TWO
A YOUNG AUGUSTUS
The journey from Misenum to Rome took ten days. As the young emperor, dressed in mourning, accompanied the body of Tiberius, he received striking demonstrations of sympathy from the population. “His progress was marked by altars, victims, and blazing torches, and he was met by a dense and joyful throng, who called him, besides other propitious names, their ‘star,’ their ‘chick,’ their ‘babe,’ and their ‘nursling’ ” (Suet. Cal. 13). Germanicus’s prestige and popularity had survived the reign of Tiberius and were now transferred to his remaining son—in more intense form because the other family members had met such tragic fates. Suetonius reports that Caligula was “the emperor most earnestly desired” (exoptatissimus princeps) by the inhabitants of the provinces and by the soldiers who had known him as a child, just as he was also by the whole population of the city of Rome (Suet. Cal. 13). When he entered the capital, the center of the ancient world in which he had not set foot for the past six years, the celebrations are said to have gone on for almost three months, and more than 160,000 animals were sacrificed—and eaten.
Figure 3. Bust of Caligula. Worcester, Massachussets, Museum of Art, Acc. 1914.23.
But how did the aristocracy react to the twenty-four-year-old new ruler? Would the flattery, denunciations, and intrigue continue as they had under Tiberius? And how would the young Augustus behave toward the senators? It was from their circle, after all, that the criminal charges against his mother and brothers had originated, and the Senate as a whole had pronounced the verdicts against them. After nearly seventy years of sole rule under Augustus and Tiberius, it had become evident that an emperor’s success or failure rested above all on the delicate business of communicating with his fellow aristocrats.
Caligula’s first step was to deliver a speech at a session of the Senate to which representatives of the equestrian order and the people had been invited. According to Cassius Dio’s account, he flattered the senators, promising to share his power with them and to do all he could to please them. He even referred to himself as their son and ward. Specifically, he announced that he was putting an end to trials for maiestas, which had had such dreadful effects on the aristocracy and its relationship with the emperor. All those who had been exiled or imprisoned under Tiberius would regain their freedom, Caligula declared. He ordered all the documents connected with those trials, which his predecessor had preserved and which also concerned the charges against his mother and his brothers, to be publicly burned in the Forum (not without securing copies of them first, as it would later transpire). This was an effort to assuage the fears of senators and knights who had played a prominent role in the trials, and to close this terrible chapter of the past. Caligula emphasized his intention truly to begin anew by his reaction to the first denunciation for conspiracy he received: He ignored it, and declared that he could have done nothing to arouse anyone’s hatred. He would pay no heed to informers.
How to commemorate the deceased emperor was another question. As Tiberius’s adopted grandson and successor Caligula had to preserve the proper degree of respect for his memory, but the dominant attitude in the Senate was still detestation. In his first written communication to the Senate Caligula had requested that Tiberius be granted the same honors that Augustus had received after death, elevation to the status of a god and inclusion in the Roman pantheon. The senators had not overcome their reluctance to comply with this request before the new emperor’s arrival, but neither had they taken the opposite step (which would no doubt have reflected their feelings more accurately) of officially condemning his memory (damnatio memoriae) and thereby expunging him from the public records. Caligula let the matter rest, in an undecided state that certainly matched the personality of the deceased; the body lay in state and was then buried in Augustus’s mausoleum in an elaborate public ceremony. Delivering the funeral oration, the new emperor mainly recalled Augustus and Germanicus and placed himself in their tradition.
Caligula then proceeded to honor Tiberius’s bequests—even though his will had been declared invalid. The members of the Praetorian Guard received 1,000 sesterces each, roughly the annual pay of an ordinary soldier. Forty-five million sesterces were paid out to the people of Rome; the urban cohorts, a kind of police force, and the firemen, who also exercised paramilitary functions, each received 500; and every citizen soldier in the Empire was given 300 sesterces. In addition the new emperor ordered distribution of the bequests in Livia’s will, which Tiberius had ignored after her death eight years earlier. Finally Caligula added his own contribution: He doubled the amount for the Praetorian Guard, and granted 300 sesterces to the head of every family in Rome. The money that rained down on the citizens of Rome at Caligula’s accession left a lasting impression of his generosity, a virtue loved above all by soldiers and the urban plebs, and one that made emperors popular.
The payments to the Praetorian Guard allowed Caligula to provide a striking reminder of his own power. Before the assembled Senate, he inspected his bodyguards, who had sworn an oath of loyalty to him. It was not lost on the spectators at the drill that the officers and men under Macro’s command were largely the same men who had not so long ago, on the orders of the previous emperor or Sejanus, arrested, tortured, or beheaded no small number of their Senate colleagues.
A further symbolic act honored the members of Caligula’s immediate family who had predeceased him. Despite stormy seas Caligula sailed at once to the islands where his mother and brother had died, exhumed their remains himself, and brought them back to Ostia, Rome’s port. From there he had them transported up the Tiber to the city by ship. At midday, when the streets were most crowded, prominent knights carried the two urns through Rome on litters normally used for transporting statues of gods. The procession ended at the Mausoleum of Augustus, where the remains were interred. The whole ceremony was arranged to resemble a delayed triumph for the family of Germanicus: A field marshal’s standard flew from the stern of the ship, and Caligula wore a purple-bordered toga and was accompanied by lictors, as if he himself were a victorious commander. It was decreed that an image of his mother, Agrippina, mounted on a carriage, would henceforth accompany all festival processions. The month of September was renamed after Germanicus, who joined Julius Caesar and Augustus as the only men so honored.
These extraordinary honors for the dead were complemented by others for the living members of Caligula’s family. The Senate granted to his grandmother Antonia Minor the title Augusta and all the further marks of distinction once given to Livia. The emperor chose his uncle Claudius, who until then had received no attention at all, to serve with him as co-consul during his first term in that office. And on behalf of his sisters Drusilla, Agrippina, and Livilla he decreed that the following sentence be included in all public oaths: “I will not hold myself and my children dearer than I do Gaius and his sisters” (Suet. Cal. 15.3). The sisters were further awarded the privilege of sitting with him in the emperor’s box when they attended games at the Circus. Lastly, Caligula adopted Tiberius Gemellus, only some seven years younger than himself, and granted him the toga virilis along with the title “Prince of the Youth,” which Augustus had given to the grandsons whom he intended to make his heirs. Thus Caligula’s co-heir and rival for the throne, who had been passed over when Tiberius’s will was set aside, became his son—and the favored candidate to succeed the brand-new emperor.
Next Caligula renounced honors for himself or any acknowledgment in public of his unique status. He forbade statues of himself to be erected within the city of Rome, and abandoned Tiberius’s custom of sending letters to the Senate and people; such letters had long before acquired the force of official directives, so that to continue them would have belied Caligula’s stated intention to share power. Finally he let three months pass before assuming the consulship on 1 July 37. Despite depleted political significance, the consulship remained the highest regular office in Rome, and had been held several times by Augustus and Tiberius during their rule, for the distinction it conferred. By postponing his entry upon the consulship Caligula prevented the two men in office from having to resign. His stint in office, which lasted only about two months, enabled the two senators who had been next in line for the honorific positions to fill them for the remainder of the year.
When he did take up the office of consul, Caligula used the occasion to deliver a policy speech in the Senate, for the first time explicitly distancing himself from Tiberius. He criticized all the actions that had earned his predecessor the enmity of the aristocracy, and announced a number of provisions for his own rule, including concessions. These corresponded so closely to the senators’ own wishes that, as Cassius Dio reports, “the Senate, fearing that he might change his mind, issued a decree that this speech should be read every year” (Dio 59.6.7). Otherwise Caligula’s brief first consulate consisted largely of magnificent festivities, which reached a climax with the formal dedication of the temple the new emperor had completed for his great-grandfather, the deified Augustus. All the senators and their wives along with the people of Rome were invited to a banquet in the city, and games were held on an unparalleled scale. Four hundred bears and the same number of beasts of prey from Libya were killed in combat in the arena, and chariot races allowed young aristocrats to display their most dashing form. Caligula himself appeared driving a triumphal chariot drawn by six horses, “something that had never been done before” (Dio 59.7.4). The emperor also took advantage of his first consulate to simplify the rules of protocol. He abolished a ritual that had upheld the ruler’s unique status, the customary greeting to an emperor in the city, and from then on appeared in the role of a simple citizen—at least as far as ceremonial greetings were concerned.
The first few months of Caligula’s reign can be clearly seen as an attempt to copy the Augustan Principate—a development that his contemporaries in the aristocracy no doubt registered with satisfaction. On the level of official politics his sole rule was not in evidence; rather he insisted that power was shared between the princeps and the Senate. He paid strict attention to the proper forms of communication between the emperor and the aristocrats in the Senate, which had traditionally symbolized their equality. He avoided any display of honor due to his position of political power in everyday social encounters. Within the city Caligula insisted upon forms of address befitting an ordinary (aristocratic) citizen; the Romans praised this as an example of civilitas, civic and unassuming behavior. On the other hand Caligula was unmistakably the sole ruler. He alone commanded the armed forces, a fact that every senator could observe when the Praetorian Guard went through its drills. He used his financial means, far superior to everyone else’s, to make gifts of money and hold games, fostering a sense of obligation among soldiers and the common people in general. He found clever ways to augment the family prestige accruing to him through his descent, which helped to solidify his position as emperor.
All this meant was that Caligula resumed the ambiguous form of communication that had been established under Augustus (and later collapsed under Tiberius) to disguise the simultaneous existence of an aristocratic republic and autarchy. The Senate resolution requiring that Caligula’s speech as consul be recorded and read aloud annually reveals tellingly how aware the senators were of the situation and how complex all communication became as a result. It shows that they knew power was shared at the emperor’s pleasure and the arrangement could be rescinded at any time—in other words, that power was not really shared at all. Yet they could neither directly express their distrust of the emperor’s declaration that he would share power, nor openly try to force him to keep his word, since either action would imply that his promise was empty. They had to take the indirect form of awarding him an honor. On its manifest level the Senate resolution said: The emperor has given such a momentous and important speech that it deserves to be read aloud every year. At the same time, however, the honor latently revealed that emperor had not truly shared power, for otherwise it would not have been necessary to remind him of his obligation in this way.
That the senators were adept at this form of communication is not surprising. But where did Caligula learn it? How could someone without the least experience in institutional Roman politics have possessed such a perfect command of it from the start? How had his ability to present himself as an Augustan princeps developed? Clearly the role had been well thought out, and Caligula played it well. Who advised him on the matter?
Philo identifies Macro and Marcus Junius Silanus as the men behind the young emperor. As Praetorian prefect Macro held the highest office possible for a knight, and Silanus, Caligula’s former father-in-law, had the highest standing in the aristocracy because of his seniority among the senators. Both men had advanced to their positions under Tiberius; they belonged to the inner circle of power, and their management had smoothed Caligula’s elevation to the throne. Dio reports that Macro arranged the Senate’s approval in advance with the two consuls and “others”; Silanus’s status must have ensured that he was included. We may safely assume that the configuration of Caligula’s rule had been discussed in this circle and concessions made to any men or groups who were reluctant.
Macro and Silanus are also supposed to have guided the young emperor after his elevation. Of the former Philo writes: “Knowing . . . that he had saved Gaius over and over again when within an ace of destruction [i.e., on Capri], he gave his admonitions frankly and without disguise, for like a good builder he wished his handiwork to remain proof against destruction or dissolution either by himself or by another” (Phil. Leg. 41). Macro advised Caligula how an emperor should behave at aristocratic banquets or at theatrical performances for the common people, and also gave him lectures on the art of governing: “The fittest contribution for a ruler is to put forth good proposals for the benefit of his subjects, to execute these proposals in the best way possible, and to bring forth good gifts with a bountiful hand and will” (Phil. Leg. 51). Silanus played a similar role: “In all his discourse, he talked as a guardian, concealing nothing that might tend to improve and benefit Gaius’s character, conduct, and government. He had, indeed, strong inducements to speak freely in his preeminently noble lineage and his close connection by marriage. For his daughter had died only a short time before; the rights of her kinsfolk had grown faint . . . but some last remnants of their vitality still existed” (Phil. Leg. 63).
As for Caligula’s share in his Augustan Principate, all that can be said is that he played the role to perfection. Though indubitably better than before his elevation to the throne, his situation continued to be anything but simple. The two manipulators who had made him emperor had cemented their own positions of power at the same time and were hardly about to give them up voluntarily. Furthermore by adopting Gemellus he had created an abiding rival for the throne. Thus the two powerful men behind the throne always had an option open; there was an alternative to Caligula.
ILLNESS AND CONSOLIDATION
As in other pre-modern monarchies, the advent of a new ruler in ancient Rome frequently bred conflict at the center of power—structural conflict, intensified through generational differences. Would the trusted entourage of the old emperor adjust to the new one? They owed their rise and influence to the old ruler and had not been chosen by the new one; their position was independent of his favor, at least in the beginning. Typically a new ruler gathered his own close confidants around him; these began as rivals of the inner circle from the old regime and then pushed them aside. The rearrangement could be an adaptation, or it could be a great upheaval.
Caligula’s closest confidants were his sisters—who shared with him not only ties of blood but also the experience of great danger under Tiberius; the husband of one of them also belonged to the inner circle. Caligula felt extraordinary affection for Drusilla especially. Tiberius had arranged her marriage to Lucius Cassius Longinus, but they were now divorced; her second husband, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, belonged to the same generation as the siblings. Lepidus came from a high-ranking family with its own ties to the imperial house, and he was Caligula’s closest confidant among the aristocracy. What kind of relationship would develop between this circle on the one hand and Macro and Silanus on the other?
A resolution developed more quickly than might have been expected. In the eighth month of his reign, at the end of October 37, Caligula fell gravely ill. No information has survived about what the disease was. The population of Rome was alarmed and grieved. Large crowds are said to have demonstrated their concern for the young emperor by surrounding the Palatine Hill every night, waiting for news. What would happen if he died? Who would succeed him?
All the known events of the next few weeks allow the following conclusion to be drawn: Macro and Silanus, the two leading men, seized the initiative. In case Caligula should die, they conferred with a number of people and prepared the way for Tiberius Gemellus, the only possible successor in the existing dynastic constellation. This was the only rational strategy, the only one that fit the circumstances, although they obviously set about implementing it a little too soon. Any other choice would have encouraged the ambitions of aristocratic pretenders to the throne and risked an outbreak of violent conflict. A crisis had developed sooner than anyone could have anticipated. Caligula’s adoption of Gemellus had been strategic, but laden with possible future difficulties. It would constitute a problem if he were to have a biological son or wish to name someone else as heir. In the meantime, however, there was no alternative to Gemellus, and this meant that if Caligula died, his sisters and Aemilius Lepidus would lose their unique position and the power attached to it; conceivably even their personal safety might be threatened.
In this situation Caligula first seized the initiative as emperor. From his sickbed he named his favorite sister, Drusilla, to inherit the imperial “property and the throne” (bonorum atque imperii; Suet. Cal. 24.1), in effect making Lepidus his successor. As soon as he regained his health, he laid a plan that was brutal but under the circumstances only logical: to eliminate Tiberius Gemellus, who as long as he lived would remain a magnet for conspirators hostile to the emperor and ambitious to place their own man on the throne. Gemellus was accused of plotting against Caligula, of having counted on his death and attempted to profit from it. A centurion and a military tribune were dispatched and forced him to commit suicide. Philo vividly describes the tragic scene: Since Gemellus had no experience of warfare and had never witnessed a suicide, he had to be instructed in the technique, “and having received this first and last lesson he was forced to become his own murderer” (Phil. Leg. 31).
The loss of an established candidate for the succession weakened Macro and Silanus. Not long afterward, probably at the start of the year 38, it was the turn of Macro and his wife, Ennia, to fall from power. To replace a Praetorian prefect was an enterprise fraught with danger, but nevertheless it was achieved smoothly in two steps. First the emperor appointed Macro prefect of Egypt, the second-highest office in the Empire for a knight, and replaced him not with one man but with two. Caligula was following Augustus’s model: Since the man in charge of the emperor’s bodyguard always represented a potential threat, Augustus had named two to the position at a time, ensuring that they would be rivals for power and keep an eye on one another. Caligula seems to have chosen the appointees wisely. They were men plucked from obscurity (only one, Marcus Arrecinus Clemens, is known by name) and owed a particularly great debt to the emperor as a result.
Before Macro could embark for Egypt, he and many other people were charged with crimes and then either executed or forced to commit suicide. In Philo’s words, Caligula began to “fabricate charges against him, which though false were plausible and readily believed”; on one count Macro had supposedly claimed that Caligula was a creature of his making and that the emperor owed the throne to him (Phil. Leg. 57–58). Some were found guilty on the basis of witnesses’ testimony and the evidence from earlier trials, supposedly destroyed, that they had participated in attacks on Caligula’s mother, his brothers, and their supporters. Others were accused of behaving inappropriately during the emperor’s illness. The charges suggest that the main targets were old enemies of Germanicus’s family who had hoped for Gemellus’s accession and presumably acted accordingly. One such man was Avillius Flaccus, who lost his office as prefect of Egypt in the autumn of 38.
Then it was Silanus’s turn. It sufficed for the emperor to indicate his displeasure with him in the Senate. Caligula altered the procedure so that the former consuls would vote in order of seniority, thus terminating Silanus’s privilege as highest-ranking senator. Everyone who had lived through the reign of Tiberius realized that it was only a matter of time until some unscrupulous senators would bring charges against the man whom Caligula had publicly demoted. Silanus saw the handwriting on the wall and committed suicide, enabling his family to retain his fortune, since if he had been tried and found guilty it would have been confiscated.
Judged by the standards of a modern society in which political disagreements and power struggles are conducted without violence, Caligula’s elimination of the people who had helped him secure the throne, and particularly his treatment of young Gemellus, were reprehensible. Given his experience of life near the throne, however, he may well have felt he had a stark alternative: Either them or me and my family. From the perspective of today this assessment can hardly be termed incorrect, and contemporaries concurred with it. Philo, whose aim is otherwise to stress Caligula’s immorality, cites at length opinions that ran counter to his own appraisal:
“Of his own cousin and fellow heir they would talk thus: ‘Sovereignty cannot be shared; that is an immutable law of nature. He being the stronger promptly did to the weaker what the weaker would have done to him. This is defense, not murder. Perhaps, too, it was providential and for the benefit of all mankind that the lad was put out of the way, since some would have been partisans of him and others of Gaius, and it is such things that create disturbances and wars both civil and foreign.’ . . . Of Macro they said, ‘His pride extended beyond reasonable limits . . . What reason had he for reversing his part and transferring the subject to the rank of ruler, and Gaius, the emperor, to the place of a subject? To command, which is what he did, befits best the sovereign, and to obey, which is what he deemed Gaius should submit to, befits the subject’ . . . In the case of Silanus, the argument ran, ‘he was under a ridiculous delusion in thinking that a father-in-law had the same influence over a son-in-law as a real father has over his son . . . But this silly man, even though he had ceased to be a father-in-law, extended his activities beyond his sphere and did not understand that the death of his daughter carried with it the death of the matrimonial affinity’ ” (Phil. Leg. 67–71).
Together with the elimination of the emperor’s last rival for power, the two most powerful men in his circle, and old family enemies, other measures shed light on the difficulties and dangers of the transitional period. Shortly after recovering his health Caligula married for a second time, indicating that he intended to father an heir and provide for a dynastic succession. His chosen bride was Livia Orestilla, whom he is said to have obtained by high-handedly abducting her during her wedding to another man, Gaius Calpurnius Piso. Supposedly Caligula justified his behavior by the examples of Romulus and Augustus, each of whom chose to wed a woman who was already married. Augustus had even married Livia while she was pregnant. Livia Orestilla behaved quite differently from her predecessor of the same name. This aristocratic young woman appears to have had no interest in being empress—a status for which others would have been prepared to suffer a good deal more than abduction. She remained loyal to the husband she had chosen herself, and had unauthorized contact with him, thereby effectively disqualifying herself for the task intended for her of giving birth to legitimate imperial offspring. A short time afterwards, the marriage ended in divorce, and Orestilla was banished from Rome, although the surviving accounts provide contradictory details. Calpurnius Piso’s admission to the distinguished priestly college of the Arval Brethren in May 38 suggests that Caligula’s choice of bride was accomplished less sensationally, or at least that it occurred with the consent of her former bridegroom and thus conformed to Roman custom.
Some of Caligula’s other measures, political in the narrower sense, were more successful. At the New Year oaths were usually sworn to uphold the decrees of previous emperors; in the year 38 Tiberius was excluded, in a nod to the Senate, which had desired to expunge his memory. In addition Caligula rescinded Tiberius’s ban on the historical writings of Titus Labienus, Cremutius Cordus and Cassius Severus, announcing that he attached great importance to full historical records for later generations. He also reintroduced the custom of publishing and presenting to the Senate the rationes imperii, the accounts of the officials responsible for administering military and financial matters in the Empire. Because the relationship between the emperor’s own assets and the public treasury was a complex one, it is unclear exactly which outlays were included, but in any case the measure corresponded well to his announced intention of sharing rule with the Senate. Further innovations were aimed at the judicial system. Caligula limited the legal cases that could be appealed to him as emperor, a move to enhance the importance of work done by judges of senatorial rank. He created a fifth decuria or panel of judges to expedite hearing cases. And finally the emperor carried out a long overdue reform of the equestrian order, expelling unworthy members and admitting new ones, with special attention to high-ranking and wealthy officials of cities around the Empire. To many of them he granted the privilege of wearing senatorial rather than equestrian insignia of rank, even though they were not members of the Senate.
For all of Italy Caligula waived the general sales tax, which had probably been earlier reduced to one half of one percent. This measure benefited the lower classes above all. A return to the old procedure for electing magistrates was aimed at the people of Rome. Under Tiberius these elections had been removed from the popular assemblies and given to the Senate. The change had made it easier for the emperor to exert control, had relieved senators of ruinous campaign expenses, mostly from sponsoring games. Cassius Dio makes it clear that the aristocracy responded to the revival of popular elections with skepticism. The emperor’s goal may have been to restore the advantages the common people enjoyed when candidates had to try to win their favor. The measure had no noticeable effect in the political sphere, however, since there was rarely more than one candidate for any given office. The voters paid so little attention to the reinstated electoral process that Caligula was forced to abolish it later. Presumably the renewal of permission to foundcollegia was also granted as a boon to the plebs. These were corporations and social clubs, and sometimes economic ventures as well, most of whose members came from the lower classes; they had been banned during the late Republic for political reasons. Caligula held lavish gladiatorial games whose cost in both blood and money was extravagant. And finally he had the floor removed from the Saepta—originally a gathering place for elections—and flooded it, so that naval battles could be presented there. It was later replaced by a wooden amphitheater.
Most of the political measures introduced early in the year 38, around the time that Macro and Silanus fell from power, were enthusiastically received. The Senate responded by voting special honors to the emperor. Every year on a particular date, for example, a golden bust of Caligula was to be carried to the Capitol, with the entire Senate marching in the procession and boys and girls from the leading senatorial families singing songs in praise of the emperor’s virtues. The first day of Caligula’s reign was designatedParilialike 21 April, the date of Rome’s founding, implying that he had founded the city anew.
Caligula’s policies were undoubtedly aimed at reconciling the various politically relevant populations to his rule. A clear difference emerges, however, from earlier actions at the time of Macro and Silanus, which still bore the stamp of the Augustan Principate. Caligula accommodated the Senate—which continued to look to the ideal of the “free” Republic, now long gone—by making the finances of the Empire public and by changing the appellate procedure for legal cases, but he also took the Republican ideal seriously in instances where it jarred with the senators’ interests. Historians could circulate their works uncensored in keeping with the notion of Republican freedom, but there were disadvantages. As Tacitus showed in his account of Tiberius’s reign in theAnnals, a frank account of past events documented not only the emperor’s despotism but also the unscrupulous opportunism of some senators and the submissiveness of the Senate as a whole—discreditable behavior which the Senate would have preferred forgotten. Reintroduction of popular elections for magistrates was similarly two-edged. Elections were a fundamental element of the Republican political order, but they had been contrary to the interests of the senatorial aristocracy for some time. Now that the Empire was administered by the emperor, senators had lost their former opportunities for enriching themselves as administrators in the provinces. Because many senators could thus no longer run exorbitant election campaigns, they had come to terms with holding elections in the Senate, though it was tantamount to appointment of magistrates by the emperor. Caligula’s renewal of old traditions outdid the Senate in its conservatism and simultaneously forestalled its objections; the senators could not criticize without exposing the selectivity in their glorification of the past, so that they were forced to remain silent.
In his ingenious positioning vis-à-vis the Senate, Caligula at the same time made good use of his support among the plebs, who profited more than the aristocracy from his political and economic changes. The emperor was not afraid to give the lower classes greater scope for political action through popular elections and collegia. He elevated upper-class inhabitants of the provinces to the equestrian order and smoothed their path to the Senate by awarding them the symbols of senatorial rank in advance. All this was definitely in the emperor’s own interest as well. As already apparent under Augustus, “new men” who were indebted to the emperor for their advancement to the Senate tended to be considerably more compliant than members of the old aristocratic families (at least in the first generation). The changes were presented, however, as a return to the good old ways, an aim that no senator could publicly oppose.
The political measures accompanying the removal of Gemellus, his supporters, and the two leading figures from the reign of Tiberius were thus clever and astute. They furthered the interests of the senatorial aristocracy, the equestrian order, the upper class in the provinces, and the plebeians in Rome itself, while also strengthening the emperor’s hand. It is probably a credit to them that no threat to Caligula’s position emerged in the period immediately following.
How much was Caligula himself responsible for these successful efforts to consolidate power and how much should be ascribed to his advisers? It is difficult to know. A number of people besides Lepidus, Drusilla, Agrippina, and Livilla probably influenced him, and the two new Praetorian prefects and other senior officers of the imperial guard undoubtedly played an important role. Individuals like King Julius Agrippa, who is supposed to have been on friendly terms with the emperor, and perhaps a few senators presumably turned their proximity to him to account. Finally, probably already active behind the scenes was a group whose significance would not become evident until later—the freedmen who acted as secretaries and administrators in the imperial household. Such men were employed in all large aristocratic households, and because of their dependent status and specific skills they often possessed important specialized knowledge that their noble masters were unwilling or unable to acquire themselves.
A hint of Caligula’s own personal stamp on the measures described above is provided by a strange episode immediately after his illness. A Roman citizen named Afranius Potitus had sworn a vow to offer his own life if the emperor recovered, while a knight named Atanius Secundus had vowed that he would fight as a gladiator. After regaining his health Caligula insisted that both men fulfill their promises, to keep them from perjuring themselves. Instead of receiving the rewards they had hoped to obtain by their exaggerated devotion, both met their deaths. Caligula’s reaction is telling. It has affinities with his measures in 38 and typifies behavior to emerge in crasser form more and more frequently as time passed. Caligula began, like Augustus, by enjoying flattery, but this changed after the first few months of his reign. He did not respond like Tiberius, however, seeking to avoid flatterers by withdrawing from the public sphere entirely. Instead, Caligula framed a new response to the ambiguous communication that had become normal in dealing with the emperor. The two men’s vows were ambiguous in that the explicit wish—for the emperor’s recovery—did not match the unstated wish—to be rewarded for their flattery. Caligula showed that he would abjure this form of communication, by taking it at face value. One could say that he simply outed them. He attributed to their utterances a sincerity that they could not deny without admitting that the emperor’s health had not been foremost in their minds—and the consequences of such an admission were foreseeable.
In Caligula’s dealings with the Senate after the fall of Macro and Silanus too, he took the declared ideals—derived from the old Republic—at face value and implemented them. This contravened the real interests of men who had professed the ideals, but they could not complain without losing face. The principle behind the emperor’s actions was cynical, but not without wit of a kind. At this point it took fairly harmless form, apart from the fate of Afranius and Atanius. Later, however, the principle would operate in much more unpleasant forms.
HOLDING POWER
Never before had Rome been ruled by a young man. For centuries a handful of experienced older men, the principes of the Roman aristocracy, had been the leaders and made the decisions. The first two sole rulers, Julius Caesar and Augustus, had won their positions by victories in protracted civil wars and were middle-aged when they began to govern. Tiberius had been a successful general in the provinces for many years before he became emperor at the age of fifty-four. Now the question was: How would a young man measure up? Caligula came from a prestigious family, certainly, and had survived the webs of intrigue spun around the old emperor, but he had no experience at all in politics. How would the aristocracy, led as always by old men of great experience, deal with a young man on the throne?
A provisional answer has already been given. At first Caligula played the part of an Augustan princeps, but then went on to secure his power by eliminating his rivals. He took specific measures to stabilize his position as ruler with different segments of the population, without making too many concessions to the aristocracy. The nobles seemed to find this acceptable. The situation remained fluid, however, because of an aspect of politics omitted in our discussion thus far: Politics in ancient Rome was not limited to specifically political institutions like the Senate, the magistracy and—for a time under Caligula—the popular assemblies. In fact the household, which the Romans called “private” and which they contrasted with the res publica, was itself a scene of politics. In Rome the private sphere was in a certain sense also public, and the political sphere operated to a large extent through personal relationships.
During the Republic the houses of the Roman aristocracy had developed into informal centers of communication, where political action took preliminary shape before being introduced in official bodies. Reciprocal visits at morning receptions and evening banquets both constituted and manifested the personal relationships, linking those who appeared at these events as friends or clients. Patronage structured the relationships. Participants helped each other in the law courts, in money matters, and in elections and political disputes. They left each other legacies. There were clear rules for the support friends and clients owed one another, rules that made the participants’ behavior predictable and reliable. The size of an aristocrat’s household, along with the number and rank of the friends and clients who met there, affected his chances for exercising real power in the institutional sphere, in politics in the narrower sense. The material luxury in such households was politically relevant, too. Carved marble ornamentation, costly paintings and furniture, gold and silver tableware, the lavishness of the food and entertainment offered at banquets—all these attested to the owner’s wealth and potential value as a patron, his social status, and the political influence he possessed or felt entitled to claim. Aristocrats took precise note of the size and opulence of each other’s houses and tried not to fall behind in the competition.
Just like sessions of the Senate, gatherings at aristocrats’ homes were regulated by ceremonial customs illustrating the political and social rank of the participants. In the case of the morning salutatio, visitors’ status and their relationship to the host were reflected in the rooms they were permitted to enter and the order in which he greeted them. Banquets were typically attended by nine people ranged around a table on three banqueting couches with different levels of prestige. The importance of these ceremonial customs, which may seem alien from the perspective of today’s largely egalitarian society, is shown in the conflicts that arose when they were not observed.
But how should an emperor organize his household? Who should be received at home, in what luxury and according to which ceremonial rules? How should the emperor shape his “personal” relationships with aristocrats? As noted above, Augustus and Tiberius had set virtually no precedents. Their desire to keep the emperor’s actual status as far in the background as possible had led to preservation of the old customs to a large extent, even though they were becoming increasingly impracticable. The emperor’s house was small, the furnishings modest, and the crush at the salutatio great, since on certain occasions the entire aristocracy appeared. Because banquets remained limited to the usual size, Augustus was obliged to give them “constantly,” often arriving late and leaving early due to other demands on his time. During the last years of Tiberius’s rule when he was living in seclusion on Capri, no imperial “household” had existed in Rome any more at all. So how was the new young emperor to run his house? Should he keep it as it was, below the standards of size and sumptuousness long since adopted by the rest of the aristocracy? Should he regularly admit all senators and the most prominent knights to morning receptions? Should he surround himself with venerable old men at evening banquets and make sure that their respective ranks were reflected at the table?
Tiberius had left more than two billion sesterces at his death. He thus offers a prime demonstration that frugality by itself could not make a Roman emperor popular. It is reported that Caligula went through this sum and more in either one year (Suetonius) or two (Cassius Dio). Most was undoubtedly spent on the immense gifts he made to soldiers and the people of Rome at the start of his rule, but a considerable portion seems to have flowed into running his household as well. His household expenditure reached a level far exceeding the aristocrats’. He began extensive construction on the Palatine Hill, enlarging the complex of freestanding houses belonging to the emperor in the direction of the Forum, so that most of the hill—the most prestigious residential area in Rome—was now reserved exclusively for his use.
Caligula built extensively outside Rome as well, on a much grander scale than his fellow aristocrats. Villas and palaces in rural settings raised previous efforts to incorporate nature and dominate the landscape to a new level. Caligula tried to realize plans that others considered impossible: “He built moles out into the deep and stormy sea, tunneled rocks of hardest flint, built up plains to the height of mountains, and razed mountains to the level of the plain, all with incredible dispatch” (Suet. Cal. 37.3). For sea journeys he had galleys built “with ten banks of oars, with sterns set with gems, particolored sails, huge, spacious baths, colonnades, and banquet halls, and even a great variety of vines and fruit trees; that on board them he might recline at table from an early hour and coast along the shores of Campania amid songs and choruses” (Suet. Cal. 37.2).
It is striking that on the subject of the morning salutatio at Caligula’s house, only a single account exists—although it reveals that the ceremony took place regularly. Philo notes that King Julius Agrippa came “to pay his wonted respects” during his visit to Rome and that others were present (Phil. Leg. 261). The odd dearth of information can probably be attributed to later efforts by senators in particular, who had been obliged to be “friends” of the emperor, to obliterate their contacts with him from the record as far as they could; the aristocratic sources reveal traces of such alteration in other contexts as well. Thus it is not certain whether Caligula performed the expected ceremonial rituals during the first two years of his reign or not. He clearly did not behave in the expected manner at banquets, which were extremely lavish yet at the same time informal.
Early on Macro is supposed to have cautioned the young princeps not to show too much enjoyment in the music and dance offered as dinner entertainment, and certainly not to participate; he should not snigger like a boy at coarse jokes or fall asleep during the banqueting, as none of this befitted the emperor’s dignity. Later Caligula ignored the usual protocol for seating guests: His sisters lay on the couches to his right, the places normally given to a wife and children, while his wife was permitted to lie to his left in the place of honor. When his uncle Claudius arrived late he could obtain a place only with effort and after several attempts.
Besides criticizing violations of traditional etiquette at the emperor’s banquets, the sources also find fault with the people he invited. Caligula enjoyed the company of the Greens faction of chariot racers at the Circus Maximus, for example, visiting their building as a guest himself and inviting the well-known charioteer Eutychus to a banquet, at which he gave the racer a gift of two million sesterces. Nonetheless senators continued to covet an invitation to dine with the emperor as a particular honor. Reports mention the presence at banquets of the sitting consuls, of aristocratic ladies with their husbands, and of Vespasian, the later emperor, who was Caligula’s guest during his praetorship and even showed his gratitude with a flattering speech in the Senate.
While the ceremonial rituals for guests of high rank were flouted, the aristocrats invited to imperial banquets were witnesses to enormous outlays of money. Foods were served covered with gold leaf; entirely new dishes might be created for the occasion, and Caligula himself is said to have drunk vinegar in which valuable pearls had been dissolved. All of this is condemned in ancient sources (and often in modern accounts as well) as more or less pointless luxury and waste. Display of this kind had a definite function, though, in the context of aristocratic competition for status and thus also a latent political dimension. As mentioned earlier, members of the senatorial and equestrian orders engaged in competition over the luxury of their houses and the number and status of people who frequented them. This competition seems even to have increased with the establishment of imperial rule and the aristocracy’s loss of real power—that is to say, it became compensatory. Tacitus reports that in the period from the start of Augustus’s sole rule to the death of Nero huge sums were squandered on luxury: “The more handsome the fortune, the palace, the establishment of a man, the more imposing his reputation and his clientèle” (Tac. Ann. 3.55.1–2).
The sources often recount aristocratic extravagance. Caligula’s later wife Lollia Paulina, for instance, is reported to have appeared on a not particularly festive occasion wearing jewelry worth forty million sesterces (forty times the minimum wealth qualification for senatorial rank). She did not even owe these fabulous jewels to her status as empress but had inherited them from her father. The pearls dissolved in vinegar had a special story behind them: Cleopatra was said to have made a wager with her lover Marcus Antonius that she could spend ten million sesterces on a single meal, and won the bet by drinking pearls in vinegar. The luxury and extravagance in Caligula’s household signified his unattainable, quasi-royal superiority in the only area where aristocrats could still vie with the emperor. In fact, Tacitus reports in the passage just cited that families belonging to the old Republican high nobility, the so-called nobilitas, wealthy and famous in years past, had ruined themselves with their pursuit of conspicuous luxury.
Caligula flouted many expectations of how a Roman aristocrat ought to conduct himself in public. His decision to dispense with elaborate ceremonial greetings was welcomed, certainly, and made it easier and simpler to encounter him in the streets and squares of the city. Yet he behaved more informally than suited the tastes of the upper classes. Macro’s admonitions to the young emperor about not showing too much enthusiasm at Circus games or theatrical performances were in vain. Caligula became an active supporter of one of the four factions at the Circus Maximus. His passion for chariot races was such that he built his own stadium, called the Gaianum, in the gardens on the Vatican Hill, where he could drive chariots himself. Aulus Vitellius, son of a man of consular rank, who would later become Roman emperor himself for a few months, shared the same passion, acquiring the special favor of Caligula and also, if Suetonius is to be believed, a limp as the result of an accident. Caligula’s enthusiasm for gladiatorial combat, both between men and against animals, went so far that he trained and fought with gladiators, and is even supposed to have used real weapons. The emperor also had a great love for the theater. He surrounded himself with stars of the stage, including the actor Apelles, who became part of his retinue for a while, and the famed mime Mnester, with whom he spent so much time that it was later claimed the two had a homosexual relationship.
In his passion for chariot races, gladiatorial games, and theatrical performances Caligula shared the interests of contemporary young aristocrats. Since Augustus, the youth of the noblest families in Rome had sometimes participated in chariot races, athletic competitions, and combat with wild animals at the Circus, together with gladiators from the equestrian order. The sons of senators who took part in a gladiatorial game put on by Caligula must have had some training in this kind of combat. Games in Rome were by no means just entertainment; they had a political dimension. It was significant that the emperor presented games, and also how he did so. The city’s arenas were the most important spaces for direct communication between the emperor and the urban plebs. Approval or criticism was communicated to the emperor during games through cheers or booing. Quite frequently chanting choruses of sports fans pressed demands that direct confrontation made it hard for the emperor to reject. Attending the contests, he showed solidarity with the people and allowed them to observe him at close quarters. When Augustus attended games at the Circus “he gave his entire attention to the performance, either to avoid the censure to which he realized that his [adoptive] father Caesar had been generally exposed because he spent his time in reading or answering letters and petitions; or from his interest and pleasure in the spectacle, which he never denied but often frankly confessed” (Suet. Aug. 45.1).
Throngs of young Romans were devotees of Circus games and the theater, and the people liked it when the emperor attended. Caligula, however, seems to have offended notions about proper public behavior for an emperor. He took sides himself for or against certain actors, and grew angry if the audience didn’t join in or applauded performances of which he did not approve. He was “so carried away by his interest in singing and dancing that even at the public performances he could not refrain from singing with the tragic actor as he delivered his lines, or from openly imitating his gestures by way of praise or correction” (Suet. Cal. 54.1). From the perspective of the aristocracy his conduct meant that the young man who had become their ruler behaved “like one of the crowd” (Dio 59.5.4).
Caligula’s organization of his household and his behavior in public were thus inconsistent with the role he played in institutional politics. While the latter showed moderation and skill and was generally praised, in the former he presumed upon his special status to the full. His displays of extravagance relegated the opulence of aristocratic houses to second class, and his unconventional manners at home flouted aristocrats’ preference that distinctions of rank be respected. His enthusiasm for the Circus and personal ties to actors and charioteers further violated aristocratic proprieties. At home he exalted himself above his fellow aristocrats, whereas in public he fell short of the dignity befitting an aristocrat, let alone an emperor. Various reasons can be suggested for this conduct: The years on Capri had removed him from senatorial society and provided too little aristocratic socialization, while the years of oppression and danger led him to savor his imperial possibilities, which must have seemed virtually unlimited. Last but not least, the role his predecessors had bequeathed to him was only imprecisely defined. The question now was, how would the Roman aristocracy react to Caligula’s behavior in the long term? There had never been a young, extravagant emperor with a passion for the arena in Rome before.
THE DEATH OF DRUSILLA
On 10 June 38 Drusilla died unexpectedly—the sister who had always been Caligula’s favorite and whom he had named as sole heir. He found her loss so extraordinarily painful that he could not bring himself to attend the elaborate public funeral with which she was honored. Seneca wrote critically that just as he was unable to show joy or pleasure in a manner suitable for an emperor, he was unable to mourn appropriately. Caligula shunned human company in Rome and withdrew to his country estate in the Alban Hills, where he tried to distract himself with dice and board games. Then he traveled aimlessly around the region, letting his beard and hair grow in grief.
Caligula granted Drusilla unusual posthumous honors. On top of all the honors Livia had received after her death, the Senate passed a measure deifying Drusilla, an honor previously granted only to Julius Caesar and Augustus. A gold portrait of her was placed in the Curia, and in the Temple of Venus on the Forum a statue of her was erected the same size as the statue to the goddess herself. Drusilla was also to receive her own temple, for which a new college of priests would be established. When women took an oath, they were to use her name, as the emperor did from then on, swearing by the divine Drusilla. Great games would be held on her birthday. In the cities of the Empire she was to be venerated as Panthea, the “All-Goddess,” and we know from inscriptions in the Greek part of the Empire in the East that these instructions were carried out. In Rome, the regulations on mourning were enforced with extreme rigor. Visits to the thermal baths and banquets were prohibited. One man who sold water to mix with wine is supposed to have been executed for the crime of maiestas. The senator Livius Geminus declared under oath that he had witnessed how Drusilla rose to heaven and conversed with the gods, vowing that he wished to be struck dead along with his children if he were lying. In contrast to similar attempts when Caligula was ill, the flattery succeeded and the senator was rewarded with a million sesterces.
Seneca writes that people were uncertain whether the emperor would prefer for them to mourn his sister or to worship her, and he describes Caligula’s actions as immoderate in the extreme. Modern authors have also declared his behavior strange, and even speculated that he may have suffered a nervous breakdown. Without any doubt he was very deeply affected. The claim that his grief was excessive may be unwarrantable, however, since the deification of a male ruler had precedents and Drusilla was Caligula’s designated successor. Her deification was the first time a woman from the imperial family was added to the Roman pantheon, but not the last. The same distinction was granted to Livia under Claudius and to Poppaea Sabina during the reign of Nero.
The unusual honors bestowed on Drusilla after her death were also intended to augment the prestige of the dynasty, and Caligula’s behavior immediately afterwards was entirely rational. The question of the succession was once again completely open, a situation that could lead to dangerous instability if the emperor should fall ill, as the previous year had shown. A few months after the death of his sister Caligula therefore married again. His choice fell on Lollia Paulina, a woman famous for her beauty and, as noted above, her great wealth. She was already married to Publius Memmius Regulus, a man of consular rank who at that time was governor of Moesia, Macedonia, and Achaea. According to Suetonius, Regulus is supposed to have suggested the marriage to Caligula himself and agreed to the divorce, yet even this should not be regarded as abnormal. Marriage within the aristocracy was a tactic in families’ political planning, rarely correlated with personal attraction or love. For sex a Roman senator had ample choice of extramarital partners among both freedwomen and slaves. The connection to the emperor Regulus would gain from Lollia Paulina’s marriage was undoubtedly worth more to him than remaining married to his wife. He was present in Rome himself for the wedding and retained his provincial office into the reign of Claudius.
This marriage did not last long either, however. Caligula ended it, presumably in the summer of the following year. Cassius Dio writes that “allegedly” the wife was infertile, but the real reason was that Caligula was tired of her. Tacitus’s reports on the year 48 show that the reason given out was in fact true: When the emperor Claudius wanted to remarry, the very same Lollia Paulina was recommended to him with the endorsement that because she had borne no children she would create no complications for the imperial family. The high-born lady still possessed all the qualities of an empress ten years later and was actually infertile. Caligula’s separation from her was thus by no means the result of mere whim. But the marriage did have an unintended but probably inevitable secondary consequence: Aemilius Lepidus, who had spent almost a year with the prospect of possibly succeeding to the throne, now knew that Drusilla’s death and Caligula’s remarriage had put an end to this chance once and for all. Events a year later, however, would show that he had not resigned himself to the fact.
THE EMPIRE
The Roman Empire, conquered during the centuries of the Republic, formed the basis of the Roman emperors’ power. Their untold wealth flowed from taxes collected in the provinces, and their political power was supported by the military forces stationed there (along with the elite troops and the paramilitary groups who kept order in Rome). At the same time, however, the resources of the Empire constituted a potential danger for the emperor. High-ranking members of the senatorial order governed nearly all the various provinces. These men were responsible for law and order in their regions and carried out administrative and jurisdictional tasks. They were in charge of the legions stationed there, whose commanding officers were Roman senators as well. A long tradition decreed that only members of the senatorial order, men of high social standing and political experience, could be considered for leadership positions in the Empire. The emperor, whose rule always drew latent rivalry from his fellow aristocrats, thus had to depend on precisely those fellow aristocrats to administer his rule. The military forces in the Empire, the base of his dominant position since the civil wars of the late Republic, could be used to threaten his grip on power in a crisis. In addition to choosing the “right” men for crucial posts, meaning primarily ones who were not of too noble birth, there were two main strategies an emperor could use to preempt crises and, in a countermove, use the Empire to stabilize his own position: He could strengthen his personal relationship with soldiers, and he could heighten his activities as a patron toward the populations of the provinces—meaning above all toward the municipal aristocracies of the Empire. Both strategies required him to spend money, but ideally they also demanded his presence in person.
The last time an emperor had traveled to one of the provinces lay almost half a century in the past, when Augustus had visited Gaul. Tiberius had not left Italy once during his entire reign. Caligula, who had already greatly favored the upper classes in the provinces when he expanded the equestrian order, spent a lot of time abroad, particularly in view of the brevity of his rule. A few weeks after Drusilla’s death, in about the middle of the year 38, he departed on a journey to Sicily. He began construction on a large port terminal with granaries near the city of Rhegium, so that ships arriving from Egypt could unload their cargoes of grain there. Presumably this helped to supply southern Italy, and in Josephus’s view it represents the most useful act of Caligula’s reign. On his visit to the city of Syracuse, the emperor sponsored games, presumably in honor of Drusilla, and had repairs made to its dilapidated walls and temples.
Seneca, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio do not mention the harbor construction at all, and note the journey to Sicily only in passing. For the city of Syracuse, however, the event was probably the most significant in its recent history. As we know from other instances, an emperor’s visit was an occasion for great festivities with elaborate greeting ceremonies and many honors conferred on the ruler by city leaders and the entire population. By sponsoring games and construction projects and making extensive gifts in return, the emperor raised his profile as a benefactor, a role to which the Syracusans would refer on later occasions. It appears that other Sicilian towns also received the honor of a visit. Caligula is reported to have left Messina ahead of schedule because Mount Etna was threatening to erupt.
On his return he began by concentrating on further benefits for Rome. In October he joined his Praetorian guards in putting out a fire; the emperor’s personal participation attracted general attention. In the year 38 he also began construction of two new aqueducts, the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus, to bring water to Rome from Tibur (modern Tivoli). Both ambitious projects were completed by his successor, Claudius.
Finally, preparations must have begun in this year for a large-scale campaign in Germania. In 39, legions and supplementary troops were assembled from all over the Empire; extensive recruiting efforts took place everywhere, and huge amounts of food and other supplies were stockpiled. Between 200,000 and 250,000 soldiers are said to have been involved. These preparations may also have included plans to build the new town in the Alps mentioned by Suetonius. The campaign was a response to incursions into Gaul by Germanic tribes from east of the Rhine; the decisive impulse, however, was probably the young emperor’s wish to recommence the conquest of Germania his father had pursued and win military glory for himself. Success in war remained the most important source of prestige in Roman society; it could both increase the emperor’s support among soldiers and widen the gap in status between him and the aristocracy. Through his wars in Spain between 27 and 24 B.C. Augustus had demonstrated that campaigns could enable an emperor to sidestep conflicts at home and benefit from a victory abroad to solidify his position in Rome. The emperors appreciated the significance of military fame for enhancing their position. In imperial Rome, celebration of a triumph, a distinction traditionally granted to victorious generals in the field, became reserved with few exceptions exclusively for the ruler, who officially exercised supreme command. Thus the preparations for war indicate that Caligula was making a concerted attempt to use the resources of the Empire to consolidate his own position.
The plans for the campaign in Germania were drawn up in conjunction with other measures in the Greek and eastern parts of the Empire. There was a string of Roman-dominated client kingdoms extending from the Bosporus through Thrace and Syria to Palestine, some of which Tiberius had brought under Roman administration as a result of domestic political upheavals and the spread of Parthian influence. In the year 37 Caligula had already placed two kings on the throne, Julius Agrippa in Judaea and Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Commagene, and had supplied both with substantial gifts of funds. Both of them had spent part of their youth in Rome and continued to reside there after their coronations. Agrippa, who had been in close contact with Caligula since his time on Capri at the latest (but possibly as early as his stay in the house of Antonia), was even granted the insignia of Praetorian rank by the Senate after Caligula became emperor.
At the end of the year 38 Caligula granted further territories in Asia Minor and the Near East. Three sons of Cotys, the king of Thrace—Rhoemetalces, Polemon II, and Cotys, who as great-grandsons of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra had family ties to the emperor—were granted kingdoms, as were Sohaemus, the scion of an indigenous princely family, and Mithridates, a great-grandson of the famous Mithridates VI. Taken together their kingdoms stretched from the region of the Black Sea to Lesser Armenia. Caligula had these grants confirmed by the Senate, and formally installed the kings himself in solemn ceremonies on the Rostra in the Forum. It is possible that Caligula envisioned these new client kingdoms as part of more extensive plans for the eastern regions of the Empire. Thus it is reported that he intended to rebuild the palace of Polycrates on Samos and also to dig a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Both projects would have aligned him vividly with the traditions of Hellenistic kings, and also with the great dictator Julius Caesar, who had made the most recent attempt to create a canal there (following the Corinthian tyrant Periander and King Demetrius Poliorcetes of Macedonia). More will be said below about Caligula’s plans for a journey to Alexandria and the East, which took on more definite shape two years later and owed much to the example of his father, Germanicus.
What sort of picture would the Roman senatorial aristocracy have had of Caligula, then twenty-six years old, toward the end of the year 38? How did all his varied activities fit together? Within a short time he had acted directly and without scruple to rid himself of both rivals for the throne and of Tiberius’s powerful favorites. Within Roman political institutions he had skillfully played the role of an emperor willing to accommodate the Senate. In his own household he had established himself on a plane above his fellow nobles with lavish displays of great extravagance. At the Circus and the theater he had shared the enthusiasm of the common people and won their hearts. He had acquired a political profile with a broad spectrum of sensible and necessary measures, ranging from expanding the equestrian order to improving Rome’s water supply, projects to which virtually no objections could be raised. He had visited cities in Sicily, reorganized the regions on the eastern borders of the Empire, maintained friendly relations with rulers in the East, and planned extensive military actions against the Germanic tribes, which if successful would significantly strengthen his position as emperor. And he accomplished all this within twenty months, despite having been confined to his bed by illness perhaps for two of them.
It is safe to assume that some of the venerable old aristocrats of consular rank who set the tone in the Senate had begun to feel uneasy. Disquieting stories circulated: When Caligula was entertaining some royal guests—perhaps the kings named above—at a banquet in Rome, they began quarreling about the respective nobility of their ancestry. In response Caligula is said to have quoted Homer: “Let there be one king, one ruler!” (Iliad 2.204–5).