Madness in government, the Caligula’s government characteristics.

Group 3

Every single man has a unique combination of moral values, skills, dreams, and whatever we can imagine, and each of them has influence in the way in which a man govern. This fact had been relevant throughout the history; it defines how and what a governor look for, and the way he does, and most commonly in ancient times, how was his end. The Emperor Caligula is an example of this fact. 

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (12 AD – 41 AD), or as well-known as Caligula, was the third roman Emperor, after his father the general Germanicus Julius Caesar, both from Julio-Claudian dynasty. Gaius earned his particular nickname when he was a boy, by his father’s soldiers because he used to wear little caligas (soldiers boots) when they were in campaigns in Germania.

There are exactly two sources of information about Caligula from his time. One from Philo, who describes the Caligula’s early reigns, but mostly focuses in events about the Jewish in Judea an Egypt; the another is from Seneca, who let us various anecdotes about Caligula’s personality, but this is not a confidence source because Seneca was a conspirator and was almost put to death by Caligula. Another sources of Caligula’s government, was written generations before his death, so we cannot take them as confidence sources. 

All the sources qualifies Caligula as a epilepticus, cruel, whimsical, sadist, vicious, extremely passionate, obsessed, wasteful, extravagant emperor, besides almost all the sources proof that in the first months Caligula was a great leader, until a sickness let him in the edge of death, and he lost his mind. In this point starts the histories about him and his madness.

After he lost his mind, he became a sexual pervert, in the middle of the banquets he took some random woman and raped her; he organized orgy parties, and even had relationships with his three sisters. In addition, he became to believe he was some kind of god and raised constructions and statues for him around the empire and made giant palace-ships with roman baths, canteens, fruit trees and temples. With all those parties, banquets and monumental constructions he waste all the empire treasures, in that point he raised the taxes and started the persecution of the riches to take his goods, and he used to applied torture or death sentence in his presence when he was eating. 

Some of the craziest things he made as the Emperor was ordered the troops in Britannia collect seashells to pay tribute at the sea. In addition, he made a floating bridge between two important ports for across it riding his famous horse, Incitatus, wearing the Alexander the Great’s breastplate in defiance of a prediction. Moreover, maybe the most famous history about Caligula, he loves his horse – Incitatus – at the point he made a magnificent constructions for him, as a stable of marble and ivory, purple robes, pearl necklaces, and give to the horse a complete house with slaves, furniture and all the luxurious things it may need. Even Caligula planned to make Incitatus a consul or a priest. 

After these actions and some more, senators, praetorian’s guards, familiars and any kind of conspirator killed him.

There are many films and books about Caligula. Starring Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange, Doomsday, Silent Hill: Revelation), the 1979 film Caligula was a complete failure, and five years before its premiere, the producer of the movie, and founder of the adult magazine Penthouse, turned the film into his own “mature audiences”, making it an X rated film. By the censorship, the movie had not permission to commercialisation until 2007.

Why do you think about Caligula’s style of government? There are nowadays governors as Caligula? If your governor fall sick and lost his mind as Caligula, you will supported him, or you will fight against him?