Thursday 21 May 2015

Caligula by Suetonius

Blimey! It all started off so well for Gaius Caligula, doing all these seemingly good and groovy things as emperor; reinstating this, giving out that, building stuff, I began to wonder if my impressions of him as a complete nut job were over inflated. Then, Suetonius writes 'so much for Gaius the Emperor; the rest of this history must needs deal with Gaius the Monster', after which all the weird, violent and sadistic stuff starts happening; he really was an unpleasant and deeply twisted individual by all accounts; if he'd been born to ordinary folk he'd have been bad enough, I'm sure; but to be born into the position of ultimate imperial power, well, his depraved excesses knew no limits, nothing was off limits to him. It's incredible and really quiet scary as to what depths people can sink to. As you'd imagine, it didn't end well for him; although I'm sure it couldn't end soon enough for all those Gaius Caligula took umbridge against or a fancy to.

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