Caligula

Caligula, also known as Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, was a Roman Emperor who ruled from 37 to 41 AD. He was known for his cruelty, extravagance, and sexual perversity. He was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guard after a reign of just four years. Caligula's rule is often considered a period of tyranny and a decline of the Roman Empire. He is remembered for his excesses and madness, which have become the stuff of legend and have been portrayed in literature, film, and other media.

He demanded senators worship him as a god, brazenly took their wives as concubines, and ordered the arbitrary executions of many of those around him.

He joked about making his horse a consul (Rome’s most senior office) rather than offer the role to one of them.

• He drew up his army on the shore of the ocean, commanded them to gather up seashells, and fill their helmets and the folds of their tunics with them, calling them “the spoils of the sea due to the Capitoline and the Palatine.”
• He erected a lighthouse, upon which, as at the Pharos of Alexandria, he ordered lights to be burned in the nighttime for the direction of ships at sea.
• He promised the soldiers a reward of a hundred denarii each, as if he had surpassed the most eminent examples of generosity, he said “Go your ways and be merry; for now you are rich!”
• Most sources explain Caligula’s behavior as symptomatic of his madness, but it is too easy to oversimplify his behavior as just being mad. ¹⁾