CLAS 355
Autocracy, Part I: Caligula
February 23, 2023

Bust of Gaius Caesar, i.e. "Caligula"

*Response #1 (due Friday, 11:59pm in D2L)

World Justice Project's 2022 Rule of Law Index: global rise of authoritarianism (based on absence of corruption, restraints on government powers, open government, fundamental rights, etc.): https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI98_zirqp_QIVnzWtBh3F6Q-DEAAYASAAEgKJ1_D_BwE

autocracy: slavery writ large (cf. Lucan; HTVT ); ruler's unlimited power (e.g., totalitarian, violent fascist rule under guise of security, law & order, etc.)

history's ample supply of/demand for autocrats/authoritarians:

demand, e.g. "A Night at the Garden" (documentary by Marshall Curry, 2017): 20,000 Americans at Madison Square Garden; Fritz Kuhn, leader of The German American Bund, promoting interests of Nazi Germany (February 20, 1939): https://anightatthegarden.com (2019 New Yorker story)

supply, e.g. Steve Raucci's rise & fall as Head of School Maintenance "energy czar", Schenectady, NY: NPR's This American Life 2010 podcast (transcript)

Rome's shift to autocracy: Roman Revolution = failure of Republican (oligarchical) institutions & emergence of strongmen with personal armies/cult of personality, 1st century BCE (cf. fascist "states of emergency"); pluralism > monarchy

Octavian/Augustus (reigns 31 BCE to 14 CE)

• Roman autocracy in Republican clothing: Augustus's self-representation as defender of Roman Republic (vs. its "opponents") & appearance of preserving legal & legislative framework of Republic (magistrates, senate, popular assemblies, priesthoods, e.g., Octavian's coinage of 28 BCE "consul for sixth time"/ "He revived the rights and laws of the Roman people"); cf. illiberal democracy today, e.g., Hungary, Russian Federation's "managed democracy", etc.
  
  
• principate = rule of princeps ("leading citizen") morphs into monarchy: chief government functions monopolized by princeps, military commands go to friends & family (corrupt basis of power) > dynastic monarchy (Augustus bequeathes power, status, wealth to heir)
  
  Julio-Claudian dynasty: Augustus (27 BCE-14 CE), Tiberius (14-37 CE), Caligula (37-41 CE), Claudius (41-54 CE), Nero (54-68 CE)
  
  Augustan coin celebrating dedication of a temple to "Thundering Jupiter", 19 BCE
  
  
• Roman people surrender freedoms for stability of autocracy ("I alone can fix it") & monarchy
  
  caliga ("boot-sandal"), Roman Egypt , 1st BCE-1st CE (British Museum)
  
  
• Suetonius's Caligula: biography of Gaius Caesar aka "Little Boots"; Suetonius (ca. 70-130 CE), imperial archivist & librarian (access to government records + lost historians) > sensationalist & biased biography with historical core = emperor's hypothetical powers
  
  Structure of Caligula, sections: 1-12 (family background & assumption of power); 13-21 (early rule); 22-49 ("Caligula the Monster"); 50-60 (summary and death)
  
  Ancient Bust of Tiberius
  
  
• Caligula's family persecuted (mother, brothers) by Tiberius (grandfather of Caligula by adoption of father Germanicus); Caligula family's lone survivor ("there was never a better slave—nor worse master", 10), suspected of murdering Tiberius
  
  
• Caligula's early reign: wide acclaim at Tiberius's death, "he was the answer to the prayer of the Roman people", 13); populist (economic transparency, free speech, tax cuts, elections, judicial reforms, gladiatorial games, circuses & theater + banquets & free gifts, infrastructure projects, 15-18)
  
  
• Caligula granted absolute power (senate, army, people) > Caligula's reign of terror: killed by Cassius Chaerea & Praetorian Guard, age 29, 4 years rule; uncle Claudius ("preserved for jokes") proclaimed emperor; Caligula first of failed younger emperors (micro-managing, pushing limits of power, humiliating elite classes)
  
  
  Restoration of ancient bust of Caligula
  
  
  *GROUPS *
  
  
  Caligula’s personal characteristics & behavioral tendencies
  
  
• viciousness & lack of impulse control (sadism, cruelty, etc.): threat to grandmother, "Remember, I can do anything I please to anybody" (29); executions ("Strike him so he feels his death", 30)
  
  
• absolute power: declares himself Rome's god vs. imperial practice (e.g. statues of head on Jupiter's body, temple to himself with corrupt priests & exotic sacrifices, 22) & eliminates rivals (23); "Whenever he kissed the neck of a wife or a mistress, he would add: 'This lovely neck would be severed the minute I gave the order'" (33)
  
  Malcolm McDowell, "I am a god", in Caligula (1979; director Tinto Brass, cast includes Helen Mirren (as fourth wife Caesonia), Peter O'Toole, Sir John Gielgud): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvVEt6F_Xw
  
  
  Malcolm McDowell as Caligula
  
  

  Caligula's elimination of his rivals for "treason": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk8_mtwxztY
  

• disruption of tradition & social norms: style of dressing conflates divine/human, male/female, etc. (52); love of chaos, "every now and again he would express his desire for a terrible military defeat, a famine, a plague, a great fire, or an earthquake" (31)
  
  
• absence of sexual boundaries: incest with sisters (esp. Drusilla); displays 4th wife Caesonia to soldiers & friends naked (25); serial adultery & sexual omnipotence, esp. with wives of prominent men & families (36, 41)
  
  Suetonius, Caligula 36
  In addition to his his incestuous relations with his sisters and his notorious affair with the prostitute Pyrallis, there was hardly any woman of distinguished family he did not make advances to. Most of them he invited to dinner, along with their husbands, and as they passed by the foot of his couch, he would appraise them carefully—as if he were buying slaves, sometimes raising their faces with his hand, if they had cast their eyes modestly downwards. Then, as often as he felt like it, he would leave the dining-room, having called to him whichever woman he found most attractive. Not long afterwards he would return, making no attempt to conceal the signs of his present sexual activity, and would offer criticism or praise of his partner, listing in detail the good or bad features of her body and sexual performance. To some women he himself sent a divorce notice, in the name of their absent husbands, and gave orders that these notices were to be entered in the public records.
  
  
• jealousy, envy, vanity (delusions of grandeur): destroyed statues of famous men & denigrated classical authors (Homer, Vergil, Livy, 34; Seneca, 53)
  
  Suetonius, Caligula 35
  Whenever he came across men with a good head of hair, he had the backs of their heads shaved to spoil their appearance . . . there was no one, however humble his rank, however wretched his lot, whose advantages Caligula did not resent.
  
  Suetonius, Caligula 50
  His hair was sparse, his crown being completely bald, while the rest of his body was hairy. Because of this he pronounced it a crime meriting death if, when he was passing, anyone should look down on him from above, or if, for whatever reason, the word 'goat' was mentioned.
  
  
  
  
• extravagant displays of wealth & power: gold loaves of bread as gifts (37); rolling on gold coins (42); grandiose building projects ("Great structures were built up in hostile and deep waters, mountains of the hardest flint were tunneled through, while plains were raised to the level of mountains and excavations levelled mountain peaks flat", 37)
  
  
• financial corruption & greed: revocations of citizenship, maneuvers to confiscate estates, forged wills, bogus auctions (38)
  
  
• inconsistency & whimsical acts: parody of military (43-48), e.g. staged triumphs and random order for soldiers to gather seas-shells at seashore of English Channel (Ocean's spoils to Rome?), lavish treatment of favorite circus horse Incitatus (55)
  
  
• cowardice: "greatest arrogance and the greatest timidity" (fear of gods, barbarians, 51)
  
  
• humorlessness & censorship: "He had a composer of Atellan drama burnt to death in a fire in the middle of the arena because one of his lines of verse contained a doubtful joke" (27)
  
  
• resentment at past slights: pontoon bridge at Bay of Baiae (prophecy re Caligula's rule & riding horses across the bay, 19)
  
  
  Caligula's victims (HTVT)
  
  
• upper classes targeted, e.g. senators forced to run alongside chariot, serve him dinner in short linen tunics (26) & extreme tortures (branded like slaves, beasts in cages, 27); brothel on Palatine (respectable women and free-born boys, 41)
  
  
• common people: megalomania results in closed granaries, awnings drawn back at gladiator shows, riots at games (26); slave has hands cut off & slung around neck with placard of guilt (32); executed Aesius Proculus for impressive size, jealous of celebrity gladiators (35); extreme taxes, including on prostitutes & pimps (40), mistreatment of older soldiers (44); "If only the Roman people had a single neck" (30)