Caligula, emperor of Rome from 37 to 41 AD, once laughed so hard at a dinner party that his guests demanded an explanation. His answer was chilling: he had just realized that with a single word, he could have all their throats cut. It was a joke in keeping with a reign remembered for cruelty, madness, and chaos that tore through the empire and ended in his own violent death. He came from extraordinary stock.
Julius Caesar was his great-great-grandfather, Augustus his great-grandfather, and his father, Germanicus, was one of Rome’s most capable and beloved generals. Young Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus grew up on campaign with his father, who dressed him in a child-sized soldier’s uniform. The troops nicknamed him Caligula, meaning Little Boots. The name stuck.
His pedigree suggested greatness; his behavior would prove how far the apple can fall from the tree. Caligula was born as Emperor Augustus lay dying. Augustus had named his stepson Tiberius as heir, but on one condition: Tiberius had to make Germanicus his successor. Tiberius agreed, and Augustus died believing his plans were secure.
They were not. One of Tiberius’s first acts was to send Germanicus on a diplomatic mission, where the general mysteriously fell ill and died. In ancient Rome, powerful men seldom died without reason, and rumors spread that Tiberius had arranged it. Conflict erupted at the highest levels of Roman society, and the fallout was brutal.
Caligula barely survived the destruction of his family. His mother accused Tiberius of murdering Germanicus and sought revenge. Tiberius acted first, charging her and Caligula’s two older brothers with treason. His mother died of starvation in exile on a remote island.
His brothers were imprisoned; one also starved to death, the other took his own life. Caligula, still a small child, was spared. His great-grandmother Livia kept him away from politics for a time, until a sudden tragedy changed everything. Tiberius’s own son died, possibly murdered by a political rival, leaving the emperor without an heir.
In 31 AD, Tiberius summoned Caligula to his retreat on Capri and adopted him. Caligula despised Tiberius for what he had done, yet the emperor still named him successor. According to contemporary accounts, the young Caligula was a gifted actor who hid his true feelings. He served Tiberius so well that one writer remarked that never was there a better servant or a worse master.
Even before becoming emperor, he showed a vicious streak. He enjoyed watching executions and indulged in scandalous behavior at night. Tiberius, growing wary, supposedly said he was nursing a viper in Rome’s bosom. Caligula later bragged that he had once carried a dagger into Tiberius’s bedroom intending to kill him and avenge his family, but found Tiberius asleep and changed his mind.
He wanted people to know he could have done it. While on Capri, Caligula befriended Naevius Sutorius Macro, the head of the Praetorian Guard. Macro’s favorable words softened Tiberius toward the young man, but Macro would come to regret the friendship. When Tiberius finally died in 37 AD, the circumstances were murky.
The historian Tacitus wrote that Macro smothered the dying emperor with a pillow to ensure Caligula’s rise. Suetonius claimed Caligula himself ended Tiberius’s life. The truth is unknown, but the result was clear: Caligula took the throne, and Rome braced itself. The Romans had grown to hate Tiberius, who spent his final years in pleasure on Capri while the capital decayed.
His death was met with rejoicing. At the funeral, Caligula delivered a passionate, tearful speech in honor of the man who had murdered his family and gave him an extravagant burial. He knew how to work a crowd. The people had high hopes for him, given his lineage and the sympathy they felt for the horrors he had endured as a child.
And for a time, he lived up to those hopes. In his first months of rule, Caligula freed citizens who had been unjustly imprisoned, gave bonuses to soldiers, and abolished a widely hated tax. The historian Philo described those early months as blissful. But the bliss ended quickly.
Six months after taking power, Caligula fell seriously ill, possibly from poisoning. He recovered, but by all accounts the illness broke something in his mind. The consequences shook Rome. He began having family members killed, starting with his cousin and heir.
His grandmother was furious, but she too died shortly afterward. He executed his father-in-law and brother-in-law and exiled his two surviving sisters. When Caligula was ill, Macro had made political moves to protect his own career. Upon recovery, Caligula discovered the plans and condemned his one-time ally.
He forced Macro to take his own life. In the chilling aftermath of his illness, nearly every close family member was executed. One of the few spared was his feeble uncle Claudius, whom Caligula kept around as an object of ridicule. Almost everything Caligula did was expensive.
Lowering taxes and buying extravagances drained the treasury, and Rome began running out of money fast. He did not merely think of himself as a god; he resented that the actual gods were worshiped alongside him. He ordered the heads removed from statues of gods across Rome and replaced with his own likeness. Many historians, ancient and modern, have tried to explain his madness.
Some speculated he suffered from epilepsy. Multiple sources confirm he could not swim, despite swimming lessons being a standard part of his education, possibly because he feared having a seizure in the water. He was described as skinny, pale, and sickly, with hollow eyes and thin hair, prone to periods of faintness that left him incapable of nearly any effort. About halfway through his reign, Caligula broke with the Senate and used every opportunity to humiliate it.
Around 39 AD, he removed and replaced all the consuls without consulting the Senate. He reportedly forced senators to run alongside his chariot in their full ceremonial robes. He laughed as he made everyone around him miserable. The gladiatorial games served public entertainment and political reputation, but also Roman justice: criminals and slaves were often thrown to beasts.
That was not enough for Caligula. One day, reportedly finding the day’s events dull, he ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the crowd to the animals to make up for it. As his behavior grew more erratic and cruel, critics began to speak out. He became one of the most hated men in the empire.
He did not care. Let them hate me, he reportedly said, so long as they fear me. In 40 AD, Caligula finally went too far. He had already spent years on cold-blooded killings and extravagant spending, but what sealed his fate was a plan to move.
Caligula saw himself as a god, yet most people still saw him only as an emperor. Across the Mediterranean in Egypt, however, rulers had been worshiped as divine for millennia. The idea was irresistible. In 40 AD, he began making plans to move permanently to Alexandria, taking the capital with him.
The plan was the last straw. If he moved, Rome and its people would lose their political influence. It would completely neuter the Senate and the Praetorian Guard. Cassius Chaerea, one of Caligula’s own guardsmen, understood this better than anyone and hatched a plan to end the emperor’s madness.
He also had a personal vendetta. Caligula reportedly mocked Chaerea for his feeble voice and called him demeaning names in public. It was the kind of treatment Caligula inflicted on countless people, but Chaerea was a man he should never have crossed. On January 22, 41 AD, Caligula was speaking to a group of young actors in the corridors beneath his palace when Chaerea and his fellow conspirators appeared.
According to reports, Chaerea struck first, and soon the entire group swarmed the emperor, cutting him down where he stood. His final moments resembled those of his ancestor Julius Caesar: both were dictators with absolute power, both were stabbed thirty times, and both were killed by conspirators led by a man named Cassius. Though the Praetorian Guard had turned on Caligula, his personal Germanic guard remained fiercely loyal. When they arrived, the emperor was already dead, but they still took their revenge, brutally attacking everyone nearby, conspirator or not.
The assassins then tracked down Caligula’s wife and young daughter, determined to eliminate any trace of his bloodline. They allegedly killed the child, Julia Drusilla, by bashing her head against a wall. Next, the conspirators went looking for Caligula’s sickly uncle Claudius. Claudius, not much of a fighter, hid behind a curtain.
A sympathetic soldier found him, and a faction of the Praetorian Guard quickly moved him out of the city to safety. The Senate wanted to restore the Republic. Caligula’s ruinous reign was a strong argument against giving one man absolute power. But there was a problem: while Caligula had been a disaster, the Roman military still preferred the empire.
They rallied around Claudius and declared him emperor. Claudius promptly executed the men who had killed his nephew, and the empire continued on, finally rid of its most deranged ruler. Caligula had been a tyrant who turned his rule into a spectacle of cruelty, fear, and excess.
His death did not restore the Republic, but it ended a reign that had pushed Rome to the brink.