Caligula: 1400 Days of Terror

Caligula, the Roman emperor who was a notorious nut, ruled for a few years in the first century AD. At the time, the Roman empire dominated about 4 million square miles around the Mediterranean Sea. All of its residents lived under Roman law and the law was set by only one man, Caligula, who was twenty-four when he took the throne. He inherited a rich empire and used the money to win popularity and power. He doubled the salary of the Praetorian Guard -- his personal army, something like Hitler's SS -- then abolished all trials for treason in the Senate.

Finally, from the top of a three-story building, he took handfuls of gold coins and flung them out into the crowd below, who crushed each other in trying to collect them. Thus he's won over the Guard, the Senate, and the people of Rome. That was in the good old days when money meant power, not like today when a shoeless beggar's vote has the same power as a billionaire's. (That's meant to be ironic.) I don't want to get into the weeds here but Caligula was both popular and powerful, but when he fell ill for several weeks of an unknown illness, the master of the Praetorian Guard began grooming Caligula's successor, his cousin Glamelus, for the throne. The emperor recovered and was not pleased. He had Glamelus killed. The illness seemed to be some kind of turning point for Caligula because it didn't stop there.

Maybe I ought to note that Caligula at the time was only in his twenties and that's a bad age bracket for certain kinds of schizophrenia. And some of his acts seem to lack all reason. When the emperor was ill, a nobleman claimed that he would give his life if the emperor recovered. The emperor DID recover, had the nobleman dragged through the streets and thrown into the Tiber, where he drowned.

Caligula then starts boffing his youngest sister and turning the arenas' blood sports into blood baths. If gladiators had been matched with weapons before, Caligula unmatched them -- sword and shield against trident and net, just like Spartacus. Exotic animals are slaughtered for the public's pleasure and prisoners are fed to predatory cats like lions and tigers. Anybody in the stands who happens to jeer the emperor immediately joins the victims in the arena. He gives lots of parties. He attends plays and sometimes jumps on the stage to play all the parts. Who's to stop him? When his lover, his sister, dies, he has her made a goddess, the first time it's ever happened, and all this erratic behavior annoys the Senate. The guy is hanging around with all these lowlifes and acting more like a king. In return Caligula humiliates the Senate and drains it of power.

When emperors died they were deified. He went one step further and declared himself a God while still in mortal form. He had a temple built to himself, complete with virgins, sacrifices, and other rituals. By the time Caligula declared he would move the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Egypt, a move that would devastate the city and everyone in it, the Praetorian Guard and the Senate had had enough and Caligula was stabbed to death. There's a moral lesson in all this. Try not to get too big for your britches.

One reviewer seems to interpret this documentary as a descent into the vulgate; lots of blood and sensationalism. It's also seen as a kind of apology for Caligula, who may not have been such a bad guy after all and who had his wits about him. I suppose there is an element of sensationalism but I don't know how it could have been avoided without turning the narrative into a dry spell of dates and figures. One of the talking heads is from Cambridge, the others from lesser venues, but I don't care about that. If they know whereof they speak it seems good enough for a popular audience.

This documentary tries to tie in Caligula the child watching his family being slaughtered by the emperor Tiberius because of Tiberius' jealousy of his father's popularity and then being called to Tiberius' side at age 17 and being forced to watch and join in with all of the debauchery at Tiberius' court as educating Caligula on the importance of eradicating rivals and the politics of power as well as giving him a taste for pleasure and power himself.

I saw a different documentary 25 years ago on Caligula of about the same length as this one that spent much more time on the illness that Caligula had six months into his reign. Up to that point Caligula had been a sly leader, rewarding key constituencies to solidify power, but he was not bloodthirsty. It was after the illness that the reign of terror began.

This documentary does not even mention that maybe the high fevers that Caligula endured during his illness might have induced brain damage that caused his behavior to so radically change. Much of this documentary seems focused on being a Caligula "sanity apologist" on showing how what he did that seemed cruel and insane actually had a point about retaining power and I just disagree. Making your favorite racehorse head of the Roman senate and ordering your troops to attack the ocean is just full scale goofiness.

One interesting point that this documentary brought out that I had not heard before? The tall obelisk that Caligula had brought from Egypt still remains and stands intact...in front of the Vatican...with a cross on top. An interesting mixture of cultures and religions, is it not?

This is probably worth watching, but even though the historians seem credible I think the production shows that even documentaries meant to inform have become somewhat infected with the sensationalism of reality TV.

A group of historians presented very little additional information apart from the pleasure barge at Nemi.

The usual concentration on gory details but little attempt to consider failures in interpretation (eg the seashells/engineers huts translation) or biased reporting by the sources.

Neither was much wright given to the possibility of Caligula's illness causing his personality to change.

The presenters seemed to carry little authority, though Katie Parla seemed to be there to provide 'sex appeal'.

This was a documentary that I decided to check out while working, treating it like a podcast. It is one that I think I would have enjoyed more if I could have solely focused my attention on it. Regardless, the historical figure of Caligula is one that I've been fascinated by due to the wild stories and movies that have been made about him.

Things that stood out to me while watching this was that he was a younger man when he took power. As you can tell from the title, he wasn't emperor long. It does seem like certain things that he did that branded him insane, were more calculated. If he was in today's society, he'd been considered a troll. Still, he was into debauchery and had a bloodlust. There were lasting effects of corruption that he was responsible for, but I'd also say there were bigger issues. There were widespread problems and power hungry individuals vying for more of the pie.

I'll then just say that this is made well enough. This is from the History Channel so the production value is there. There are dramatizations that were edited in to break up seeing and hearing the talking heads tell the factual information. It looks good. I don't know if I pulled as much from this as I wanted, but there's interesting data provided to explain things that this emperor did. I would recommend it from that standpoint.

My Rating: 6.5 out of 10.