Caligula

The infamous emperor Caligula ruled Rome from AD 37 to 41 as a tyrant who ultimately became a monster. This book sets the emperor's story into the context of the political system and the changing relations between the senate and the emperor during Caligula's time and finds a rationality explaining his notorious brutality.

Accessible and graceful. . . . Highly recommended.

Autorentext
Aloys Winterling holds a chair for Ancient History at Humboldt-University Berlin. He is the author of Aula Caesaris and Politics and Society in Imperial Rome, among other books.

Klappentext
Caligula enjoys a reputation as one of the most brutal and tyrannical Roman emperors. In this accessible narrative of Caligula's life, Winterling uses his deep knowledge of Roman society and the imperial court to investigate why contemporaries chose to assassinate Caligula's reputation as well as his person. Caligula emerges here as rather less insane, if no less loathsome, than his posthumous reputation made him out to be.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, author of Rome's Cultural Revolution

Zusammenfassung
The infamous emperor Caligula ruled Rome from A.D. 37 to 41 as a tyrant who ultimately became a monster. An exceptionally smart and cruelly witty man, Caligula made his contemporaries worship him as a god. He drank pearls dissolved in vinegar and ate food covered in gold leaf. He forced men and women of high rank to have sex with him, turned part of his palace into a brothel, and committed incest with his sisters. He wanted to make his horse a consul. Torture and executions were the order of the day. Both modern and ancient interpretations have concluded from this alleged evidence that Caligula was insane. But was he?

This biography tells a different story of the well-known emperor. In a deft account written for a general audience, Aloys Winterling opens a new perspective on the man and his times. Basing Caligula on a thorough new assessment of the ancient sources, he sets the emperor's story into the context of the political system and the changing relations between the senate and the emperor during Caligula's time and finds a new rationality explaining his notorious brutality.

Inhalt
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: A Mad Emperor?

1. Childhood and Youth
2. Two Years as Princeps
3. The Conflicts Escalate
4. Five Months of Monarchy

5. Murder on the Palatine
   Conclusion: Inventing the Mad Emperor
   Epilogue to the English Edition

   Notes
   Bibliography
   Index