What happens when the
people of a great nation gradually realize that their leader may not be, er,
quite right in the head?
When Caligula became Roman
emperor in A.D. 37, the people rejoiced.
“On all sides, you could
see nothing but altars and sacrifices, men and women decked in their holiday
best and smiling,” according to the first-century writer Philo.
The Senate embraced him,
and he was hailed as a breath of fresh air after the dourness, absenteeism and
miserliness of his great-uncle, Emperor Tiberius.
Caligula was colorful and
flamboyant, offering plenty of opportunities for ribald gossip.
Caligula had four wives in
rapid succession, and he was said to be sleeping with his sister. (Roman
historians despised him, so some of the gossip should be treated skeptically.)
He was charming, impetuous
and energetic, sleeping only three hours a night, and he displayed a common
touch as he constantly engaged with the public.
His early months as
emperor brimmed with hope.
Initially, Caligula
focused on denouncing his predecessor and reversing everything that he had
done.
Caligula also made popular
promises of tax reform so as to reduce the burden on the public.
He was full of grandiose
pledges of infrastructure projects, such as a scheme to cut through the Isthmus
of Corinth.
But, alas, Caligula had no
significant government experience, and he proved utterly incompetent at
actually getting things done. Meanwhile, his personal extravagance actually
increased the need for tax revenue.
Suetonius, the Roman
historian, recounted how Caligula’s boats had “sterns set with gems,
parti-colored sails, huge spacious baths, colonnades and banquet halls, and
even a great variety of vines and fruit trees.”
Romans initially accepted
Caligula’s luxurious tastes, perhaps intrigued by them. But Caligula’s lavish
spending soon exhausted the surplus he had inherited, and Rome ran out of
money.
This led to increasingly
desperate, cruel and tyrannical behavior.
Caligula reportedly opened
a brothel in the imperial palace to make money, and he introduced new taxes.
When this wasn’t enough,
he began to confiscate estates, antagonizing Roman elites and sometimes killing
them.
A coward himself, Caligula
was said to delight in the torture of others; rumor had it that he would tell
his executioners: “Kill him so that he can feel he is dying.”
Caligula, a narcissist and
megalomaniac, became increasingly unhinged.
He supposedly rolled
around on a huge pile of gold coins, and he engaged in conversations with the
moon, which he would invite into his bed.
He replaced the heads of
some statues of gods with his own head, and he occasionally appeared in public
dressed as a god.
He was referred to as a
god in certain circumstances, and he set up a temple where he could be
worshiped.
“Remember that I have the
right to do anything to anybody,” he told his grandmother, according to
Suetonius.
Caligula had a thing for
generals, and he periodically wore the garb of a triumphant military commander.
He removed the breastplate
of Alexander the Great from his sarcophagus and wore it himself at times.
The Senate, dignified and
traditional, watched Caligula with increasing alarm. He scandalized the public
by sometimes dressing as a woman, and he aggravated tensions by scathingly
denouncing the Senate, relying on sarcasm and insult, and showing utter
contempt for it.
One of Caligula’s last
allies was his beloved racehorse, Incitatus, who wore a collar of precious
stones and lived in a marble stall. Caligula would invite Incitatus to dine
with him.
Edward Champlin, a
historian of Rome at Princeton University, says that Caligula pursued “a love
of pranks that a 4-year-old might disdain” and had a penchant for “blurting out
whatever is on his mind” — such as suggesting that Incitatus could become
consul.
These rash statements
rippled through Rome, for leaders of great powers are often taken not just
seriously but also literally.
Yet as Caligula wreaked
havoc, Rome also had values, institutions and mores that inspired resistance.
He offended practically
everyone, he couldn’t deliver on his promises, his mental stability was
increasingly doubted and he showed he simply had no idea how to govern.
Within a few years, he had
lost all support, and the Praetorian Guard murdered him in January 41 (not a
path I would ever condone).
Caligula was as abominable
a ruler as a great nation could have, yet Rome proved resilient.
Likewise, Rome survived
Emperor Nero a generation later, even as Nero apparently torched Rome,
slaughtered Christians, slept with and then murdered his mother, kicked his
pregnant wife to death, castrated and married a man and generally mismanaged
the empire.
“If there’s a hero in the
story of first-century Rome, it’s Roman institutions and traditional
expectations,” reflects Emma Dench, a Harvard scholar of the period. “However
battered or modified, they kept the empire alive for future greatness.”
To me, the lesson is that
Rome was able to inoculate itself against unstable rulers so that it could
recover and rise to new glories.
Even the greatest of
nations may suffer a catastrophic leader, but the nation can survive the test
and protect its resilience — if the public stays true to its values,
institutions and traditions.
That was true two
millennia ago, and remains true today.
Response Magic 
