This antique hero and villain was born exactly two thousand years ago - on August 31, 12. According to some sources, it happened in Rome, according to others - in a military camp, and according to the searches of the contemporary historian Suetonius - in Antium. The father of the newborn was the famous consul of Rome Germanicus, who spent his entire life in numerous wars.
As soon as the boy got to his feet, his father began to take him with him on military campaigns. So all his childhood was spent among the soldiers. He was even dressed appropriately, and instead of the soldier's shoes, which bore the name of kaligi, small caliguls were sewn for him. It was these children's shoes that gave him the nickname under which he entered world history - Caligula.
Son of the poisoned one?
In fact, his full name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. However, he possessed supreme power for a very short time - three years, ten months and eight days. He did not live long - only twenty-nine years.
After the death of Augustus, the uncle of Germanicus Tiberius was proclaimed the Roman emperor. The consul at that moment was with his army in distant Germany. The legionnaires refused to recognize Tiberius, and Germanicus, the father of Caligula, took great pains to convince them that he was not seeking imperial power.
Soon another war broke out, and the legions of Germanicus went east to Antioch. There he died at the age of thirty-four, leaving three girls orphans - Agrippina, Drusilla, Livilla, and three boys - Nero, Druch and Guy.
It was said that the death of Germanicus was unnatural: his body was swollen, covered with blue spots, and white foam came out of his mouth. The future emperor Gaius Caligula believed the rumors. Moreover, immediately after the death of his father, the Senate, having considered the accusation of Tiberius, recognized his brothers as enemies of the state. He considered the emperor Tiberius the killer of his father. But for the time being he tried to hide his suspicions.
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Education of the senses
After the death of his father, young Guy lived first with his mother, and then, when Tiberius exiled Agrippina, with his great-grandmother Livia Augusta, and after her death - with his grandmother Antonia.
Antonia tried to educate a young man, but Caligula was an uncontrollable youth. He preferred to do what was interesting to him. Most of all he was interested in sex games and different types of death, and not at all in science. When he was nineteen years old (the age of Roman majority), Tiberius remembered Guy and ordered him to come to Capri.
There, in a marble palace, the emperor lived out the rest of his years. Gaius obeyed and behaved in this palace so meekly and submissively that he surprised Tiberius with his humility. But the old man did not trust him completely: he was well aware of Caligula's violent disposition. Nevertheless, the emperor approved the marriage of Guy to the noble Roman woman Junia Claudilla.
But the marriage was short-lived: a year later, Junia died in childbirth. Almost immediately, Guy found a replacement for her - the wife of the chief of Macron's praetorian cohort, Enny Nevia. Caligula even gave this woman a receipt that he promised to marry her after achieving imperial power. Together with Macron, Guy conspired and began to poison the old emperor with poisons. The poisons did not act as quickly as Caligula wanted. The death of Tiberius was accelerated with the help of a pillow: Guy pressed it to the emperor's face with his own hands, and when the pillow did not help, he squeezed his neck and held it until Tiberius suffocated. So the main enemy of the Germanicus family was eliminated. Caligula was proclaimed emperor. The people who loved Germanicus and did not love Tiberius rejoiced.
Was there a boy?
Common Romans, especially the military, expected Guy to inherit his father's best traits and talents. Many still remembered the little boy in soldier's clothes, whom his father carried everywhere with him.
Then, on the day Tiberius was declared emperor, only the threat to take little Gaius from the military camp to Rome instantly stopped the incipient rebellion. Caligula knew about these sympathies for him, he easily took advantage of them. First, he freed all the condemned and returned all the exiled from exile, then he ordered all the denunciatory sheets to be brought to the Roman forum and burned them with his own hand, and the writings of the disgraced historians, which Tiberius destroyed, ordered to be found and preserved in the future, because the history will only be reliable when not a single eyewitness voice will be lost.
He even canceled the trade in posts and wanted to return to Rome the popular assemblies and the election of officials, but this innovation angered wealthy fellow citizens. The Senate was forced to obey Caligula, although it was rumored that the emperor released the murderers, and generous payments for burned or lost property, which he did not skimp on, could ruin the Roman treasury.
The Senate rebelled a little, but the emperor promised to bring his beloved horse to the Senate meeting, which, as he announced, is much more reasonable than the hookers-senators. And the dignitaries humbled themselves. They ordered to make a golden shield dedicated to Caligula.
Every year, on the day he was declared emperor, a procession of senators and children, dressed in festive dress, was supposed to bring this shield to the Capitol, glorifying the wisdom and virtue of Caligula.
The Emperor loved theatrical gestures. He furnished his reign with numerous stage effects. He either arranged gladiatorial battles with free food for the audience, then erected beautiful buildings, then even built a bridge over the bay four kilometers long between Bayi and Puteoli and rode along it in painted clothes and with a golden shield.
To crown it all, the emperor declared himself a living god. At the statue of Zeus, brought from Greece, he ordered to remove the head and replace it with an image of his own face. And then he even built a temple dedicated to himself!
4. Love and death
But the most beautiful thing that the imperial power gave was the ability to satisfy the most daring sexual fantasies with impunity.
Rumors of Caligula's perverse amusements confused even those who loved him so much. Officially, the young emperor had four wives: in 33-34, Junius Claudilla, who died early, then from 38 to 41, Livia Orestilla, Lollia Paulina and Milonia Caesonia alternately. He never fulfilled the obligations given to Ennia Nevia. On the contrary, there were rumors that Enny and Macron were killed by order of the emperor. A woman - for having a receipt from Caligula, a man - for participating in the murder of Tiberius. The emperor quite openly dragged himself after the Romans, married and unmarried. He was credited with a special relationship with his own sisters. He allegedly corrupted Drusilla as a teenager, and then married off and immediately took away from her husband, making him his concubine.
At feasts, he looked closely at pretty ladies and appointed them a bed audience. He looked after his second wife, Livia Orestilla, at her own wedding and immediately selected for himself, the third wife, Lollya Paulina, divorced her husband, and the last wife, Milonia, who had three daughters from a previous marriage, called his wife only after the birth of the child.
Milonia's daughter, Julia Drusilla, is said to be a sadistic infant. Having barely learned to walk, she bit and scratched other children until they bled. The Emperor liked to quote the words from the Aktey action tragedy: “Let them hate, if only they were afraid”.
He believed that power could only be held by instilling fear. This belief was a consequence of his own experience: at first, power came into his hands easily, thanks to the people's love, then the first discontented people appeared, they needed to be neutralized, that is, executed or expelled, as the rulers had done before him. But the number of those executed increased. Dissatisfied with the executions - too. Old rumors surfaced that young Guy had enjoyed watching the torture masters work. Roman citizens no longer felt protected.
On the eve of the February calendars, when Caligula and his companions stopped to look at the boy actors who had been discharged from Asia, Cassius Kherea and Cornelius Sabinus lifted him to their swords, while the other conspirators shouted "Beat him again!" rushed to the emperor.
With dead lips Caligula whispered: "I am still alive." He started having seizures. Only after thirty blows with blades, the famous emperor fell silent forever.