The madness of Emperor Caligula
A mental or physical illness, or senatorial propaganda of the time?
Much has been written over the centuries about the madman Caligula. In general, the reports of the Roman historian Suetonius, who wrote a biography of the emperor, have tended to be taken as true. In it, he describes him as a monster who enjoyed incest with his sisters, enslaving Roman citizens to steal their wealth, torturing his prisoners, sexually abusing men and women, among many other things that reveal a disturbing behavior. Let's see how true the reports about Caligula, the mad emperor of Rome, are.
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Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula, was the third Roman emperor, after Augustus and Tiberius, and ruled for almost five years (37-41 AD), until a conspiracy ended his life. In general, historiography has tended to see Caligula as a character dominated by madness. Ancient sources are particularly severe. Suetonius, his biographer, describes him as a monster (Calig. 22). Although in his first months of government he was characterized by maintaining a good relationship with the people through donations and feasts, after an emotional crisis he began to show a cruel and unscrupulous character, to finally end up ruling as the monster he supposedly was.
Having sexual relations with his sisters, forcing senators to repudiate their wives in order to marry them, social and political repression that led to the torture and execution of Roman citizens, squandering the state coffers on banquets, brothels and the construction of pleasure cruises, and then confiscating the property of private individuals to pay his debts, are all things Caligula is accused of, explaining them in the context of his personality. Suetonius comments that as a child Caligula suffered from epilepsy and was aware that he had a mental illness (Calig. 50). It could be said that what Suetonius was describing was more of an autocrat than a madman (understanding him as someone suffering from mental afflictions), but there are other extravagant aspects of his life that lead one to think that indeed this madness may have been expressed in other ways.
With the death of Emperor Augustus, a tradition of deifying emperors was inaugurated. Caligula took it further, and deified himself in life, developing an official cult to his person, as if he were one more among the gods of the Roman pantheon. This may suggest megalomania, among other things.
In recent decades, the way of looking at Caligula has changed in modern historiography. In the first place, there is awareness that the sources that narrate the lives or governments of emperors usually come from authors (such as Suetonius or Tacitus) belonging to the senatorial order, which historically opposed the concentration of power that the figure of the emperor entailed. In that sense, senators used to have reasons or pretexts to speak ill of the emperors. The clash between senate and emperor for power and their areas of influence was a constant for the Roman Empire in Antiquity.
On the other hand, recognizing that there may be a tendency to exaggerate the evils of Caligula's rule, modern historians are often not satisfied with explanations that adduce insanity, which can be understood and take many forms. Thus, Professor Robert S. Katz (The Illnes of Caligula, 1972), in an attempt to give a new interpretation to Caligula's behavior, postulated that the emperor was not simply mad, but suffered from hyperthyroidism. Katz relies not only on Caligula's erratic behavior as emperor for his diagnosis, but also uses Suetonius' physical description of Caligula. Thinness, insomnia and constant energy are some of the symptoms Katz uses to attribute hyperthyroidism to Caligula.
Perhaps the key is in that episode, that kind of emotional crisis that Caligula had in 37 A.D. a few months after being named emperor. The ancient sources do not specify what happened to Caligula, beyond agreeing that from that moment on he began to show a new character. It is speculated that Caligula may have suffered an emotional shock at the prospect of being the new emperor, something a bit unlikely from his perspective, if we consider that Tiberius, his predecessor, had his father, mother and two of his brothers eliminated. Let's just say that initially Tiberius did not have much sympathy for Caligula and the prospect of being appointed heir was practically nil.
It may be that this fact brought about a change or a deepening of certain attitudes and psychological processes that were already at work in Caligula's mind, or it may be that he had always been this way, and that at that moment he realized that this was when, as emperor and the most powerful man in the known world, he could show himself as he really was, a sociopath. Truth be told, the process of diagnosing Caligula is complex and highly speculative. That is something we always have to keep in mind when talking about this subject.
Professor Barbara Sidwell (Gaius Caligula's Mental Illnes, 2010) argues that Caligula most likely experienced separation anxiety since childhood, another element that could help us understand (or not) the emperor's complex behaviors.
Son of Germanicus, the popular nephew of Tiberius, Caligula had a childhood marked by a strong paternal attachment that even led him to spend some years in the military camps of the legions that his father commanded. Hence the nickname Caligula (from the Latin caliga, as the military boots were designated) affectionately imposed by the legionaries to Gaius Julius. The death of Germanicus, most probably poisoned by agents of Tiberius, must have meant a very hard blow for the young Caligula, who was soon summoned by Tiberius himself to live with him in his retreat on the island of Capri.
We can only guess what Caligula must have felt when he was forced to live with the one who was pointed out as the culprit of his father's death. This misfortune was followed by the exile by order of Tiberius himself of his mother and his two brothers, who died in strange circumstances. Despite this, Caligula seems to have established a relationship with the emperor that allowed him to gain his trust and eventually be designated as heir.
We already know Caligula's legacy as emperor. A madman so mad, that in his time he was rumored to have appointed his beloved horse as consul. To this pedigree we have listed here could be added other antecedents, such as the occasion when, according to Suetonius, Caligula declared war on the ocean and made the legionaries collect sea shells, concluding that he had thereby defeated it (Ca. 46). Whatever afflicted him, be it hyperthyroidism, anxiety attacks, epilepsy, or something else, what is certain is that Caligula did not show psychological symptoms until after his emotional crisis shortly after assuming office as emperor.
In this regard, it is interesting that Suetonius records that Caligula was aware of the illness that afflicted him mentally, which may suggest that for years he may have consciously hidden or controlled some of his symptoms. If so, it seems to me difficult that his illness can be justified from a physical perspective alone, as may be the case with the theory of hyperthyroidism or epilepsy. If ancient sources are to be believed, in his position of power Caligula demonstrated megalomaniacal and autocratic traits laden with cruelty, and the possibility that he was able to control these traits suggests that he was aware of them, as Suetonius implies.
All these records on the life of Caligula should be taken with some caution. The historiographical production of the time was dominated by the senatorial order, which used to be in a constant conflict of power, always in a position of inferiority, with the emperor. This is not to say that Caligula did not rule expressing the symptoms of mental illness, but that the senators who recorded his rule had every reason to exaggerate each of his negative aspects.
Suetonius' account may seem exaggerated in certain passages (as when Caligula pretends to declare war on the ocean), but in general I am inclined to think that it is true. If it was all a narrative construction just to discredit the emperor, one might wonder why, if it was so effective, it was not used to attack other emperors who were also frowned upon by the senate. We can read about the horrors of the governments of emperors like Nero or Domitian, but apparently none of them were as mad as Caligula.
Gaius Julius, Caligula, suffered from some kind of mental disorder that he channeled through impunity in his position as emperor, which left him marked for posterity. No doubt his enemies in the senate exploited that. Caligula, the mad emperor.
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Another good piece.
I have visited the Virginia State Art museum in Richmond which has the better preserved of the two full size sculptures of Caligula known to survive. It is quite impressive and they put a lot of work into restoring it.
Seb—have you read any of Robert Fabbri’s VESPASIAN series? Really entertaining. Really hard look at what people are capable of if they are told they’re infallible…