The Short and Terrible Reign of Caligula (Episode 111)

Born in 12 CE, Gaius Cesar Augustus Germanicus - nicknamed 'Caligula' - survived a horrific adolescence to become the third Roman Emperor at just 24 years old. The four years that followed were expensive, scandalous, and full of increasingly violent behavior - but was he really as 'mad' as his earliest biography would have us believe?

On this episode, we're discussing dynasties, paranoia, and all those juicy scandals.

Sources for this episode include:

"Caligula: A Biography" by A. Winterling, 2015 "Caligula: a neuropsychiatric explanation of his madness", J. Charry-Sanchez, et al, for Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, 2021 "Dinner with Caligula" by C. Baumgarthuber for The New Inquiry, 2016

"The lives of the Caesars", Suetonius, 1913 Loeb translation