60 Minutes - 5/29/2022: High Velocity, The Green River Drift, Caligula’s Gardens

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Following the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Scott Pelley revisits a 2018 report on AR-15-style weapons with rounds causing such devastating and often lethal wounds that first responders and emergency rooms are changing their protocols and preparing for the worst. Bill Whitaker reports on the longest-running cattle drive in America, begun 125 years ago and carried on today by the descendants of the original drivers. Anderson Cooper takes a look at the gardens of the Roman emperor Caligula that have been discovered and excavated, and some of the most remarkable finds are now on display for the first time. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. Shot fired, shot fired. As a result of the wounds inflicted by AR-15-style rifles, the weapons used in the worst of recent mass shootings, doctors, first responders, civilians, and children are now being trained to use something called a bleeding kit, an idea that comes from saving Americans on the battlefield. Turn it off! Turn it off!

You believe that these mass casualty events have become so common that it is important for everyone in this country to be prepared. Everyone. That's where we are in America. That's where we are. It's an American story. Cattle ranchers in Wyoming, who every spring, push thousands of cows along the same 70-mile route

their ancestors pioneered 125 years ago. The Green River Drift is the country's longest running cattle drive, and as we saw, it's filled with sensational sunrises. There's that sun. It's going to peak up over the hill. Hard, dusty days. All of it worked on horseback. That's the Temple of Castor and Paul. Exactly. Exactly. The Roman Empire centered around conquests and the outsized personalities of its emperors.

Research and archaeology continue to search for reliable evidence from that time. And tonight, we'll introduce you to some new discoveries about one of the most written about, if not misunderstood, emperors of all time, Caligula. I can't believe that we are sitting on the steps that Caligula may have walked on. It's amazing. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper.

I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. gave me time back to dive into our financial future. We expand into Europe in 2027, so I'm getting ready. Well, you can predict the future? I can predict you'll like that message. What message? Oh, hey, we all got bonuses.

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Variations of the AR-15 were used in this month's massacre at a Buffalo supermarket, at a Texas Walmart in 2019, a Florida high school in 2018, a Texas church and a Las Vegas concert in 2017, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The AR-15 style weapon is the most popular rifle in America with well over 11 million and they are rarely used in crime. But the AR-15 is the weapon of choice of the worst mass murderers. AR-15 ammunition travels up to three times the speed of sound and as we first showed you in 2018, we're going to slow that down so you can see why the AR-15's high-velocity ammo is the fear of every American emergency room. Hang on, hang on, hang on.

Mass shootings were once so shocking… Where the is this coming from?, they were impossible to forget. Now they've become so frequent, it's hard to they're all bleeding, they're going to die. Oh my God, they're dead. In October 2018, at a Pittsburgh synagogue, 11 were killed, 6 wounded. Just 11 months before, it was a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Assistant Fire Chief Rusty Duncan was among the first to arrive.

90% of the people in there were unrecognizable. The blood everywhere, I mean, it just covered them from head to toe. They were shot in so many different places that you just couldn't make out who they were. The church is now a memorial to the 26 who were murdered. I've never had the experience, not with any kind of weapon like this. For me to see the damage that it did was unbelievable. It was shattering concrete. I can, you know, you can only imagine what it does to a human body. The police estimate that he fired about 450 rounds.

I believe that I saw the damage it did. I saw all the holes in the church from one side to the other. All the pews, the concrete, the carpet. I saw it all. A gunshot wound is potentially fatal no matter what kind of ammunition is used. But Cynthia Burr showed us the difference in an AR-15 round against gelatin targets in her ballistics lab at the University of Southern California. Years of research have gone into kind of what the makeup should be of this ordnance gelatin to really represent what damage you would see in your soft tissues. So this is a pretty accurate representation of what would happen to a human being. Yeah, this is currently considered the kind of the state of the art.

This is a nine millimeter bullet from a handgun, which we captured in slow motion. The handgun bullet traveled about 800 miles an hour. It sliced nearly straight all the way through the gel. This one's going to be a little bit louder. Now, look at the AR-15 round. See the difference? Yes. It's three times faster and struck with more than twice the force. The shockwave of the AR-15 bullet blasted a large cavity in the gel,

unlike the bullet from the handgun. Wow, there's an enormous difference you can see right away. Exactly. There's fragments in here. There's kind of took a curve and came out. You can see a much larger area in terms of the fractures that are inside. Now watch from above. On top the handgun, at bottom the AR-15. It's just exploded. It's exploded and it's tumbling. So what happens is this particular round is designed to tumble and break apart. The 9mm handgun round has a larger bullet, but this AR-15 round has more gunpowder, accelerating its velocity. Both the round and the rifle were designed in the 1950s for the military. The result was the M16 for our troops

and the AR-15 for civilians. There's going to be a lot more damage to the tissues, both bones, organs, whatever that gets kind of even near this bullet path. The bones aren't going to just break, they're going to shatter. Organs aren't just going to kind of tear or have bruises on them, they're going to be, parts of them are going to be destroyed. That fairly describes the wounds suffered by 29-year-old Joanne Ward. At Sutherland Springs Baptist Church, she was shot more than 20 times while covering her children. Ward was dead, her daughters mortally wounded, as Assistant Fire Chief Rusty Duncan made his way from the back of the sanctuary. As I got a couple rows up,

Ryland's hand reached out from under his stepmom and grabbed my pant leg. I wouldn't have even known he was alive until he did that. I didn't even see him under her. That's where me and him made eye contact for the first time. Joanne Ward's 5-year-old stepson, Ryland Ward, was hit five times and was nearly gone when he reached trauma surgeon Lillian Liao at San Antonio's University Hospital. How much of Ryland's blood do you think was lost before he came to you? At least half. This is Ryland's ER x-ray.

Yes, you see the two bullet fragments that are in him. The x-ray shows you the solid fragments of the shrapnel and the bullets, but it doesn't tell you much about the damage to the soft tissue. No, and it doesn't tell you what's on the inside. I mean, a bomb went off on the inside, and our job is to go in there and clean it up. A bomb went off on the inside because of the shockwave from these high-velocity rounds. Correct. Ryland endured 24 surgeries to repair his arm, leg, pelvis, intestines, kidney, bladder, and hip. At some point, it's like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

What do you mean? Well, his organs are now in different pieces, and you have to reconstruct them. The arm was missing soft tissue, skin, muscle, and part of the nerves were damaged. The bowel has to be put back together. Some of the areas of injury has to heal itself. So you can see that he can walk around like a normal child and behave as normal as possible. With the AR-15, it's not just the speed of the bullet,

but also how quickly hundreds of bullets can be fired. The AR-15 is not a fully automatic machine gun. It fires only one round with each pull of the trigger. But in Las Vegas, it sounded like a machine gun. That's an AR. Go, go, go! A special add-on device called a bump stock allowed the killer to pull the trigger rapidly enough to kill 58 and wound 489. Let's go! Come to me, heads up! In other mass killings, the AR-15 was fired without a bump stock,

but even then, it can fire about 60 rounds a minute. Ammunition magazines that hold up to 100 rounds can be changed in about five seconds. I remember hearing the gunshots go off and being so nervous and scared, and all of a sudden I felt something hit me. You'd been shot how many times? Four times. How many surgeries? Three. For my arm, my stomach, and my ribs and lung. In February of 2018, 17-year-old Maddie Wilford was at school,

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. 17 were murdered, 17 wounded. And I just remember thinking to myself, like, there's no way, like, not me, please, not me. I don't want to go yet. Her vital signs were almost non-existent. She looked like all the blood had gone out of her body.

She was in a state of deep shock. Paramedic Laz Ojeda saved Maddie Wilford in part because Broward County EMS recently equipped itself for the battlefield wounds that the AR-15 inflicts. We carry active killer kits in our rescues. Active killer kits? Yes. What is that? That is a kit that has five tourniquets, five decompression needles, five hemostatic agents, five emergency trauma dressings. Dr. Peter Antebi, Broward County Medical Director, told us today's wounds demand a new kind of training. If I take you through one of our ambulances or take you through our protocols, almost everything we do is based on what the military has taught us. We never used to carry tourniquets. We never used to carry chest

seals. These are things that were done in the military for many, many years. When did all of that change? It really changed, I think, after Sandy Hook. After Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 21st graders and six educators were killed with AR-15 rounds. A campaign called Stop the Bleed began nationwide. Good, really tight. And Tevi and doctors including Lillian Liao in San Antonio Make this tight. are training civilians who are truly the first responders. There have been more than 100,000 classes like this in the last seven years.

You have to go the second round to actually stop the bleeding here. Does it hurt? Yeah, her face, you can undo it now. The day after the shooting, my kids are waking up and they're time to go to school. And my son heard, kind of heard what had happened the night before when I was on the scene, and he looked at me with the fear of God that he had to go to school that day. My first instinct was, he needs a bleeding kit. My son today has a bleeding kit on his person.

How old is he? Twelve years old. Here it is. This is it. I've given him this, and I've taught him how to use it. You believe that these mass casualty events have become so common that it is important for everyone in this country to be prepared. Everyone. That's where we are in America today.

That's where we are. Ryland Ward survived the church massacre because firefighter Rusty Duncan used his belt as a tourniquet. Look where you're going. For over a year, Ryland worked often six days a week. Slow but controlled. Learning to sit. All right, we're loosening up all your muscles. Stand and walk again.

Okay. You're very strong. You're very strong. Let me see if this actually goes in the hospital. Yep. Okay. You're very strong. You're very strong. Let me see if this actually goes in the hospital. Yep. Did you meet some new people in the hospital? You were there for a long time. How do you know? They told me. I talked to some of the people who helped you. Like who?

There was Dr. Lau? Dr. Lau, yes. Hello, how are you? I'm good. Yeah, how's your arm? Good. Let me see. He has his strength back, it's remarkable really. But healing from the loss of his stepmother and sisters won't be as quick. How was your day? Maddie Wilford is also moving forward. Like many who suffer physical trauma, her interests have turned to medicine and an internship where she's studying the kind of surgeries that saved her. Not long ago, many communities assumed mass murder would never come to them. Where she hit? Where she hit? Where she hit?

What's wrong with that door right there? Today, all Americans are being asked to prepare for the grievous wounds Oh my God! of high-velocity rounds. Turn it off! Turn it off! Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling.

History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The cattle drive is an enduring symbol of the American West. The image of tough cowboys pushing huge herds of cows across the open range is stamped on our imaginations.

But by the 21st century, with western states growing and changing fast, most horseback cattle drives have been run off the range by suburban sprawl, government regulation, lower beef consumption, and the return of protected predators. But there's a group of stubborn men and women in Wyoming who every spring push thousands of cows along the same 70-mile route their ancestors pioneered 125 years ago. As we first reported last fall, this throwback to the Old West is called the Green River Drift,

and it's the longest-running cattle drive left in America. Just after dawn one Saturday in June of 2021, I'm trying to help Wyoming rancher Albert Summers and his team move hundreds of cows. Most of them mothers with new calves in a cloud of dust toward high green pastures where they'll graze all summer. And if you feel inclined, Bill, you can whistle, you can yell. I can do anything.

This is like cowboys therapy. You get to voice everything out. Come on, Indy. I do the best I can. Come on, cows. Move, cows. But it's not quite as good as little Shad Swain, the son of Albert's ranching partner, Ty. Shad is five years old?

He is. Shad, if you can do this, I can do this, okay? Shad got to do it with a sour apple lollipop in his mouth. All of us, with the help of some fearless herding dogs, move cattle over hills, across creeks, through shimmering groves of aspen, along what cowboys call driveways, and across highways north toward those distant mountains. How long does it take you to get them to the summer feeding area? So it takes about 13 days from when we start to when we get up there, where we want to be.

We travel up to about 60 to 70 miles. Albert Summers is one of 11 ranchers who work together to drive more than 7,000 head of cattle on the Green River Drift. Those 11 ranches all lie in Wyoming's Green River Valley, south of Jackson Hole. Here, the Wyoming Range is to the west, the Wind River Range is to the east. The valley between is part bone-dry high desert and verdant river drainage where Native Americans once hunted buffalo. Today, the Green River runs through Albert Summers' ranch. And your family's been doing this how long?

My family's been doing this since about 1903. Albert's neighbor, Jeannie Lockwood's family, has been at it even longer. This was my granddad's ranch. He homesteaded this in 1889. Her ranch is about 20 miles south of Albert Summers Place. We joined her on horseback before dawn the day she started moving her cattle north. There's that sign. It's going to peak up over the hill. Along the same path, her family has trekked for 125 years. So you're going to be doing this for the next two weeks? Yes.

Getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning? Or 3 or 2.30. Or 2.30. Yeah. Those early starts barely compare to what old-timers endured when cowboys stayed out under the stars all night and the sun all day until they got the herd to high pastures. Well, I think we can go home. What do you think?

Today, they go home after each day's drive. The next morning, they trailer their horses back to where they'd left the cattle, round up those that have strayed, and move them out again before dawn. The old chuck wagon? It's been replaced by a cooler and the tailgate of a pickup truck. But compared to what your grandfather did, this is easy. Yeah, we have it easy. Only ranchers would call this easy. Driving cattle is hot, dusty, demanding, and they'll be lucky to make a $50 profit per cow when they finally send them to market. Jeannie's daughter, Haley, and son-in-law, France, help wrangle the herd.

Her husband, Milford, shuttles the horse trailers. They all left regular jobs and moved back to the ranch several years ago after Jeannie's brother, who had been running the place, died in an accident. It takes all of us to do it, it seems like. Jeannie was a librarian. So what is it about this place that makes you give up regular, normal American jobs and come back here to do this really hard work? Well, first of all, it was home to me. And it was hard work for my parents. And I know it was hard work for my grandparents.

And I just couldn't see letting it go. Labor of love, it's called. Where's the emphasis, labor or love? Love. Love might sustain the Green River Drift, but it was born in crisis. The winter of 1889-90 is really what started the drift. Clint Gilchrist is an historian who grew up in this valley and has written about that harsh winter.

And it killed off the vast majority of the cattle herds that were here because they weren't prepared for a bad winter. Nobody had prepared for a bad winter. White settlers were not prepared. Native tribes, which the U.S. government drove off the land to make room for homesteaders, knew that winters in the Green River Valley could be merciless. The Shoshone Indians and the Crow Indians were one of the

dominant tribes in these areas, and they didn't winter here. They wintered over on the other side of the mountains where it was, you know, less elevation. After that brutal winter, ranchers realized they had to move their cattle out of the valley long enough to grow a crop of hay. So while the cattle are up in the uplands, you're able to grow hay. Right. And that feeds them all winter long. Right. And so that was the genesis of what we call the drift. The drift, Albert Summers says, because when the first fall frost chills the mountains, the cows instinctively head for home.

Just on their own, turn around and start coming back. Turn around and start. We open gates. Drift back. And they drift back. In the spring, we drive them. In the fall, they drift. When the drift began 125 years ago, there were no regulations, no subdivisions, just wide open range. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! Now, ranchers drive their cattle to U.S. Forest Service land, the largest grazing allotment in the country. 127,000 acres of the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Last summer, they paid the federal government $1.35 a month for every cow and her calf.

Murdoch! Summers! Price! Murdoch! How much each rancher will owe is tallied at a place called the counting gate. Summers! Summers! place called the counting gate. It's Jamie Burgess's job to read brands or ear tags and call out which cows belong to which ranch.

While his wife Rita adds up the totals. When the cows finally reach mountain pastures, they're handed off to range riders. Bring them. Like Brittany Heseltine, whose job is to watch over them all summer. And you're up here by yourself? Yes. Just me, my horses, my three dogs, and a cat. How long altogether? It'll be about five months.

Every day for those five months, Brittany is out at dawn to check on the 600 or so cattle in her care. First thing in the morning, you come out on a rise, and especially in the fall, the elk are bugling and just talking to each other. Brittany earned her degree in veterinary science in 2019. This was her third summer as a range rider. It's really hard work. What's the attraction? What's the draw? Something about it speaks to my soul. I really can't describe what.

But all winter long, I'm like, oh, a couple months more, a couple months more, and then I'll be up at home. Her home for the summer was a small trailer in an isolated camp, off the grid, no running water, no cell service. At the start of last summer, four of the five drift range riders were women. You told us that you thought women made the best range riders. Why would that be? They're hard workers. And I can't say that, you know, the men aren't good. But the women don't go to town as much as some of the men kind of have a tendency to.

Visit the tavern? Yeah, they'll go on the other side of the mountain. So what happened to the cowboys? I don't know. Maybe they're just not cut out for it. There's beauty up here and danger too. Since listed as endangered species, wolf and grizzly bear populations have exploded in these mountains. Brittany keeps track of the calves they kill. If it was actually killed by a predator, then there will be bruising on the hide on the inside, and it's very obvious.

You know, like last year, we lost 24 calves. Didn't come home. Now we lose between 10 and 15 percent of our calves. It sounds like a lot. It's a lot. It would break us if it weren't for a compensation program by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. So you get paid for every animal you lose? We do.

Predators aren't the only threat to these ranchers. A growing chorus of critics argue cattle shouldn't graze on public lands at all. Consumption of beef is declining, and so is the number of ranches on the drift. There were more than 20 in the early 1990s. Today, just 11. The Green River Drift is so iconic that the cattle drive has earned a spot

on the National Register of Historic Places. These remaining ranchers are determined to see that it's not just relegated to history books. So what does it mean to you to be doing what your father and your grandfather did on the same land? That's hard to talk about. It means a lot. It means a lot. It means a lot. Albert Summers has no children, so to preserve this land and its tradition, he's set up what's called a conservation easement. Preservationists have paid him to agree that his ranch will never be developed or subdivided,

and to allow the public to use the land for recreation. That agreement will also apply to his partner, Ty Swain, as he takes over, and to his son, Shad, when and if he picks up the reins. So with the conservation easement, this land will not change. It will stay the same. It will stay the same. Well, no land stays the same, but this land will not be developed, and I will go to my grave peacefully with that knowledge, but just not tomorrow. Many traditions have left their mark on this land.

Native Americans were forced to give way to fur traders, pioneers, and homesteaders. Today, it's the cowboy way of life that is fighting to hold on. It's tied every year. I mean, we're down to the last dime at the end of the year. It sounds like you're not in it for the money. No, sir. No, we're not. You know, and if somebody says, you know, you're a rich rancher, only rich in the fact that we get to do what we do and we live where we live.

And we get to see the sun come up over those mountains. That's the rich part of this job. It's not the money. Jeannie Lockwood and her family are driving their cattle on the drift again this summer. So is Albert Summers, though after 31 years in charge of the drive, he's handed that responsibility off to someone else. And Brittany Hazeltine, the young woman we met up in the high country? She's also back in the saddle this summer. And this year, she was put in charge of hiring all the other range riders. When workers broke ground on an underground parking lot in the heart of Rome 15 years ago,

they had no idea what their backhoes were about to unearth. The site turned out to be what Italian archaeologists believe was once the pleasure gardens of the Roman emperor Caligula, where some 2,000 years ago all sorts of lavish parties, royal intrigue, and debauched behavior likely took place. Caligula became the third emperor of Rome in 37 AD, and he reigned for barely four years. He's been portrayed in history as one of the most deranged and despicable Roman emperors ever to rule, but as we first reported last fall, scholars have been re-examining Caligula's story for years to see if history has it right. Could we discover some new fragments of truth in Caligula's gardens? We were more than happy to go to Rome to find out. The temples and palaces of ancient Rome may have crumbled long ago, but the legend of one of its oddest emperors lives on.

Down on your knees, all of you! Bend your heads! I shall sever each one at the neck! What most people know about Caligula comes from this iconic BBC series, I, Claudius, which was based on two historical novels by Robert Graves. In the show, Caligula turns his palace into a brothel, makes his horse a high-ranking senator, and declares himself a living god.

For now, you may address me as youse. It's a torrid tale of incest, infanticide... Don't go in there. ...and imperial madness. Help me! But how much of that portrayal is real? Did Caligula impregnate his sister and then eat her baby? Caligula did not impregnate his sister and eat her baby.

Did Caligula make a horse a high-ranking senator or consul? No, no, of course he didn't. Did he turn his palace into a brothel? No. So where did all these ideas come from? Well, largely from Robert Graves. You know, his Ainclaudius novels are awesome. But he wasn't an academic. He was a writer.

Andrew Wallace Hadrill is an academic, a professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, and he's closely studied the few written accounts that survive from Caligula's time. I grew up watching I, Claudius. I love the book. I love the old TV series. You're telling me a lot of that just wasn't true. No. What I'm not denying is they had sex in the palace. Of course they had sex. Pretty spectacularly, of is they had sex in the palace. Of course they had sex. Pretty spectacularly, of course they had sex. Spectacularly?

But Wallace Hadrill does believe Caligula could be very impulsive and brutal, and he doesn't rule out the possibility that he may have had a severe physical or mental disorder. I think there's a serious danger that Caligula was pathological, that he actually didn't care about the hurt he caused. Wallace Hadrill says Robert Graves' novels were largely based on stories published around 121 A.D., 80 years after Caligula's death, by Suetonius, a well-known biographer and advisor to later emperors. But Suetonius often had to rely on second-hand stories and gossip from members of the imperial court. These members of the court, it's like staffers in the White House.

It's like all those leaky people in Buckingham Palace. What are these stories worth? How can you pin them down? Archaeology can help pin down the past, but in a city full of amazing ruins, not much directly linked to Caligula had been discovered. That is, until 2006, when a pension fund for Italian doctors called EnPAM started digging an underground parking garage for its new office building in the Esquilino neighborhood of Rome. In ancient times, this was one of a number of tranquil garden estates for its new office building in the Esquilino neighborhood of Rome.

In ancient times, this was one of a number of tranquil garden estates located about ten minutes by carriage from the bustling Roman Forum. These recreations from Rome's superintendent of antiquities give some sense of the sprawling grounds and buildings enjoyed by emperors and their guests for about four centuries. It took archaeologists nine years to carefully recover more than a million pieces of the past, while an underground parking garage and modern building was built around them. Everything found was taken to a large warehouse, where it was closely analyzed, logged into a database, and when possible, painstakingly restored.

The office buildings completed now in Rome's newest archaeological site, the Nymphaeum Museum, opened in the basement, preserving some of the excavation and suggesting what a lush and lavish place this once was. It contains thousands of items from the 2nd century B.C. through the 5th century A.D., like this drinking glass that somehow survived largely intact for 1,900 years. Morella Sir Lorenzi, director of excavations for the Italian Ministry of Culture, took us to a small staircase normally closed to the public and brought us to the level of the ground during Caligula's time.

And so back then, in the 1st century, 2,000 years ago, this was outside. It was clearly a garden because we found in the layers traces of the roots of the plants. And in this part here, the staircase connected the various levels of the garden. Is it possible to walk on it? Assolutamente sì. Excellent. the various levels of the garden. Is it possible to walk on it? Absolutely, yes. Excellent. This is what Sir Lorenzi's team believes the area looked like during Caligula's reign.

We ended up talking for a long time on the garden steps. Is it right to sit down? Yes, okay. There was something about touching those old slabs of marble that made ancient history feel very real. I can't believe that we are sitting on the steps that Caligula may have walked on. It's amazing. She told us the water pipe by our feet was installed by Caligula's successor,

his uncle Claudius. His name is stamped on the pipe. One of the most remarkable things about Caligula is that he lived to become emperor at all. The emperor before him, his adoptive grandfather Tiberius, was suspected of killing Caligula's father, mother, and two brothers. And when Caligula turned 19, he was summoned to live with Tiberius at his palace on the island of Capri. It sits high on a cliff, and it it said Tiberius would have people who crossed

him tossed onto the rocks below. Through some combination of flattery and deceit, Caligula managed to survive here for six years with the man who may have killed much of his family. He became Tiberius's successor in 37 AD. He was just 24 years old and in charge of an empire. He was in a very, very difficult position. I like the saying of Tiberius, who says, being emperor is like having to hold a wolf by the ears. There's this sort of savage beast that can turn on you any moment. What is so insecure about it? Was it the system itself? You've got this enormous concentration of power and resource, wealth, concentrated on the palace in Rome. And everyone wants in on it. Are they prepared to do anything to

seize this power? Back then, the Roman Empire dominated the Mediterranean world, and items found in the gardens give some sense of the riches that flowed towards Rome. Rare and intricately carved marble from the far reaches of the empire decorated the walls of the buildings. Glass recovered at the site appears to have been used in very early windows, and large amounts of oysters appear to have been served at meals. Morellis Lorenzi says her team recovered the bones of wild animals that would have been brought here from faraway lands. She showed us the leg of an ostrich, the foot of a lion,

and the tooth of a bear. It's evident that wild animals were here for the entertainment of the emperor. Games were carried out here with gladiators, we can imagine, and battles with ferocious beasts. When he became emperor, Caligula started improving Rome's infrastructure. He began work on new aqueducts. He also cut taxes. Sir Lorenzi says this coin found in the gardens was minted around 39 AD to remind Romans that Caligula got rid of a sales tax. 2,000 years ago, politicians were just like politicians today. If they cut taxes, they wanted everybody to know about it. That's exactly right.

The coins are a form of imperial propaganda. But something changed as the years progressed. Suetonius says Caligula wanted to be treated as a god and connected his palace in the Roman Forum to a major temple. That's the Temple of Castor and Paul. Exactly, exactly. And this column has been standing there for more than 2,000 years. They have been created in year six.

Paolo Carafa, professor of archaeology at Sapienza University of Rome, has been studying the Roman Forum area for more than 35 years. So, according to Suetonius, Caligula extended his house up to that temple. Exactly. Have you found evidence of that? Behind that temple, recent excavations have identified fragments of a large house,

a luxury house. He can't say for sure it was Caligula's house, but he says it comes from that time period. And only an emperor like Caligula would have dared do something so shocking. He wanted the temple to be the entrance to his own house. Which is quite unusual. One of the things I, Claudia, seems to have gotten right, Wallace Hadrill told us, was Caligula's capacity for both physical and mental cruelty. There's no doubt that Caligula's brutal, but Suetonius says he's not only brutal,

he thinks it's amusing. He takes pleasure in it. Perhaps the most telling account comes from a contemporary of Caligula's, the philosopher Seneca, who describes how Caligula invited a father to a festive dinner on the day he'd executed the man's son. And at the dinner, he insists that the father should have a jolly time. He plies him with wine and food. He even plies him with perfume and a garland. On the very day, his son. On the very day. And Seneca says, people asked, how on earth could he endure to do it? And the answer is, he had a second son. And I think that anecdote just evokes the atmosphere of terror of the court of Caligula.

As iClaudia showed, the end came in 41 AD, when Caligula was stabbed to death by members of his own imperial guard. He's killed by his own guardsmen, but then they haven't got a candidate. They don't have somebody waiting to take over. They have no one in the wings, except poor old Claudius. Does that argue the point that he had to have been really awful if they were so motivated to just kill him?

Yeah, yeah. It's an assassination born of anger, humiliation, disgust. We can't take this anymore. Long after the assassination itself, some historians believe Caligula's enemies assassinated his memory as well. There's a number of contemporary scholars who have argued that Caligula's critics distorted his memory, that they have falsely made him out to be far worse than he was. Of course, it's like entering a hall of mirrors, and you know some of them are concave and some are convex, and there are no flat mirrors. But isn't that terrifying that what we think we know about history

is so dependent on rumors or... I think it's an enormous mistake to look at the past as a series of solid rocks that are, you know, that was definitely there and that was definitely... It's a great morass, a flowing sea. I think that ancient history is very good for people because it's got so much uncertainty in it. But why is it good that there's a lot of misinformation? It's good because the world we live in is full of misinformation, as we have learned spectacularly in recent years. You know, people invent truths. You have to be skeptical. As we prepare to leave the Nymphaeum Museum,

we couldn't help thinking about how time tramples even the mightiest of empires, turning lavish gardens into underground parking lots. What do you think Caligula would think of what's happened to his gardens? I think he'd be in total disagreement. And I don't think he'd be very happy that we're sitting on his staircase. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.