Camp Gagnon - CALIGULA: The Insane True Story of Rome's Forgotten Butcher

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Today, we take a closer look at King Caligula. We’ll talk about how Caligula obtained power, Theatrics of Caligula, The Wealth of Caligula, Why Caligula Went Crazy, and other interesting topics... Welcome to HISTORY CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsor: Mars MenFor a limited time, our listeners get 60% off FOR LIFE AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men when you use code 'CAMP' at https://mengotomars.com👕🧢 Use CHRISTMASCAMP at checkout for 17% off when you shop at https://camp-rd.com/collections/chris...🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Christos YAPPIN1:38 Caligula’s Childhood6:05 Death of Tiberius10:45 Caligula Terrorizes Rome15:26 Theatrics of Caligula17:16 The Wealth of Caligula20:10 Caligula’s God Like Ceremonies23:00 Caligula Leaves For Alexandria26:45 The People Turn on Caligula28:14 The Death of Caligula36:13 Why Tiberius Took Caligula In39:18 Why Caligula Went Crazy#history #podcast #war #battle #mystery #film #camping

From the golden boy to a living nightmare, how did Rome's most adored heir become its most feared ruler? This is a story of Caligula. The emperor who didn't just claim to be a god, he demanded it. He spoke to Jupiter like an equal. He turned Rome's Senate into a stage for mockery. He built floating bridges across the sea so that he could ride over them dressed as a deity, and he nearly ignited a holy war by ordering his statue into the heart of Jerusalem's most sacred temple. This isn't just a story of madness.

It's about power unchecked, push. too far and what happens when a man starts to believe that he is a god. And what makes this story so terrifying, Caligula wasn't some random madman. He had it all. Youth, charm, the love of Rome, and watching his fall isn't just a sad, cautionary tale. It's revealing about us, every human being, and how we actually deal with unchecked power. So, if you want to know what absolute power does to the mind, how trauma can twist a ruler, and how empires crumble when no one has the courage to stand up, Well, this is the episode for you. So, sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to History Camp. Oh, boy, do we got a heater for you today.

All right, my name is Mark Gaggonaut. Thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week I explore the most interesting, fascinating, and controversial stories throughout all history, forever, from all time, all the way to the very beginning of our universe. Yes, we go through all the historical events, all the most interesting historical people, the rulers, the tyrants, and everything in between. lot of stuff that's been happening on this planet. Millions of years, probably. And I'm in the interest of getting to the bottom of all of it. I'm trying to figure out everything and understand everything that's ever happened. And I can't do it alone. Obviously, I need you, the people at home, the viewers, and the viewers like you that support the show and keep the fire burning.

Appreciate that. Also, I got my friend Christos. Okay, if you don't know Christos, he's 6'5, long head of hair, the Greek freak is what we call. Don't laugh, okay? I'm trying to, I'm trying to big up my dog. All right? Crestos is a legend in the game. All right, he's got a herm of women at all times, and he took a second from just absolutely dog and everyone Carl Lee Sposwick to be here today. Crestos, how are you?

History Kim commenters have hurt me greatly, so I won't be speaking this. Enough, enough, enough. All right, look, we probably need to take out the dog and part because children watch this show. So can we blurp it? Absolutely. All right, we're going to blurp it.

We'll just figure out a way to come back in. Yes. You guys decide the comments. Is David allowed to have a camera or not? He's also not Roman. He is from Ecuador. All right. Now, before we jump into Caligua, okay?

This is the moment we've all been waiting for. I do want to point out a few things. Like with most history and any type of journalism on ancient history, it's difficult to get a real read. Okay. Most of what we know about Caligula comes from a couple historians. Guys like Suetonius and Cassius Dio. Now, these are men that wrote decades later after Caligula had died, and they had their own

political agendas. So their accounts are, you know, little. laced with bias and drama almost inevitably, and they are going to be, you know, creating things and packaging them for the audience that will read them later. And like with most rulers, you know, and most tyrants, if someone's unpopular, people are going to exaggerate the stories, you know, get some more clicks. Who would do that, right? But look, they still capture something that's important, right? They kind of show why Rome's empire nearly collapsed, what people saw in that time. Even if it's exaggerated, we can get an idea of the type of person he was and

why he was framed in this way. And really what it reveals about power. and trauma and really the flaws that all leaders today have. So 2,000 years later, we're still trying to understand who this guy was and how does someone with everything, literally everything going for him, try to destroy everything that his ancestors and himself have built. So that's really the question. How did this mighty Roman Empire watch its emperor go crazy and nobody said anything? Well, let's tell that story. All right. The rise and the fall of Caligula and why it matters for understanding politics today. So where do we start? Let's go all the way back, right, to David's favorite topic. A seven-year-old boy, he is standing next to his father's

funeral pyre. Basically, like literally how they would bury people, they would cremate them, and they watch the flames go up, and it devourses the man that he worshipped, his own father. And around him, there's whispers of people being like, oh, he didn't die under natural causes. This is not a mistake. No, he was poisoned. And for young Caligula, the loss cuts deeper than anything you can imagine, right? You see your own father die. And not only that, people are saying that he was murdered. So his childhood, as you can imagine, is forged in the fire. Okay. And this is on the Germanic frontier where soldiers nicknamed him Little Boot for his little miniature uniform. Well, you know, all the other imperial children and, you know, the noble kids played in like the marble palaces and had very cushy lives. Caligula learned. how to do war. Like that was his school. He was literally just around these legions who treated him like their little mascot. He was just kind of like, you know, paraded around on their shoulders and they were like,

you're like our little war buddy. And his mother, Agrippina, refused the soft life of Robin nobility. So following her husband Germanicus, she goes to the edge of this empire. But back in Rome, his family was caught in a death spiral of imperial politics. You got to understand. his father Germanicus was beloved. He was so beloved that he became a threat to the emperor Tiberius, which fun fact, the emperor that was in charge of Rome when Jesus was killed.

I thought it was Pontchus Pilate was the senator of Judea under the Roman emperor Tiberius. Back to the story. So his father, Germanicus was loved, but his father wasn't, you know, the emperor, his father wasn't necessarily even like the highest ranking noble. He was just a beloved statesman. and when he suddenly died in 19 AD, ancient sources at the time, again, conspiracy land, all right, they say that he was poisoned. Caligula was then fatherless at the age of seven. Now, his mother's accusations against Tiberius kind of sealed their fate.

Over the next decade, Caligula watched his family just get destroyed. His mother was exiled to starve on a barren island. His brothers were in prison. One of them was murdered. The other one was basically driven insane over this trauma and then the whole state coming out on them. So his family is basically just like, yo, you killed our dad, husband, brother, whatever, and they're like, nah, we didn't. And on top of that, we're going to kill all you guys and get you out of here

because you guys are stirring up trouble for the emperor. So by age 20, Caligula was like the only young man that survived this purge of his family. So he learned a brutal lesson very early that mercy is weakness and trust was fatal. You got to understand. his father, Germanicus, trusted the state that he trusted the justice system. He trusted everyone in Rome, and he got him killed. Then came a twist that would shape everything. Tiberius summoned the young man to live with him on Capri. So for six years, Caligula played a courtier. He was kind of hiding his rage beneath the mask. And ancient sources even hint that then his cruelty and his obsession with performance and proving people wrong was actually, you know, beginning to come up. but it was still hidden behind, you know, sort of this facade. So when Tiberius dies in 37 AD, the mask comes off. And Rome sees underneath who this guy, Caligula, actually is.

So by March 37 AD, Emperor Tiberius is dead. The news goes across Rome, and everyone's talking about it. Everyone's excited because they hate Tiberius. They love Germanicus. And so, after 23 years under this paranoid, bitter ruler, Rome believed salvation had finally arrived in the form of a young man with the legendary name in this heroic bloodline, the son of Germanicus.

Tiberius had named joint heirs, which was strange for the time, but he appointed Caligula, this beloved child of this great heroic man and then his teenage grandson, Tiberius Gamalus. Now, that arrangement lasted exactly as long as it took Caligula to come back from the outskirts of the empire and go back to Rome. Caligula convinced the Senate to throw out the will

and yeah, just burn it. Forget that it ever happened. And he argued that the old emperor must have been out of his mind to suggest handing power to this little teenage brat that doesn't know anything, probably with low tea.

So with one... It's probably true. The kid is probably a sugar addict. Low tea, dude. So with one smooth maneuver, okay, this, you know, he gets the Senate kind of fired up. And he eliminated his only rival

basically bloodlessly and just by convincing a couple old Senate. So in the early days when, you know, Caligula takes over, everything's going great. He starts handing out like these generous bonuses to the guards and to the legions and all the soldiers. He welcomed back a bunch of political exiles and gave them their property back. And most remarkably, he gave every Roman citizen a bunch of money. Literally, started just handing out 400 cestrises to everyone, about $1,000 in today's money.

And it cost the state nearly a billion dollars to actually fund all the citizens. So the mood in Rome is electric. People are fired up. Within three months, Romans had sacrificed over 160,000 animals celebrating this new emperor. Caligula is the man. Big C. In the building. Then in Alexandria, the philosopher Philo described how all the world was filled with expectation and prayers for his prosperity. Caligula showed like, oh, this guy's a genius. He knows how to give people on his side. He has the right name, comes from the right family. he, you know, kind of handled Tiberius' memory in an interesting way. Instead of trashing the man who literally probably killed his dad, destroyed his entire family, put Rome into the mud, he gave Tiberius his big funeral and actually declared him divine. He was like, Tiberius is a great man and I'm just honored to, you know, carry on the, you know, the throne. I'm, you know, just doing my best. And the Senate approved. And at the same time, Caligula made a public show of honoring his own murdered family. He personally sailed to the islands where his mother and brother had died. He gathered their ashes.

and brought them back to Rome for a proper funeral. And these weren't just like, you know, sentimental gestures about how emotional he was that his family had died. They're calculated moves. Caligula's positioning himself both as a good son, right, to his mom and a good brother to his brother and just a real family man,

but also a traditional Roman by honoring the past, but still, you know, offering hope for what the future of the empire had. So for a moment, it seemed like Rome found the perfect ruler, right? They'd gone through so much with all these bad emperors, but finally they got this young guy, He's beloved by the people. He's generous to the military. He's handing out cash to everybody. He's politically, you know, savvy. He's balancing the old with the new. But things didn't stay this way for long. But for a brief time, it was working. Trade was bustling. People were putting money into Rome. You know, everyone's in a great mood. Literally the treasury built up by Tiberius's years of penny pinching are actually overflowing with wealth. And according to Philo, the empire under Caligula's early rule had universal peace and prosperity. It was the best that Rome had been done, that had been doing in literal decades, but underneath this beautiful golden surface cracks a strong show. And the same trauma that helped Caligula survive in Tiberius' shadow, being in the courts,

having his whole family be destroyed and not showing anything. The boy who watched his dad literally get murdered, allegedly, poisoned. I don't want to get sued by the state of Tiberius, allegedly. Now, with unlimited power in his hands, the truth is coming out. And the wounds that he had been hiding are now starting to tear open. The first breakdown in Caligula's reign comes just seven months in, all right, October and 37 AD. Caligula gets sick, like really sick. And we still don't know exactly what happened. There's still a lot of historical debate over what it was. Maybe it was like a fever that affected his brain or some epilepsy or a stroke. No one really knows, but the effect is unmistakable. So Tonyus, one of the historians I talked about earlier, he wrote that it revealed

not sickness of the body but corruption of the mind, transforming Caligula from, you know, this reasonable man into a tyrant. And the first sign of what was coming, remember Tiberius Gamalus, the co-air, the grandson that Caligula just kind of pushed out on day one? Well, he's about to become his first victim. He accused the boy of treason in orders Gamalus to commit sht. That's the sentence. Hey, put a gun in your mouth.

That's what he says off rip. I don't know if we can even say that, but that's what he said. And the terrified teenagers now forced to commit under military supervision. Brutal. And this wasn't just about eliminating a rival, right? He's starting to get paranoid. He's starting to see threats everywhere.

Because again, his dad was, you know, beloved. He was a hero amongst the Roman people and gets killed by the emperor. So once that switch kind of flips in his brain, things start to get weird. Caligula starts showing up, like to public events, dressing up as different gods. He starts demanding people to worship him.

He builds a temple specifically for him, sacred altars sacrifices priest for Caligula to aunt like it's hard to really wrap your head around this guy's like guys I'm a god and you got to worship me as such and it was no longer like this performance piece it was just a complete

like rupture detachment from everything that Roman emperors had carefully balanced since Augustus Caligula wasn't like being pretend like oh I'm like a god or you know I'm from the lineage of it he's like I'm God so his treatment of the Senate started to

reveal a lot more, right? How do you think a God's going to treat like these lowly little statesmen? You know, he'd once shown restraint and respect and, you know, diplomacy. Now he's just straight up humiliating people. He's forcing them to run alongside his chariot, like servants, forcing them to wait on him at like feasts as if like they're like waiters and shit. He even made some of them fight in the arena for his amusement. Like this is centers. These are not like other people. He's just paying to do it. It's like these are people that have high ranking status within the Roman society. But if you really want to see how far he goes, around December, his sister, Drusilla, and Caligula, you know, coroner, sources is incredibly close to her. Maybe too close, but I'll let

you speculate on what that means. His reaction to her death is intense, maybe disordinent, okay? His grief turns into something surreal. He says, I'm a God. Also, my sister that just died, she's a goddess. And then he creates a cult in her honor and says, all right, you people now worship my sister that just passed away. Like, this is beyond mourning. I don't know what stage of grief this is, but this is an indicator that someone is losing grip on reality. So now we're barely eight months in,

and this guy that everyone loved for a little bit is gone. And in his place is now this guy who's like, I'm a god, my sister's a god, and is starting to use fear and almost, you know, creating like this police state to actually, you know, change the way that people are seeing him. And now everywhere he looks,

he's just seeing enemies. He's just like, I'm surrounded by ops, okay? Now, this treasury, remember, it was overflowing because Tiberius was, you know, so cheap with stuff. Well, it's starting to drain, and they're losing money. All the goodwill that he inherited from the people and the, you know, vast wealth that the Roman Empire collected, it's all going away. And yet, for all that chaos, Caligula still knew how to protect himself. So he moved really quickly against threats. So he saw this guy, you know, Camelis, the grandson, he saw him as an issue and said, you know what?

We're going to get rid of him and we're going to avoid any type of revolt. He's treasonous. We're getting him out of here. Humiliates the Senate, but not enough to make them really try to, like, form a violent coup, but just enough to keep everyone, you know, just checking everyone, kind of little broin, the whole squad. So he's becoming a monster, but he's moving with some strategy for now. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I have a story to tell you. Fun fact, after you have a child, your testosterone naturally goes down.

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ruler and like performance art is now completely gone. And the scale of these performances is bizarre. At one point, he built a bridge across the Bay of Naples. And this is a massive body water. And it's not a stone bridge. This is a bridge made of ships. So just imagine. Okay, three miles of vessels of these boats chained together.

And the reason is that he wanted to gallop across in full costume playing this conquering hero. And these are not just displays. They are ways for the Roman public to observe him and to see him as a God. He wanted to basically ride off onto the water, walking on the water like a God would. And he didn't just stop it like playing God. He started to rewrite the rules of society to fit this fantasy. the way he saw himself. One of his craziest moves, he starts chopping off the heads of these divine statues and replacing them with his own. And he's not just asking for worship. He's literally tearing

down the boundary between God and him. Like, imagine someone becomes president and starts chopping off statues of Jesus and is like, put my head on Jesus. I'm God. I'm actually that guy. So the empire is now no longer a, you know, Republic in disguise. It's now just full on theater. and this guy is the star of the show. Now, ancient sources claim that Caligula burned through enormous sums of money. Sotonius mentions 2.7 billion cestrices. This is, like, difficult to really fathom how much money that was at the time. And what's certain is that, you know, regardless of the exact amount of money,

his building projects and the spectacles that he was doing were expensive and absolutely caused a strain on the treasury. And the consequences of, you know, these public works projects are, vast. So in Eastern provinces, his madness almost creates an entire war. He decided to put a statue of himself as Jupiter, the king of all the gods in the Roman

Pantheon, inside the temple of Jerusalem. So just as like a caveat, at this point, the Roman Empire has gone so far as to, you know, control Judea like we talked about before. And he knows that, you know, this place in Jerusalem is a very important place, you know, to the Christians, to the Jews that live there and all the other sort of

polytheistic groups that are kind of in that region. And the holiest site in Judaism is the temple of Jerusalem. So the governor of Syria stalls, because the governor that's controlling the province is like, dude, we can't put you as a God inside the Jewish temple. Like this is going to cause a massive revolt. The people are going to be pissed. And so he's literally waiting and filibustering. He's like, yeah, yeah, we'll build it. We'll build it. Let's do it in a couple months. Let's do it in a couple months and he's pushing it off and just waiting for Caligula to die because he knows that if they put the statue up, the entire region is going to be in revolt. He's going to have a war on his hands. So even diplomatic meetings became this crazy political theater. So when the philosopher of

Philo came from Alexandria with a delegation to, you know, plead for the protection of the Jewish community that was being persecuted at the time, Caligula didn't even listen. He just wandered around his garden, you know, during the whole meeting and was just too busy like admiring his surroundings and, you know, just acting like what he thought a God would do, just kind of like looking at stuff like, huh. And he was doing that instead of actually governing or, you know, talking to anyone. But yet, he still held on to the power. And the reason is because he understood one thing better than anyone,

the Roman mob. He was feeding them. He was entertaining them. He was letting the senators fight each other in arenas for all the people to watch. He was giving them games and feasts and these dramatic shows. And he was just acting like, you know, this star, like this frontman. And these are all tools that kept the people loyal. So there's a quote, actually, even as the Senate ground their teeth and the provinces trembled, the people stayed loyal.

This is what people talk when they say, like, bread and circuses, you know, like, you just give the people bread and a little show, and they'll just kind of, they won't be too mad about the corruption and the insane, you know, madness that the leader has. But beneath all these costumes and the circuses and everything like that, there is a calculation. He knew how to play the part of emperor well enough to survive. So while he was, you know, God, the cracks are spreading and the madness is fully taking over. So now by 39 AD, his palace is just a temple. His daily routine is like a ritual. According to Stonius, he was alleged to have regular conversations with Jupiter, the king of the gods, talking to Jupiter as equals. And so the guards are reporting that he's having like these long conversations late at night.

And when they look in the room, there's no one there. He's talking to God, to Jupiter. And he's just like, yeah, dude, you're my homie. you're like, we've got to figure out this whole Rome thing together. It's just you and me, Bonny and Clyde. And now he's just fully living in this, like, delusional world where he thinks that he's talking to God. Rome had always been careful with divinity, okay? They had seen what happens when people, you know, think that they're gods and rule with power. So, you know, emperors would get deified, but typically after they died. And even then with some type of restraint. But Caligula just

completely shattered this. He said, no, no, I'm a god now and I want temples and priests. And I want everyone to offer sacrifices in my name, all that kind of stuff. His surviving sisters, actually, Julia, La Villa, and Agrippina got actually swept up into this fantasy. He brought them to ceremonies where they were worshipped as divine figures alongside him. And there was even rumors of, like, you know, some incest stuff. And we don't necessarily know the full truth. But what's clear is that Caligula was creating a royal family, not bound by, you know, the laws of Rome, but by whatever divine laws he wanted. And the senators were just humiliate. in these endless rituals and they would mouth words with, you know, like almost prayers to him with

like this fake emotion and their faces were kind of just, you know, silent. They would look at the ground during these, you know, Senate meetings. And Caligula loved it. He extended ceremonies just to watch Rome's old aristocracy, like squirm and sweat under his gaze. But it gets even worse because at one point, a senator's son actually criticized one of Caligula's, you know, very ostentatious performances and Caligula didn't take kindly to this type of criticism so what does he do he has the kid tortured to death in front of his own father and Caligula praises him for his restraint it was literally just a test it was a show of loyalty like yo I'm gonna kill your own son and you're not going to do shit about it it's crazy and the empire's finances I'm glad you asked they're draining okay the funds are going to

these temples and you know roads and aqueducts and all that stuff are falling apart no money is actually going to infrastructure tax collectors are now more ruthless because the treasury is running dry, so they're actually trying to get more money out of the people. And Caligula is just spending it like a god, you know? So the motto that sums up his reign says, let them hate me so long as they fear me. That is a phrase from the poet Asseus that Caligula allegedly said about himself. And these aren't the words necessarily of like an actual, you know, psychotic person. Through the words of someone that understands power so deeply that he chooses to wield that power like a weapon. So by 40 AD, Caligula's reign was about to go completely

off the rails. He'd blown through all the money. The provinces are pissed. They're getting taxed an insane rate and they're not getting anything for it. So what do they do? He manages to piss off literally everyone and people are done. The Senate is done. The military's fed up. They're not getting paid anymore. The average person is like, this is getting a little crazy. And what's wild is that the first real threat didn't come from a foreign enemy. It came from his own family. So his uncle, Claudius. This was sort of like a docile, stuttering scholar that everyone counted. It was just like, yeah, it's like a nerd. He quietly was becoming interested and people were very desperate and they started to see him as someone that could potentially help. He wasn't really plotting anything, but when your

empire is falling apart, even the idea of someone's sane starts, you know, looking pretty appealing to these desperate senators and these commanders. Claudius himself wasn't dangerous, but he represented hope. People saw him. They were like, this guy comes from the same family. He's noble himself. Maybe, just maybe, Claudius can take over. And so, that's one issue for Caligula to, you know, keep in mind. And then you have the Praetorian Guard. This is Rome's elite bodyguards who are sworn to protect the Emperor, but here's a thing. They're also sworn to protect Rome. And in this moment, those are looking like two different things. You have this Emperor that's almost at odds with Rome. Then you have the Roman people that are getting hurt by the Emperor. So what does the Praetorian Guard do?

especially their commander Cassius Caria. So Caligula had, you know, just a desire to torment this guy for no reason, okay? Now, remember, Cassius Carrier is not some nobody. He's the head of the Praetorian Guard. But for months, every day, the emperor would mock his voice and he would make fun of him, say he wasn't a man. He was just being a dickhead, okay? But this was on purpose because he was trying to grind him down psychologically.

He was trying to make him feel so small. But the issue with the guy like this is you start to, you know, make people want to snap. But then came what might be the final straw for Rome's elite. Caligula announces something that will make everyone lose their minds. He plans to abandon Rome. Yes. Caligula says, you know what? This town sucks. We're moving the entire imperial capital to Alexandria. Literally, Alexandria in Egypt, where he claimed people actually understood divinity and they would worship him properly. And, you know, they actually know what it means to be ruled by a god. So to the Rome's ruling class, this wasn't just another crazy thing.

This is like an actual threat, okay? Alexandria meant that they'd lose everything. Their power, the influence, the entire world. The Egyptian priests would now take over the role of the Roman senators. And for the ruling class, that was not an option. And with all of this, you know, the money is absolutely drying up. He's selling off everything. He's starting to sell furniture and family heirlooms and gladiators.

At one auction, a senator dozed off and Caligula decided that every head nod that the senator would do was a bit. And the poor guy woke up and realized that he bought 13 gladiators on accident. Now, that might just be a story, but that goes in the history book for the kind of guy that Caligula was. Now, the military situation is just as crazy, right? Because you have these, like, tough Roman soldiers. And your emperor, your literal emperor drags you to a fake campaign in like Gaul or something. And you're marching with, you know, the legions to the English Channel where he declares victory over Neptune, the Seagot, and he has you collecting sea sheds. shells, the spoils of war for destroying Neptune. Like, the whole thing is just crazy.

These are literal veterans who bled under Augustus, under Tiberius. And now they're doing, like, these role play, like, reenactment things against fake entities just to appease the emperor. So, as you can see, everyone is pissed. By 40 AD, people aren't just talking about, you know, getting rid of him in whispers. They're actually meeting about it, okay? Because you've got to understand. He pissed off everyone.

He pissed off the military. Pissed off his own bodyguard. pissed off the ruling elite, pissed off the other provinces, like the people in Judea that are like, you're not going to put a statue of you in our temple. I mean, that's basically everyone. And then just the average citizen is just like,

oh, we don't have any more money to pay for roads and aqueducts and like we can't do trading and, you know, commerce and people aren't spending money in our empire anymore. All right. So senators who literally hated each other for years and now suddenly like bonding

and they're coming together over this shared enemy. Military officers aren't asking, if the emperor might fall, they're just trying to figure out when. Even people in Caligula's own court, the people that are supposed to be guiding him are starting to back away, unwilling to defend this regime

that they just can't even understand. And Caligula could sense that something was going on. So he doubled his personal bodyguard count, started changing bedrooms every single night so that people didn't know where he was sleeping, and lashed out with these like random, brutal punishments, but he never understood

that the real danger wasn't in the shadows, it was standing right next to him. All those people that he had been mocking, humiliating, ignoring, ridiculing, and his paranoia is now through the roof. And here's the ironic part. It doesn't make him more careful. It just made him more unpredictable. So in this imperial Rome, being unpredictable was way more dangerous than being insane.

In the end, it became suddenly. But not before Caligula gave everyone one final insane display that just absolutely shattered any chance that he could be emperor any longer. By January of 41 AD, the emperor announced this over-the-top festival that was supposed to reveal his divine nature to all of Rome. Everyone would see that he truly is a god.

So, Caligula himself is going to appear as Jupiter, obviously, king of the gods. And he would have, you know, this fake thunder thing that would happen by rolling these bronze balls around with like a lighting effect from torches. And it wasn't just like some entertainment. In Caligula's mind, this was a sacred ceremony.

He's going to be a big public moment. going to cost a lot of money. Everyone has to go, and they're going to see that he truly is a god. For the conspirators, led by the humiliated Praetorian commander, Cassius Correa, remember the guy that he was mocking his voice saying that he was just a loser, along with a bunch of senators and officers, basically everyone, the festival was basically their last shot. Okay, if Caligula actually managed to pull off another big show and wow the crowds, he might actually be able to win back the average dumb guy's loyalty and continue his reign. So, they put together a massive plan, senators, knights, soldiers, people that have literally

battled each other, hated each other, you know, within these political courts, you know how politics get. They were like, all right, let's come together in a rare moment of us versus him. And the Jewish historian Josephus gives us a play by play of how obsessively these guys planned everything, escape routes, back-up plans, contingencies on the contingencies. They weren't letting this go to waste. This was their one shot. So January 24th, 41 AD, Caligula showed up to some theatrical performances that were a part of this festival, you know, a few days leading up to the big moment. And the conspirators had picked this, you know, exact place because it was perfect.

He was in public, but away from most of his bodyguards. So as Caligula walked through this narrow kind of underground passage to get to the theater, Cassius Carria approached him and just was acting like it was routine business, right? Because again, this is the head of the guard. This is the guy that's going to go talk to him, give him a little security briefing. Here's what happened. Cassius Cario, literally the head of the guard, goes up and he says, what is the day's password? Now, this is just a, you know, standard security protocol that they do with all the people going through this passage. It's basically like a military watchword that Roman guards would use to confirm identity, and they had to ask it to everyone.

Collegial answers, Jupiter. The irony is perfect. the man who claimed to be a god was about to die while saying the name of the supreme deity that he claimed to be. Then Caria strikes. And the blow is quick. And then others jump in immediately. And within minutes, the man who had been terrorizing Rome is dead.

His desperate screams for mercy are just drowned out by the festival noise nearby, the very festival that he had planned for himself. And what happened next really showed just how completely alone Caligula was. The Praetorian Guard, they didn't lift a festival. finger to help them. The people that weren't even in on the conspiracy, they saw it happen. They were like, it took long enough. The Senate was literally like, all right, the public's restored. We got rid of the crazy tyrant. We can all go back to not having a god that's walking around on water. This is so much better. But that fantasy lasted only like five minutes before soldiers are literally like, all right,

well, who's going to be the new emperor? We got to find someone. And they go into the palace, and they look behind a curtain. And they see two little feet sticking out under the curtain, two little sandals and they're just kind of wiggling and they go i think he's here they pull back the curtain and they they find claudius this is literally caligula's uncle this is the brother of germanicus this is the last guy from this family that was you know so sort of prosecuted in rome and they're like you know what you're going to be the emperor you're one of the good ones you're from this heroic bloodline we need you so the roman people who once cheered when caligula came to power they heard about his death and they were like, thank God.

And perhaps the most brutal testament to how isolated he was was that according to Sotonius, his only freedmen, like a former slave that was bound by law to serve him, dared to actually touch the emperor's dead body. They quickly cremated this, you know, former emperor God thing because no one else wanted to even be involved. The man who demanded worship from millions died completely abandoned

by every single person who once. worshipped him. So within hours, the empire had a new ruler. Claudius, not chosen by the Senate or the people, but literally like declared emperor by the soldiers who understood Rome couldn't afford to be leaderless even for a day. So the curtain fell on Caligula's insane four-year reign, but Rome's stage was already being set for whatever drama would come next. The fallout from Caligula's reign cut deeper than just his bloody ending. It literally shattered the systems that upheld Rome. It's And here's why it's crazy. Caligula's madness wasn't just his own. It was a failure of everyone that was supposed to check him, right? Of course, in that time, you have emperors that rule with an absolute power.

But you have senators and generals and guards and men who had ruled provinces and led armies and, you know, other people that are supposed to have some type of oversight on what he's doing. And instead of checking him or standing up and stopping it, they just contorted themselves rather than confront the emperor's insanity until finally someone was brave enough to do it. the government literally was just twisting itself in these crazy shapes to actually accommodate this guy's delusion. And Caligula, maybe in some ways, was good because he just tore off the mask that a lot of the previous emperors had carefully maintained. Augustus and Tiberius pretended Rome was still a republic. Caligula demanded worship as a living god and treated the Senate like servants. And after him, the pretense was gone.

Emperors just ruled as dictators. And the Republic of Rome was just a memory. The treasury once overflowing was now, you know, emptied out, basically looted by Caligula himself and forced all the future rulers to squeeze the province and every surrounding province for every coin that they had. What's up, people? We're going to take a break because we got new merch. That's right. It is the holiday season and the good folks over at Camp R&D have been cooking up in the lab. We got the Christmas sweaters with the aliens.

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You can get all the tickets at Mark Yagnon live and I'll see you guys there. Let's get back to the show. So the effects of this tyranny lasted long after Caligula's death. And the biggest lesson here, I mean, that I think is probably important for everyone to think about

is when you have this absolute power, Reality is negotiable. Like, you can just kind of invent your own idea of who you are and who other people are and this place that you rule of what it really is. Like, you say you're divine and people worship you, you can do anything you want. So as Philo even says, Caligula was corrupted by the greatness of his authority. Literally, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And he lost all sense between this line between man and God.

I've heard the saying that the mask ate the face, that you actually put on a mask to pretend to be something else, but after enough time, that mass becomes who you are. And I think this is the exact case with Caligula. The system didn't have the checks in place in order to remove this mad emperor except murder. And that's what they had to do. So this created a systemic collapse. The empire's fate was on one man's sanity. And, you know, he just, within four years, became Rome's most lasting warning that power doesn't just corrupt. It can literally recreate reality itself. So, next time you see someone, in power, you know, pushing the boundaries, trying to, you know, control every single facet of

your country's government. Just think about Caligula. You know, just think about Caligula, okay? Just hope that there's checks in place that can stop it, all right? Just four years of Caligula created these ripples that lasted for centuries and really changed the fabric of Roman government. And, you know, the question for us today is, like, how long will we let that go on in our world now? So, ladies and gentlemen, that is the story of Caligula. What a screw-up, right? He had everything. He had the whole game.

He had the whole ball game. What did he do? He just decided to just throw it away on palaces and being a god, banging his own sister. He wasn't fucking his own sister. Allegedly. For her. For her.

One thing I don't understand is why Tiberius took him under his jurisdiction. Yes. I don't. I didn't get that at all. That's an excellent question. So a few things. One, remember where Caligula was growing up? Yes, Germanic outskirts.

With who? His dad. But? His mom. The army. The army. And Germanicus became an issue. His dad became an issue because he was just this awesome, heroic, you know, general.

Yeah. And so if this little kid has grown up with the army, all of a sudden he's like their little mascot, he's raised by them, becomes their leader. Guess what? You got Germanicus part two. And we already got rid of Germanicus. That doesn't explain why Tiberius would want him under his jurisdiction. Get him out of the army. Bring him into the temple.

Get close to me. You don't need to be with this army running around. They needed to pull him away from the actual force that could overthrow a ruler. Okay. So Tiberius is like, you're going to come chill with me. And then also, according to ancient writers, he also really liked corrupting people. Okay. Like Tiberius liked to kind of like mess with people.

So literally, according to, Sotonius, Tiberius supposedly was training him in wickedness. Tiberius allegedly said, I'm nursing a viper for the Roman people. I see. So, and then on top of that, Caligula was like, you know, a good student. He was pretty harmless. He was, you know, his own family gets murdered and he's just kind of like smiling. He's just like, he's not really acting.

He's not acting too crazy. So Tacitus says, never was there a better slave or a worse master. And then do you think he went crazy just because, like, his front finally fell, or do you think he just got sick and then went insane? I think it was a mix. I think he was predisposed to going crazy. And then you have some type of illness or some of near-death experience or literally a change in your brain chemistry and you just actually lose your mind. Yeah. That makes sense.

If I were an emperor, I would do exactly what Caligula would have done. Why? You have so much power and money. How can you not? Yeah, that's a good point. I would have been like Nero Nero was lit He just loved the theater

Fiddler? Yeah he was fiddling He was fiddling Yeah, yeah, yeah Tiberius had two heirs His grandkids His sons Oh yeah That died before he died

Okay So he needed someone He needs someone This guy is the son Of a high-ranking general He's the man Let's pull him in Get him away from the army

I can train him to be like my guy And then I'll protect myself Not get killed Da-da-da and then Caligula goes crazy. I think it's a mix of things. I think, like, again, we look at historical people and we're like, yeah, you know, you see your dad dies, whatever.

Like, that's legit trauma. And we can say, like, oh, man, trauma only existed and started in, like, 2016. But no, these people were feeling the same shit. So I'm like, it wouldn't shock me if this guy was broken mentally, raised on a battlefield. I mean, Alexander the Great, kind of the same vibe, right? Like, I mean, granted, he was the Great,

but he was, like, raised on campaign. And I think being raised around like the military your entire life as a little kid just effectively changes the way you see like brutality and on top of that your dad gets killed and on top of that you get sick and Who knows what he got sick with? But like you could literally get a fever that like changes your brain chemistry or something And then just goes crazy and then becomes the mad tyrant and yeah it tries to destroy all of Rome and then lead pipes theory too Is this in the same time? I think so interesting I've heard the lead pipes then like oh Rome had lead pipes but then I heard of heard that that was debunked. Every time I hear like a sick historical fact for my childhood, I'm like, oh, that's awesome. The Pio is actually not true. There's so many that I've heard.

Ross Childs. Yes, but actually, they were Christian. Oh, but that was, no, that's a, I've heard the name Caligula and never really knew the story. I knew one thing where it's like, he would always try to mess with his guards and what the, you mentioned the password of the day, and one time it was, give us a kiss. You're lying. I swear to God. Louis C.K. mentioned this in a podcast that I love. And he's like, to mess with the, done like every guard had to go to the next person and go, give us a kiss. No way. Yeah, yeah, and the guards were like, fuck.

That's so funny. I mean, all right, so there's some good with the bad, you know? He was kind of like the ultimate jokester. What do you got, Chris does? Romans used lead for pipes, but it's unlikely collagulous behavior was caused solely by lead poisoning. What do they know? Yeah, what causes behavior? Is there like a prevailing theory here?

One other interesting theory that I just found on what made him crazy, temporal lobe epilepsy. In modern cases, this type of epilepsy can cause hyperreligiosity, auditory hallucinations, rage episodes, and personality changes. Sound familiar?

No. It also could have been encephalitis, or brain encephalopathy. This is when your brain actually swells due to inflammation, perhaps from a fever that can cause mood swings,

loss of impulse control, and delusions. And so you have this guy that's just like traumatized, like his whole family is destroyed. He comes from like this family line, like the, you know, the Julio Claudians, which are like, basically like Julius Caesar's like,

you know, I'm a god, Augustus is the son of a god, Germanicus is a semi-divine hero that's adored in Rome. So all of these things converge, and it creates the ultimate tyrant. Yeah. I mean, four years is not super long for someone to be like, yeah, we got to just get rid of this guy.

I'm surprised they did it at all. I feel like that took a lot of balls I mean like had a Roman emperor Emperor ever been assassinated before this Julius Caesar So it's not unprecedented Okay never mind Not unprecedented

But you know what Then it shouldn't We're all learning That's fine But it is an interesting thing that You know Once you start messing with the rich people That's really when it comes down

Yeah He was like messing with the military people Like alright come on And then he started messing with the people And they were like Oh well we still got some cool claims and stuff Yeah we don't have clean drink of water But who cares

We have gladiators That's awesome But then the second he was like I'm moving the Capitol, you guys are no longer going to have political influence, and he mess with the elites, got to go. Got to go. So, anyway, ladies and gentlemen, that is the life and times of Caligula.

Now, if some of this stuff sounds familiar, congrats, you've seen Gladiator. If it sounds super familiar, gladiator too, you get what I'm saying. If it sounds super familiar, you maybe have seen the Colligula episode that we did on the main channel, Camp Gallaghan. That's where I do all sorts of podcasts, but also a bunch of miscellaneous stuff where I test out awesome interesting ideas and theories that are just whatever I'm into that week. It might be a CIA guy, might be an alien dude, it might be just me musing on the occult or conspiracy theories.

Who knows? You should check out that channel. Also check out religion camp. And of course, you can check out me on the road. Mark Yagen on Live. I do stand-up comedy. I'm coming to your city and I cannot wait to see you guys. I will shake your hand.

I'll give you a hug. Also, make sure you subscribe to this channel, History Camp. We do these every single week where we explore the most interesting stuff throughout history and try to figure out everything that happened. So if you want to be smarter and less dumb, join me on the ride, all right, to figure out all the stuff that's been going on on this beautiful planet. I'll see you guys in the future to talk about the past.