Reign of Caligula
Caligula ruled Rome for not quite four years and was murdered by his own guard in a corridor. He was the son of Germanicus, the most popular man in the empire, and got his nickname — little boots — from the soldiers of his father's Rhine army, who dressed him as a miniature legionary as a child. He was the only surviving adult male of his line after Tiberius's reign had removed the others, and he was accordingly welcomed in 37 with genuine relief. The first months were conciliatory: the treason trials suspended, exiles recalled, games given, taxes remitted. Then he fell seriously ill in October 37, and the sources describe a different man afterwards — though the sources are Suetonius and Cassius Dio, writing generations later for an audience that expected monsters, and modern historians read them with care. What is reasonably solid is that he humiliated the senate systematically, insisted on divine honours in his lifetime in a way that Augustus and Tiberius had carefully avoided, drained the treasury Tiberius had filled, and executed people whose property he wanted. The famous stories — the horse Incitatus made consul, the war against the sea with soldiers ordered to collect shells — may be garbled reports of jokes or deliberate insults to the senate. He was stabbed in January 41 by Praetorian officers he had mocked, and his wife and infant daughter were killed with him. The guard then found his uncle Claudius and made him emperor. His reign settled one constitutional question by accident. It demonstrated that the principate could not be abolished by removing a princeps, because the men with the swords had no interest in a restored republic and every interest in an emperor who owed them his throne.
- Year: 37 CE
- Category: Political
