Ancient World Review

The Coins Of Caligula

Related: Browsing Roman Imperial Coins of Caligula.

Caligula: Coins

According to Wikipedia, "[Cassius] Dio wrote that following the death of Caligula the Senate demonetized his coinage, and ordered that they be melted. Regardless of whether or not this actually occurred, it demonstrates the importance and meaning that was attached to the imagery on a coin."

Caligula Was Smeared By The Roman Aristocracy

"The accounts of Caligula surviving from antiquity pursue the clearly recognizable goal of depicting the emperor as an irrational monster. They provide demonstrably false information to support this picture of him and omit information that would contradict it. They present the emperor's actions out of context, so that their original significance is either completely obscured or can be grasped only with great difficulty. The authors offer assessments of his behavior that often contradict other information contained in their very own accounts." -- Introduction, "Caligula: A Biography," by Aloys Winterling.

Note: "Almost all the sources [for Caligula's life] can be traced back to members of the Roman aristocracy [Suetonius, in particular]. They stem from senators and knights who were in direct contact with the emperor. Thus even their false statements about Caligula contain a degree of historical truth: The Roman aristocracy must have experienced such appalling things under his rule that posthumously he was tarred with the worst possible stigma: He was reviled as a monster and a madman and thus expelled outright from human society."

One Of Caligula's Villas Discovered After Italian Police Capture Tomb Raiders

Note: This story came out in 2011. It appears to be related to the "discovery of Caligula's tomb" story posted below, but this video makes no mention of a tomb. It's also unclear if this villa is a new discovery at all.

Caligula's Tomb Found After Police Arrest Man Trying To Smuggle Statue? (2011)

"The lost tomb of Caligula has been found, according to Italian police, after the arrest of a man trying to smuggle abroad a statue of the notorious Roman emperor recovered from the site." Source: The Guardian (2011)

Note: The announcement that Caligula's tomb had been discovered apparently originated with the Italian police, who thought that the statue they recovered was the kind of thing that would be found in the notorious emperor's tomb.

According to historian Mary Beard, however, there's no evidence for this at all:

Was The Roman Emperor Caligula Insane?

"Historians have some fragmented records of Caligula’s by his contemporaries such as the orator Seneca, Pliny the Elder and Philo of Alexandria.  But unfortunately, most of the Caligula legend has come to us from one historian, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus who lived a century after Caligula.  He was not exactly an unbiased writer.  He worked for the Imperial family of the times, the Flavians.  It was in his best interests to make the original Imperial family, the Julians, look as wicked as possible in order to make the Flavians look good." Source: Knoji - European History.

Comment: Suetonius' life of Caligula is full of crazy stories that probably never happened, but I don't think it's accurate to say that he was just a propagandist attempting to smear the Julians. After all, Suetonius' biography of Caesar -- the founder of the Julio-Claudian dynasty -- is generally complimentary and seems reasonably fair and accurate.

Suetonius was undoubtedly writing propaganda in all of his biographies, at least to some extent, but the impression I get from reading him is that he liked salacious stories in general and was passing along what he heard without examining it too critically. This approach to history was fairly common in the Roman world and it's not unheard of today.

Caligula: Mad, Bad, And Maybe A Little Misunderstood

"...what most people know, or think they know, about [Caligula] is that he was one of the mad Roman emperors, the chap who made his horse a consul, imposed a reign of terror on Rome, and was assassinated after only four years. Mad, bad and altogether horrible, you see." Source: The Telegraph (2013)

"Actually, a lot of the evidence is pretty shaky."

9 Reasons Caligula & Nero Were Saner Than You Think

"Rome’s two most famous emperors share more than just a family tree. Both Caligula and Nero assumed the throne at a young age; grew increasingly more depraved; lost the support of the Roman people; and were assassinated—that’s the popular story, at least." Source: Listverse.

Related: 7 Things You May Not Know About Caligula.

Comment: The Listverse piece accepts the story that Caligula had sex with his sisters, but attributes it to "different social customs" and the idea that Caligula "had gone eastern," so to speak. This could be true, but it was fairly common for Roman historians to smear their enemies with accusations of incest and other unnatural sexual practices, so it's possible the story was a pure fabrication.

According to Aloys Winterling, author of Caligula: A Biography, "The claim that the the emperor committed incest with his three sisters is misinformation that surfaces for the first time in Seutonius."