Playing the Role of the Demens Imperator: The Public Image of Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus

Christopher Copley

University of South Florida Department of History           

Modern scholarship regarding the Roman emperor Gaius, better know as Caligula, has focused on his madness and mental instability.  However, biographer Anthony A. Barrett, in his acclaimed 1989 book Caligula: The Corruption of Power rejects this theory and concludes that his eccentric actions were simply a charade intended to strengthen his position as the sole leader of the expanding Empire.  Using Barrett as a point of departure, this paper examines how Caligula employed spectacle in creating a public image to serve his personal interests.

Caligula used his imperial powers to assert a public image to his liking.  Through coins, shows, and festivals, he was able to create an image of himself for the Roman public in the manner that he pleased.  His self-presentation violated several traditional dichotomies: human/divine, female/male, Greek/Roman.  By doing so, he displayed his superiority over all mortal beings by transforming himself into a deity, imitating Greek and Roman gods of both sexes, such as Jupiter, Neptune, Diana, and Juno.  According to ancient sources Cassius Dio, Seneca the Younger, and Suetonius, this chameleon-like self-presentation produced a culture of fear that affected Roman subjects in the capital city and Empire.  After more than two years of this public charade, several senators and members of his own Praetorian Guard killed Caligula inside a public theater while he watched young noble boys rehearsing a stage performance.  As he was being stabbed, he proclaimed to those watching that he was a divine being and thus immortal, which prompted a second round of wounds which put an end to his mortal life. The fact that Caligula’s assassination was set in the theater with a cast of characters rehearsing for a stage performance heightens the drama of the emperor’s proclamation of his own divinity.  It was a logical culmination to a reign spent in spectacle and self-fashioning.