Caligula Disentangled

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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from http://www.HowStuffWorks.com.

Katie Lambert

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I’m Katie Lambert.

Sarah Dowdey

And I’m Sarah Dowdey. Our subject for today is known as being a paranoid tyrant and a megalomaniac. He’s rumored to have committed incest with his sisters, and to have elevated his horse to the consulship. He gets his nickname, which means little boots, because his father used to dress him up in these cute little army sandals and take him on campaign with him.

Katie Lambert

This is actually relevant to some of the events of today as Sarah is taping her sandals back tighter, as they broke.

Sarah Dowdey

Yes. I broke them on my way into recording and was hobbling around. I guess I’m like Caligula in one respect.

Katie Lambert

Caligula was the third emperor of Rome. His real name is Gaius Ceaser, but none of us call him that. he was so unpopular that it’s hard to know what’s really true and what isn’t about him because, guess what, the Roman historians really didn’t like him, so their accounts are almost completely unreliable. Encyclopedia Britannic says, “Accounts of his reign by ancient historians are so biased against him that the truth is almost impossible to disentangle.”

Sarah Dowdey

Which is where we got our title? That always makes us a little bit nervous, but it also usually means it’s going to be a fun podcast.

Katie Lambert

Let’s see how it goes. To give a little family history, Gaius Ceaser was born in A.D. 12, the great-grandson of Augustus. He’s actually really related to the emperor on both sides.

Sarah Dowdey

He was partly raised in the household of Augustus’s wife, Empress Livia. That’s where we’re going to start this family history. She’s known for her intrigues, and those very intrigues make his role possible in an indirect sort of way.

Livia is probably best known for plotting on behalf of her son, who wasn’t Augustus’s son. It was her son by her first marriage, Tiberius. The thing is, even though Augustus didn’t have a legitimate son, he wasn’t interested in making his stepson, Tiberius, his heir.

Katie Lambert

No. He wanted pretty much anybody else.

Sarah Dowdey

Yeah, but Livia wasn’t going to have that. And hey, the chosen heirs just kind of kept on dying.

Katie Lambert

Thanks to Livia, perhaps.

Sarah Dowdey

Yeah. Thanks to Livia, maybe. Eventually, Augustus is like, “All right. Well, I guess I’ll settle on Tiberius.”

Katie Lambert

It’s rumored that Livia may have even done in Augustus himself when it seemed he was wavering on his commitment to Tiberius as heir. She was a motivated woman, that Livia.