43. Caligula had only a single taste of warfare, and even that was unpremeditated. At Bevagna, where he went to visit the river Clitumnus and its sacred grove, someone reminded him that he needed Batavian recruits for his bodyguard; which suggested the idea of a German expedition. He wasted no time in summoning regular legions and auxiliaries from all directions, levied troops with the utmost strictness, and collected military supplies on an unprecedented scale. Then he marched off with such rapidity that the Guards battalions could not keep up with him except by breaking tradition: they had to tie their standards on the pack-mules. Yet, later, he became so lazy and self-indulgent that he travelled in a litter borne by eight bearers; and, whenever he approached a town, made the inhabitants sweep the roads and lay the dust with sprinklers.
44. After reaching his headquarters, Caligula showed how keen and severe a commander-in-chief he intended to be by ignominiously dismissing any general who was late in bringing along the auxiliaries he required. Then, when he reviewed the legions, he discharged several veteran leading-centurions on grounds of age and incapacity, though some had only a few more days of their service to run; and, calling the remainder a pack of greedy fellows, scaled down their retirement bonus to sixty gold pieces each.
All that he accomplished in this expedition was to receive the surrender of Adminius, son of the British King Cymbeline, who had been banished by his father and come over to the Romans with a few followers. Caligula, nevertheless, wrote an extravagant despatch, which might have persuaded any reader that the whole island had surrendered to him, and ordered the couriers not to dismount from their post-chaise on reaching the outskirts of Rome—although wheeled traffic was forbidden in the streets during daylight hours—but make straight for the Forum and the Senate House, and take his letter to the Temple of Mars for personal delivery to the Consuls, in the presence of the entire Senate.
45. Since the chance of military action appeared very remote, he presently sent a few of his German bodyguard across the Rhine, with orders to hide among the trees. After luncheon scouts hurried in to tell him excitedly that the enemy were upon him. He at once galloped out, at the head of his staff and a few Guards cavalry, to halt in the nearest thicket, where they chopped branches from the trees and dressed them like trophies; then, riding back by torchlight, he taunted as cowards all who had failed to follow him, and awarded his fellow-heroes a novel fashion in crowns—he called it ‘The Ranger’s Crown’—ornamented with sun, moon, and stars. On another day he took some German hostages from a military school, where they were being taught the rudiments of Latin, and secretly ordered them on ahead of him. Later, he left his dinner in a hurry and took his cavalry in pursuit of them, as though they had been fugitives. He was no less melodramatic about this foray: when he returned to the hall after catching the hostages and bringing them back in irons, and his officers reported that the army was marshalled, he made them recline at table, still in their corselets, and quoted Virgil’s famous advice: ‘Be steadfast, comrades, and preserve yourselves For happier occasions!’ He also severely reprimanded the absent Senate and People for enjoying banquets and festivities, and for hanging about the theatres or their luxurious country-houses while the Emperor was exposed to all the hazards of war.
46. In the end, he drew up his army in battle array facing the Channel and moved the siege-engines into position as though he intended to bring the campaign to a close. No one had the least notion what was in his mind when, suddenly, he gave the order: ‘Gather sea-shells!’ He referred to the shells as ‘plunder from the sea, due to the Capitol and to the Palace’, and made the troops fill their helmets and tunic-laps with them; commemorating this victory by the erection of a tall lighthouse, not unlike the one at Pharos, in which fires were to be kept going all night as a guide to ships. Then he promised every soldier a bounty of four gold pieces, and told them: ‘Go rich, go happy!’ as though he had been excessively generous.
47. He now concentrated his attention on the imminent triumph. To supplement the few prisoners taken in frontier skirmishes and the deserters who had come over from the barbarians, he picked the tallest Gauls of the province—‘those worthy of a triumph’—and some of their chiefs as well, for his supposed train of captives. These had not only to grow their hair and dye it red, but also to learn German and adopt German names. The triremes used in the Channel were carted overland most of the way; and he sent a letter ahead instructing his agents to prepare a triumph more lavish than any hitherto known, but at the least possible expense to the Privy Purse; and added that everyone’s property was at their disposal.
48. Before leaving Gaul he planned, in a sudden access of cruelty, to massacre the legionaries who, at news of Augustus’s death, had mutinously besieged his father Germanicus’s headquarters; he had been there himself as a little child. His friends barely restrained him from carrying this plan out, and he could not be dissuaded from ordering the execution of every tenth man; for which purpose they had to parade without swords or javelins, and surrounded by armed horsemen. But when he noticed that a number of legionaries, scenting trouble, were slipping away to fetch their weapons, he hurriedly absconded and headed straight for Rome. There, to distract attention from his inglorious exploits, he vengefully threatened the Senate who, he said, had cheated him of a well-earned triumph—though, in point of fact he had expressly stated, a few days before, that they must do nothing to honour him, on pain of death.
49. So, when the distinguished senatorial delegates met him with an official plea for his immediate return, he shouted: ‘I am coming, never fear, and this’—tapping the hilt of his sword—‘is coming too!’ He was returning only to those who would really welcome him; namely, the knights and the people; so far as the senators were concerned he would never again consider himself their fellow-citizen, or their Emperor, and forbade any more of them to meet him. Having cancelled, or at least postponed, his triumph he entered the City on his birthday, and received an ovation. Within four months he was dead.
Caligula had dared commit fearful crimes, and contemplated even worse ones: such as murdering the most distinguished of the senators and knights, and then moving the seat of government first to Antium, and afterwards to Alexandria. If, at this point, my readers become incredulous, let me record that two books were found among his papers entitled The Dagger and The Sword, each of them containing the names and addresses of men whom he had planned to kill. A huge chest filled with poisons also came to light. It is said that when Claudius later threw this into the sea, quantities of dead fish, cast up by the tide, littered the neighbouring beaches.
50. Physical characteristics of Caligula:
Height: tall.
Complexion: pallid.
Body: hairy and badly built.
Neck: thin.
Legs: spindling.
Eyes: sunken.
Temples: hollow.
Forehead: broad and forbidding.
Scalp: almost hairless, especially on the poll.
Because of his baldness and hairiness he announced that it was a capital offence for anyone either to look down on him as he passed or to mention goats in any context. He worked hard to make his naturally uncouth face even more repulsive, by practising fearful grimaces in front of a mirror. Caligula was, in fact, sick both physically and mentally. As a boy, he suffered from epilepsy; and although his resistance to the disease gradually strengthened, there were times when he could hardly walk, stand, think, or hold up his head, owing to sudden fits. He was well aware that he had mental trouble, and sometimes proposed taking a leave of absence from Rome to clear his brain; Caesonia is reputed to have given him an aphrodisiac which drove him mad. Insomnia was his worst torment. Three hours a night of fitful sleep were all that he ever got, and even then terrifying visions would haunt him—once, for instance, he dreamed that he had a conversation with the Mediterranean Sea. He tired of lying awake the greater part of the night, and would alternately sit up in bed and wander through the long corridors, invoking the
day which seemed as if it would never break.
51. I am convinced that this brain-sickness accounted for his two contradictory vices—over-confidence and extreme timorousness. Here was a man who despised the gods, yet shut his eyes and buried his head beneath the bedclothes at the most distant sound of thunder; and if the storm came closer, would jump out of bed and crawl underneath. In his travels through Sicily he poked fun at the miraculous stories associated with local shrines, yet on reaching Messina suddenly fled in the middle of the night, terrified by the smoke and noise which came from the crater of Etna. Despite his fearful threats against the barbarians, he showed so little courage after he had crossed the Rhine and gone riding in a chariot through a defile, that when someone happened to remark: ‘What a panic there would be if the enemy unexpectedly appeared!’ he leaped on a horse and galloped back to the bridges. These were crowded with army transport, but he had himself passed from hand to hand over the men’s heads, in his haste to regain the farther bank. Even when safely home in his palace he was haunted by the fantasy of a German invasion and decided to escape by sea. He fitted out a large fleet for this purpose, finding comfort only in the thought that, should the enemy be victorious and occupy the Alpine passes as the Cimbrians had done, or Rome, as the Senonian Gauls had done, he would at least be able to hold his overseas provinces. This was probably what later gave Caligula’s assassins the idea of quieting his vengeful German bodyguard with the story that rumours of a defeat had scared him into sudden suicide.
52. Caligula paid no attention to traditional or current fashions in his dress; ignoring male conventions and even the human decencies. Often he made public appearances in a cloak covered with embroidery and encrusted with precious stones, a long-sleeved tunic and bracelets; or in silk (which men were forbidden by law to wear) or even in a woman’s robe; and came shod sometimes with slippers, sometimes with buskins, sometimes with military boots, sometimes with women’s shoes. Occasionally he affected a golden beard and carried Juppiter’s thunderbolt, Neptune’s trident, or Mercury’s serpent-twined staff. He even dressed up as Venus and, long before his expedition, wore the uniform of a triumphant general, often embellished with the breastplate which he had stolen from Alexander the Great’s tomb at Alexandria.
53. Though no man of letters, Caligula took pains to study rhetoric, and showed remarkable eloquence and quickness of mind, especially when prosecuting. Anger incited him to a flood of words; he moved about excitedly while speaking, and his voice carried a great distance. At the start of every speech he would warn the audience that he proposed to ‘draw the sword which he had forged in his midnight study’; yet so despised all rhetorical style that he discounted Seneca, then at the height of his fame, as a ‘mere text-book orator’, or ‘sand without lime’. He often published confutations of speakers who had successfully pleaded a cause; or composed speeches for both the prosecution and the defence of important men who were on trial by the Senate—the verdict depending entirely on the caprice of his pen—and would invite the Knights by proclamation to attend and listen.
54. Caligula practised many other arts, most enthusiastically, too. He made appearances as a Thracian gladiator, as a singer, as a dancer, fought with real weapons, and drove chariots in many regional circuses. Indeed, he was so proud of his voice and deportment that he could not resist the temptation of supporting the tragic actors at public performances; and would repeat their gestures by way of praise or criticism. On the very day of his death he seems to have ordered an all-night festival in honour of some god or other, intending to take advantage of the free-and-easy atmosphere for making his stage debut. He often danced at night, and once, at the close of the second watch, summoned three senators of consular rank to the Palace; arriving half-dead with fear, they were conducted to a stage upon which, amid a tremendous racket of flutes and heel-taps, Caligula suddenly burst, dressed in cloak and ankle-length tunic, performed a song and dance, and disappeared as suddenly as he had entered. Yet, with all these gifts, he could not swim a stroke!
55. On those whom he loved he bestowed an almost insane passion. He would shower kisses on Mnester the comedian, even in the theatre; and if anyone made the slightest noise during a performance, Caligula had the offender dragged from his seat and beat him with his own hands. To a knight who created some disturbance while Mnester was on the stage, Caligula sent instructions by a centurion to sail from Ostia and convey a sealed message to King Ptolemy in Mauretania. The message read: ‘Do nothing at all, either good or bad, to the bearer.’
He chose Thracian gladiators to officer his German bodyguard. Disliking the men-at-arms, he reduced their defensive armour; and when a gladiator of this sort, called Columbus, won a fight but was lightly wounded, Caligula treated him with a virulent poison which he afterwards called ‘Columbinum’—at any rate that was how he described it in his catalogue of poisons. Caligula supported the Leek-green faction with such ardour that he would often dine and spend the night in their stables and, on one occasion, gave the driver Eutychus presents worth 20,000 gold pieces. To prevent Incitatus, his favourite horse, from growing restive he always picketed the neighbourhood with troops on the day before the races, ordering them to enforce absolute silence. Incitatus owned a marble stable, an ivory stall, purple blankets, and a jewelled collar; also a house, furniture, and slaves—to provide suitable entertainment for guests whom Caligula invited in its name. It is said that he even planned to award Incitatus a consulship.
56. Such frantic and reckless behaviour roused murderous thoughts in certain minds. One or two plots for his assassination were discovered; others were still maturing, when two Guards colonels put their heads together and succeeded in killing him, thanks to the co-operation of his most powerful freedmen and some other Guards officers. Both these colonels had been accused of being implicated in a previous plot and, although innocent, realized that Caligula hated and feared them. Once, in fact, he had subjected them to public shame and suspicion, taking them aside and announcing, as he waved a sword, that he would gladly kill himself if they thought him deserving of death. After this he accused them again and again, each to the other, and tried to make bad blood between them. At last they decided to kill him about noon at the conclusion of the Palatine Games, the principal part in this drama of blood being claimed by Cassius Chaerea. Caligula had persistently teased Cassius, who was no longer young, for his supposed effeminacy. Whenever he demanded the watchword, Caligula used to give him ‘Priapus’, or ‘Venus’; and if he came to acknowledge a favour, always stuck out his middle finger for him to kiss, and waggled it obscenely.
57. Many omens of Caligula’s approaching death were reported. While the statue of Olympian Juppiter was being dismantled before removal to Rome, at his command, it burst into such a roar of laughter that the scaffolding collapsed and the workmen took to their heels; and a man named Cassius appeared immediately afterwards saying that Juppiter had ordered him, in a dream, to sacrifice a bull. The Capitol at Capua was struck by lightning on the Ides of March, which some interpreted as portending another Imperial death; because Julius Caesar had been murdered on that day. At Rome, the Palace gatekeeper’s lodge was likewise struck; and this seemed to mean that the owner of the Palace stood in danger of attack by his own guards. On asking Sulla the mathematician for his horoscope, Caligula learned that he must expect to die very soon. The Oracle of Fortune at Antium likewise warned him: ‘Beware of Cassius!’ whereupon, forgetting Chaerea’s first name, he ordered the murder of Cassius Longinus, Governor of Asia. On the night before his assassination he dreamed that he was standing beside Juppiter’s heavenly throne, when the God kicked him with the great toe of his right foot and sent him tumbling down to earth. Some other events that occurred on the morning of his death were read as portents. For instance, blood splashed Caligula as he was sacrificing a flamingo; Mnester danced the same tragedy of Cinyras that had been performed by the actor Neoptolemus during the Games at which King Philip of Macedonia was assassinated; and a pantom
ime called Laureolus, at the close of which the leading character, a highwayman, had to die while escaping, and vomit blood, was immediately followed by a humorous epilogue—the comedians were so anxious to display their proficiency at dying that they flooded the stage with blood. An evening performance by Egyptians and Ethiopians was also in rehearsal: a play staged in the Underworld.
58. On 24 January then, just past midday, Caligula, seated in the Theatre, could not make up his mind whether to rise for luncheon; he still felt a little queasy after too heavy a banquet on the previous night. However, his friends persuaded him to come out with them, along a covered walk; and there he found some boys of noble family whom he had summoned from Asia, rehearsing the Trojan war-dance. He stopped to watch and encourage them, and would have taken them back to the Theatre and held the performance at once, had their principal not complained of a cold. Two different versions of what followed are current. Some say that Chaerea came up behind Caligula as he stood talking to the boys and, with a cry of ‘Take this!’ gave him a deep sword-wound in the neck, whereupon Gaius Sabinus, the other colonel, stabbed him in the breast. The other version makes Sabinus tell certain centurions implicated in the plot to clear away the crowd and then ask Caligula for the day’s watchword. He is said to have replied: ‘Juppiter’, whereupon Chaerea, from his rear, yelled: ‘So be it!’—for Juppiter deals sudden death—and split his jawbone as he turned his head. Caligula lay twitching on the ground. ‘I am still alive!’ he shouted; but word went round: ‘Strike again!’ and he succumbed to further wounds, including sword-thrusts through the genitals. Caesonia was murdered by a centurion at the same time, and little Julia Drusilla’s brains were dashed out against a wall. Caligula’s bearers rushed to help him, using their litter-poles as spears; and soon his German bodyguard appeared, too late to be of any service, though they killed several of the assassins and a few innocent senators into the bargain.