>Philo of Alexandria and Seneca the Younger describe Caligula as an insane emperor who was self-absorbed, angry, killed on a whim, and indulged in too much spending and sex.[98] He is accused of sleeping with other men's wives and bragging about it,[99] killing for mere amusement,[100] deliberately wasting money on his bridge, causing starvation,[101] and wanting a statue of himself erected in the Temple of Jerusalem for his worship.[95] Once, at some games at which he was presiding, he ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the crowd into the arena during intermission to be eaten by animals because there were no criminals to be prosecuted and he was bored.[102][clarification needed]
>While repeating the earlier stories, the later sources of Suetonius and Cassius Dio provide additional tales of insanity. They accuse Caligula of incest with his sisters, Agrippina the Younger, Drusilla, and Livilla, and say he prostituted them to other men.[103] They state he sent troops on illogical military exercises,[69][104] turned the palace into a brothel,[46] and, most famously, planned or promised to make his horse, Incitatus, a consul,[105] and actually appointed him a priest.[79]
How can one man be this based?
>based
>gets killed like a bitch
live by the sword, die by the sword
I feel like Caligula is wildly misrepresented in history becase he was so hated. He, Tiberius, and Nero all exhibit sinilar (general) accusations and characteristics that Romans associated with tyrrants and bad emperors. Less so in the specifics.
Caligula, Nero, and some of the later Empire's more infamous emperors typically get similar accusations.
Califula was probably not a great emperor and could very well have been a ludicrous madman. But if you take a step back and realize the Senatorial Perspective he seems to have just been a smotty aristocrat constantly pissing off the Senate and not caring much to rule.
There are also certain inconsistencies with accusations...namely his depletion of the treasury. If that were the case Claudius wouldn't be able to have built what he did nor finance the conquest of Britain.
>>1301594
Senatorial butthurt is a hell of a thing.
the only thing he did wrong was not purging enough senators
>>1301669
I read a good argument to this extent where the author noted that there were actually very few disturbances on the frontier during the reigns of Caligula and Nero, and that most likely much of their ill begotten infamy was due to slander. Some of it was probably true though.
>>1301786
The part where he cucks senators is probably true because being called a cuck was probably the biggest insult back in Roman times. If it wasn't true, they probably wouldn't write about him humiliating his senators in the worst way possible.
>>1301669
Caligula is largely represented out of historical context due to Claudius taking over his projects (Caligula wasted all the money yet somehow Claudius has all the money in the world for infrastructure projects and the invasion of Britain) and the Senate needed to legitimize itself after a failed pro-republican coup
>>1301669
>He, Tiberius, and Nero
If they were all slandered, then why did other similar populists (Julius Cesear, Gracchi brothers) not get nearly the same slander treatment?
>Why were pre-imperial politics different from the politics of the principate
Are you really this dense?
>>1302411
Because their sides won?
