Caligula's Theatrical Antics

 From Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars:

  

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 Jupiter'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.

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.

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 and 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 estival 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. Yes, with all these gifts, he could not swim a stroke!

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 afterwords 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 Dutychus 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.

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 cooperation 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. 

Many omens of Caligula's approaching death were reported. While the statue of Olympian Jupiter 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 Jupiter 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 Jupiter'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 pantomomime 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 humourous 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.

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: 'Jupiter', whereupon Chaerea, from his rear, yelled: 'So be it!' —for Jupiter 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 swordthrusts 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.

He died at the age of twenty-nine after ruling for three years, ten months and eight days. His body was moved secretly to tha Lamian Gardens, half-cremated on a hastily-built pyere, and then buried  beneath a shallow covering of sods. Later, when his sisters returned from exile they exhumed, cremated, and entombed it. But all the City knew that the Gardens had been haunted until then by his ghost, and that something horrible appeared every night at the scene of the murder until at last the building burned down.

The terror inspired by Caligula's reign could be judged by the sequel: everyone was extremely reluctant to believe that he had really been assassinated, and suspected that the story was invented by himself to discover what people thought of him.