wealth of rich allies whom he conveniently suspected of treason, "putting some to death on the grounds that they were 'plotting' or 'rebelling'". Caligula accused the Imperial legate,
Gaetulicus, of "nefarious plots", and had him executed – according to Dio, he was killed for being popular with his troops. Lepidus, along with Caligula's two sisters, Agrippina and Livilla, was accused of being part of this conspiracy; he too was executed and Caligula's two sisters were exiled after being condemned
pro forma for adultery. A senatorial embassy arrived from Rome, headed by Caligula's uncle Claudius, to congratulate the emperor for suppressing this latest conspiracy. It met with a hostile reception, in which Claudius was supposedly dunked in the Rhine (though this might have been the loser's award in a contest of Latin and Greek oratory held by Caligula in Gaul that winter). On Caligula's return from the north, he abandoned the theatre seating plans that Augustus had introduced so that rank alone would determine one's place. In the consequent free-for-all, seating was left to chance; doubtless to Caligula's pleasure, fights broke out as senators competed with common citizens for the best seats. Very late in his reign, possibly in its last few days, Caligula sent a communique in preparation for his imminent
ovation in Rome, following his military activities in the North and his suppression of Lepidus. He announced that he would only be returning "to those who wanted him back"; to the "Equestrians and the People"; he did not mention the Senate or senators, of whom he had grown increasingly mistrustful.
Auctions In late 39, Caligula wintered at
Lugdunum (modern
Lyon) in Gaul, where he auctioned off his sisters' portable property, including their jewellery, slaves and freedmen. Dio claims that wealthy bidders at these auctions were willing to offer far more than items were worth; some to show their loyalty, and others to rid themselves of some of the wealth that could render their execution worthwhile. Caligula is said to have used intimidation and various auctioneer's tricks and tactics to boost prices. In an event that Suetonius describes as "well known", a Praetorian gentleman, nodding off to sleep after a gladiator match, woke to find that he had bought 13 gladiators for the vastly over-inflated sum of 9 million
sesterces. Caligula's first Lugdunum auction proved such a successful fundraiser that he had many of the furnishings of his palace in Rome carted to Lugdunum and auctioned off; they included many precious family heirlooms. Caligula recited their provenance during the auction, in an attempt to help ensure a fair return on objects intrinsically valuable, and seemingly much sought after by the wealthy for their Imperial associations. Income from this second auction was relatively moderate. Kleijwegt (1996) describes Caligula's performance as vendor and auctioneer at this second auction as "completely out of character with the image of a tyrant". Auctions of Imperial property were acceptable ways to "balance the books", practiced by Augustus and later, by
Trajan; they were expected to benefit the bidders as well as the vendor; Roman auctioneers were held in very low esteem, but Kleijwegt claims that Caligula seems to have behaved more like a benevolent
princeps in this second auction, without malice, greed or intimidation.
Britannia In the spring of 40, Caligula tried to extend Roman rule into
Britannia. Two legions had been raised for this purpose, both likely named
Primigeniae in honour of Caligula's newborn daughter. Ancient sources depict Caligula as being too cowardly to have attacked or as mad, but stories of his threatening a
decimation of his troops indicate mutinies. Broadly, "it is impossible to judge why the army never embarked" on the invasion. Beyond mutinies, it may have simply been that British chieftains acceded to Rome's demands, removing any justification for war. Alternatively, it could have been merely a training and scouting mission or a short expedition to accept the surrender of the British chieftain
Adminius. Suetonius reports that Caligula ordered his men to collect seashells as "spoils of the sea"; this may also be a mistranslation of , meaning siege engines. The conquest of Britannia was later achieved during the reign of Caligula's successor, Claudius.
Mauretania In 40, Caligula annexed
Mauretania, a wealthy, strategically significant
client kingdom of Rome, inhabited by fiercely independent semi-nomads who resisted Romanisation. Its ruler,
Ptolemy of Mauretania, was a noble descendant of
Juba II, popular, extremely wealthy and with a reputation as "feckless and incompetent". Ptolemy failed to deal effectively with an uprising and was removed. The usual fate of incompetent client kings was retirement and a comfortable exile, but Caligula ordered Ptolemy to Rome and had him executed, some time after the spring of 40. His removal proved unpopular enough in Mauretania to provoke an uprising. Rome divided Mauretania into two provinces,
Mauretania Tingitana and
Mauretania Caesariensis, separated by the river
Malua. Pliny claims that division was the work of Caligula, but Dio states that the uprising was subdued in 42 (after Caligula's death), by
Gaius Suetonius Paulinus and
Gnaeus Hosidius Geta, and the division only took place after this. This confusion might mean that Caligula decided to divide the province, but postponed the division because of the rebellion. The first known equestrian governor of the joint provinces was
Marcus Fadius Celer Flavianus, in office in 44. Details on the Mauretanian events of 39–44 are lost, including an entire chapter by Dio on the annexation. Dio and Tacitus suggest that Caligula may have been motivated by fear, envy, and consideration of his own ignominious military performance in the north, rather than pressing military or economic needs. The rebellion of
Tacfarinas had shown how exposed Africa Proconsularis was to its west and how the Mauretanian client kings were unable to provide protection to the province, and it is thus possible that Caligula's expansion was a prudent and ultimately successful response to potential future threats.
Religion , a personification of
Rome According to Barrett, "[o]f all the manifestations of wild and extravagant behaviour exhibited by Caligula during his brief reign, nothing has better served to confirm the popular notion of his insanity than his apparent demand to be recognised as a god." Philo, Caligula's contemporary, claims that Caligula costumed himself as various heroes and deities, starting with demigods such as
Dionysos,
Herakles and the
Dioscuri, and working up to major deities such as
Mercury,
Venus and
Apollo. Philo describes these impersonations in a context of private pantomime or theatrical performances he may have witnessed or heard of during his diplomatic visit, as evidence that Caligula wanted to be venerated as a living god. Philo, as a Jew and a monotheist, took this as proof of the emperor's insanity. Caligula's impersonations had a precedent; Augustus had once thrown a party in which he and his guests dressed up as the Olympian gods; Augustus was made up and dressed as Apollo. No-one was thought insane in consequence, and none claimed to be the god they impersonated; but the event was not repeated. It showed near-blasphemous disrespect to the gods in question, and insensitivity to the population at large – the feast was staged during a famine. Coin issues of the official Roman mint, dated to the early 20s BC, show Octavian as Apollo, Jupiter and Neptune. This too may have been thought a transgression, and was not repeated. Caligula took his own impersonations less seriously than some, certainly less seriously than Philo did. According to Dio, when a Gallic shoemaker laughed to see Caligula dressed as Jupiter, pronouncing oracles at the crowd from a lofty place, Caligula asked "and who do you think I am?" The shoemaker answered "a complete idiot". Caligula seems to have appreciated his straightforward honesty. Dio claims that Caligula impersonated
Jupiter to seduce various women; that he sometimes referred to himself as a divinity in public meetings; and that he was sometimes referred to as "Jupiter" in public documents. Caligula's special interest in Jupiter as Rome's chief deity is confirmed by all surviving sources. Simpson believes that Caligula may have considered Jupiter an equal, perhaps a rival. According to
Ittai Gradel, Caligula's performances as various deities prove no more than a penchant for theatrical fancy-dress and a mischievous desire to shock; as emperor, Caligula was also
pontifex maximus, one of Rome's most powerful and influential state priests. The promotion of mortal rulers to godlike status, to honour their superior standing and perceived merits, was a commonplace phenomenon among Rome's eastern allies and client states; during their eastern tour, Germanicus, Agrippina and their children, including Caligula, were officially received as living deities by several cities of the Greek East. In Roman culture a
client could flatter their living patron as "Jupiter on Earth", without reprimand. The
divi (deceased members of the Imperial family promoted to divine status) were creations of the Senate, who voted them into official existence, appointed their priesthood and granted them cult at state expense. Cicero could protest at the implications of Caesar's divine honours while living but address
Publius Lentulus as
parens ac deus (parent and god) to thank him for his help, as aedile, against the conspirator
Catiline. Daily reverence was offered as a matter of course to patrons, heads of household and the powerful by their clients, families and social inferiors. In 30 BC, libation-offerings to the
genius of Octavian (later Augustus) became a duty at public and private banquets, and from 12 BC, state oaths were sworn by the
genius of Augustus as the living emperor. Notwithstanding Dio's claims that cult to living emperors was forbidden in Rome itself, there is abundant evidence of municipal cult to Augustus in his lifetime, in Italy and elsewhere, locally organised and financed. As Gradel observes, no Roman was ever prosecuted for sacrificing to his emperor. Caligula seems to have taken his religious duties very seriously. He found a replacement for the aged priest of
Diana at
Lake Nemi, reorganised the
Salii (priests of
Mars), and pedantically insisted that as it was
nefas (religiously improper) for Jupiter's leading priest, the
Flamen Dialis, to swear any oath, he could not swear the imperial oath of loyalty. Caligula wished to take over or share the half-finished but splendid
Temple of Apollo in Greek Didyma for his own cult. Seemingly, his statue was prepared, but possibly not installed. When
Pausanias visited the still-unfinished temple a century later, its cult statue was of Apollo. Suetonius and Dio mention a temple to Caligula in the city of Rome. Most modern scholarship agrees that if such a temple existed, it was probably on the Palatine. Augustus had already linked the
Temple of Castor and Pollux directly to his imperial residence on the Palatine, and established an official priesthood of lesser magistrates, the
seviri Augustales, usually drawn from his own freedmen to serve the
genius Augusti (his "family spirit") and
Lares (the twin ancestral spirits of his household). Dio claims that Caligula stationed himself to receive veneration, dressed as Jupiter Latiaris, between the images of
Castor and Pollux, the twin Dioscuri, to whom he referred – humorously – as his doorkeepers. Dio's claim that two temples were built for Caligula in Rome, is unconfirmed. Simpson believes it likely that Caligula, voted a temple on the Palatine by the Senate, funded it himself. An embassy from Greek states to Rome greeted Caligula as the "new god Augustus". In the Greek city of
Cyzicus, a public inscription from the beginning of Caligula's reign gives thanks to him as a "New Sun-god". Egyptian provincial coinage and some state
dupondii show Caligula enthroned; the first reigning Roman
princeps to be described as the "New Sun", () with the radiate crown of the Sun-god, or of Caligula's divine antecedent, the Augustus. Caligula's image on other state coinage carries no such "trappings of divinity". Compared to the full-blown cults to major deities of state,
genius cults were quite modest in scope. Augustus, once deceased, was officially worshipped as a – immortal, but somewhat less than a full-blown deity; Tiberius, his successor, forbade his own personal cult outright in Rome itself, probably in consideration of Julius Caesar's assassination following his hubristic promotion as a living divinity. Augustus, and after him, Tiberius, insisted that if temples to honour them in the provinces were proposed by the local elite, they must be shared by the "genius of the Senate", or the personification of the Roman people, or the
genius of Rome itself. Dio claims that Caligula sold priesthoods for his unofficial
genius cult to the wealthiest nobles, for a
per capita fee of 10 million sesterces, and made loans available to those who could not afford immediate full payment. His priests supposedly included his wife, Caesonia, and his uncle
Claudius, whom Dio claims was bankrupted by the cost. The circumstances mark this out as private cult and personal humiliation among the wealthy elite, not subsidised by the Roman state. Throughout his reign, Caligula seems to have remained popular with the masses, in Rome and the empire. There is no sound evidence that he caused the removal, replacement or imposition of Roman or other deities, or even that he threatened to do so, outside the hostile anecdotes of his biographers. Barrett (2015) asserts that the "emphatic and unequivocal message of the material evidence is that Caligula had no desire for the world to identify him as a god, even if, like most people, he enjoyed being treated like one." He did not demand worship as a living god; but he permitted it when it was offered; Imperial etiquette, and the examples of Augustus and Tiberius, would have him refuse divine honours but thank those who offered them, inferring their status as equal to his. He seems to have taken his own
genius cult very seriously but his fatal offense was to willfully "insult or offend everyone who mattered", including the military officers who assassinated him. == Assassination and aftermath ==