Roman Imperial Texts: A Sourcebook

5. Caligula

5 Caligula Caligula (12–41 ce; emperor 37–41 ce) Gaius Caligula was picked to rule because of the noble family from which he came. He is famous for insisting on his divine status while still ruling. 16. GAIUS CALIGULA’S CLAIM TO BE GOD 1 In the following selection from Suetonius, we read of Caligula’s public works and his pretenses to be divine.§21 The public structures left incomplete by Tiberius, Augustus’ temple and Pompey’s theater, he completed. He also started construction on an aqueduct that began in the area of the Tibur and an amphitheater near the voting enclosure; Claudius his successor finished the first but dropped the other. He [Gaius] restored the city wall of Syracuse that had fallen down because of its age and he rebuilt the gods’ temples. He had plans to rebuild the palace of King Polycrates on Samos, complete Apollo’s shrine in Didyma next to Miletus, establish a city on an ridge in the alps, but beyond all to channel through the Achaean isthmus, and he had already a chief engineer for the task of surveying.§22.1 Thus far for a princeps, as it were; what remains to be narrated concerns a beast. Gaius got quite a few nicknames—he was termed “pious,” “child of the war camp,” “father of the troops,” and “best and grandest Caesar”—once when he happened to hear kings who were in Rome on official visits arguing over their royal pedigrees while at dinner, he exclaimed, “There should be one lord, 1. Suetonius, Cal. 21–22.4; my translation of Latin text found in Suetonius, ed. and trans. Rolfe. 59 one king!”2 Right then he almost put on a kingly crown and changed the semblance of a principate into the structure of a sovereignty.§22.2 But after being told that his greatness was beyond kings and emperors, he started from that point on to insist on his divine status: plans were drawn up to bring the gods’ statues from Greece, those most well known for the worship they prompted or for their skillful sculpting, including Jupiter in Olympia; whose heads he planned to displace with his own; he built out part of his palace building on the Palatine Hill so that it went into the forum, and then reworked the temple of Castor and Pollux to be its vestibule, frequently standing in the center, in between the statues of the divine twin brothers, presenting himself as someone to be worshiped by those who entered, and some acclaimed him “Jupiter Latiaris.”3§22.3 Gaius established a temple to the worship of his genius; he instituted priests and the most unheard of sacrifices. In the temple stood his statue in gold, dressed each day in the clothes just like what he wore. Those men with the most money contested for the privilege of serving as priests by gathering support and offering more money. Animals sacrificed were flamingos, peacocks, black grouse, guinea birds of two sorts, and pheasants—a different type of animal was sacrificed day by day.§22.4 During the night, he would repeatedly proposition the full and bright moon into his bosom and bed; in daytime he would speak one on one with Capitoline Jupiter, at times whispering and then listening to him reply, while other times he spoke loudly and angrily. For his warning voice was heard, “You either lift me, or else I shall lift you!”4 At last, as he said, won by requests that he live with him [the god], he linked the Palatine and Capitoline Hills with a bridge that went over the temple of the Divine Augustus. In order to be even nearer [to the god], he set the footings for a new home right in front of the temple for Capitoline Jupiter. 2. In Suetonius’ text this line is in Greek, a quotation from Homer, Iliad 2.204. Caligula’s quotation of this in regard to himself shows his own quest for greatness. 3. The temple of Jupiter Latiaris was on Mt. Alba just outside Rome. Celebrations of minor military victories occurred there (Hurley, Caesars 171 n. 52). 4. A Greek quotation in Suetonius’ text from Homer, Iliad 23.724, from a wrestling scene. 60 | Roman Imperial Texts 17. CALIGULA ORDERS HIS STATUE ERECTED IN THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE 5 The following excerpt from Philo of Alexandria’s Embassy to Gaius illustrates how...