Caligula = Evil, we all get that. But putting a horse in charge of the senate just to fuck with people you don't like is kinda hilarious, hahaha.

Ivan IV, "the Terrible," is another great example of a ruler who began as a progressive and capable leader who spiraled into madness. I would love to see him covered here!

Sadly missing the part of his childhood, following his father around after his mother dressed him in a child sized version of a roman soldier uniform and being seen as a mascot for the legion and the origin of his nickname "Caligula" meaning Little Boots (caligae being the footwear of the Roman army) so to this day we still call him the equivalent of "ickle, little bootsies"

"the younger" is 1000x cooler than "junior"

The main source for most of the more outrageous stories about Caligula is Suetonius, who was born a couple of decades after the Julio-Claudians were out of power and may have been motivated to exaggerate Caligula's madness. His stories are not corroborated by, say, Tacitus. Nor by Philo, who had actually met with Caligula and who described him more as fidgety and neurotic than megalomaniacal. We unfortunately have no details from Tacitus; the books of his Annals that would have covered Caligula's reign are lost.

I personally subscribe to the idea that he threatened to appoint his horse to the senate as a 'f*** you', like 'You're all so useless a HORSE could do your job!'

Combined with the terror he experienced by seeing his family killed by Tiberius and the constant threat of death probably drove him to insanity. If you add the possibility of lead poisoning due to the widespread use of it in almost everything from water pipes to cosmetics and wine preparation its not surprising he did what he did.

At 3.23 there is a mistake. It shows a statue of emperor Nero, who was NOT the brother of Caligula. He was the son of his sister. Caligula did have a brother called Nero...but he was locked up in prison in 29 AD by then emperor Tiberius.

Dont think he was mad. He was well trained in Tiberius's depravity and paranoia from a very young age. He knew how to express his power and constantly tested peoples loyalty like the collecting of shells in what could be seen as madness. He once said about the senate. Quote "I dont care if they hate me as long as they fear me"

It's interesting that the guy who played Joffrey on Game of Thrones looks just like Caligula. He's apparently a hell of a nice guy in real life but if he ever gives acting a go of it again, that would be a great role.

“LET US BEGIN WITH INCEST” a truly gripping line, sir.

I really like the new thing the editors are doing zooming in on google earth when a location is mentioned, would really like this on the other channels as well!

I'd argue very few people in power are lunatics to begin with, but if you don't have trusted advisors who will present challenges to ideas other advisors come up with then you're going to not see most of the pitfalls ahead. You need people around you in a leadership role who think differently, because you need to see those blind spots so you don't turn against your original ideals and become corrupted by power.

Caligula and Nero for that matter - Remember "Source critical" thinking. A lot of what was written about Nero was written by haters as we would say today. My brother is an expert on Roman times and there are signs that Nero was not treated well by historians after his death for various reasons, and that the more we find out, the more normal he looks - in some instances at least.

I'm so happy you covered Caligula's horse. I fully believe that Caligula might have tried to mock the Senate by doing something like that. And I also believe that any record we have of Caligula has probably been influenced or directly written by members of the Senate. Also, the story of the men being punished by collecting seashells makes a lot of sense if you look at Roman behavior. They'd refused to cross into Britannia and so had to be shown to be cowards. They had to go back to Rome with seashells in hand to show the Roman people what treasures they were winning at the edge of the world. IIRC, within the last twenty years, we actually found proof of those massive ships that Caligula had built.

Caligula’s older brother Drusus was locked up and forcibly starved on Tiberius’s order. He tried to eat the stuffing from his mattress before he died. Then Caligula was ordered to go live with Tiberius, the man who killed most of his family. The horror!

I have often wondered if Caligula's illness may have been encephalitis. Encephalitis can cause personality changes and loss of consciousness, including coma.

1:25 - Chapter 1 - A confusion figure 2:45 - Chapter 2 - Early years 5:15 - Chapter 3 - Persecution & exile 7:05 - Chapter 4 - Rags to riches 8:20 - Chapter 5 - A glorious start 9:20 - Chapter 6 - Illness 11:00 - Chapter 7 - Paranoia 11:55 - Chapter 8 - Keeping in the family 13:50 - Chapter 9 - Madness 15:55 - Chapter 10 - Cruelty 17:50 - Chapter 11 - Collecting seashells 19:00 - Chapter 12 - Assassination 20:40 - Chapter 13 - Mad or myth ? - Chapter 14 - - Chapter 15 -

I did a thesis on Caligula that proposed that he wasn't as mad/crazy as he was made out to be. Yes, sure, there was sociopathic tendencies there (an understatement, I'm sure), but when you weed out the likely propaganda, he was a shrewdly cruel ruler that took it a step too far and had to be dispatched by his guards, the senate and the nobility (I'm way over simplifying it here). Nero is often considered the worst of the Julio Claudian emperors (mainly because of his persecution of the early Christians), but Caligula was much worse. I've actually been quite fascinated by Caligula and his reign. The level of WTF, dude! is just incredible.

I love the biographics series on Roman emperors, this stuff is the icing on the bloody cake.

last time I was this early, the Roman empire still existed

As bad as he was, his son gave us power to burn compact disc and for that I am grateful.

While Caligula's behavior may have been exaggerated and born from hatred, Caligula did, to a certain degree, earn that hatred with his administrative incompetence and hostility toward the Roman Senate.

My gut has told me that Caligula was more party boy than murder tyrant. Like, his worst excesses sound made up or taken out of context. I think his “serious Illness” was a failed poisoning by some faction on the senate. He came back and started purging, but he eventually lost this political battle and was finally assassinated and was turned into the “worst ruler in Roman history”.

Okay but the nemi ships are fkn sick. Big ass party boats? Iconic. Shame he was seemingly so gross in so many ways, because that's a hilarious and incredible image of a floating orgy palace long before models on super yachts became a reasonably common thing amongst the elite.

There was actually some detailed information about Caligula’s 4 year reign by his sister Agrippina the Younger, but her work was lost to history at some point between her own Assassination & today

Only simon can blend modern historian, anthropologist, storyteller, etc. so well on this platform. Difficult subject/story expertly told.

he utterly despised the ruling class and never turned down an opportunity to humiliate them. you left out the part in which Capri was essentially emporer tiberius's own personal epstein island, when you mentioned how long he lived there. interesting to note that of all of caligulas alleged "crimes and indiscretions", assaulting children wasn't one of them.

Also consider that much of what we know of Caligula was written by a man who's family hated Caligula's family and hated him, and also remember that the history we only know is just what some guy wrote thousands of years ago and that is usually just scraps of info that survived.

Part of Caligula's legacy (for good or ill) became the inspiration for John Hurt's portrayal of him in I, Cladius, the old BBC miniseries of the Suetonius "history" of the first 12 emperors. Many great actors got their introductions to an American audience at that time, so some good came out of that early work of latin-inscribed KZfaq forerunner fiction.

I feel for George III. He seemed competent, but then his genetic "gift" of porphryia made him suseptible to bouts of instability. As Eddie Izzard so wonderfully put it "because marrying cousins is a bad idea!" From the English monarchy to the Hapsburgs that inbreeding did the royal houses no favors aside from securing their power and money. When it comes to Caligula....yeah..he probably did some pretty brutal and disgusting things but I also recognize the Senatorial hobby of denegrating the emperors they didn't like. You needed to suck up to the Senate to get good reviews so..I think a lot of what we get about Caligula through Senatorial history is to be taken with a very large grain of salt. Just my opinion. Yours may vary. :)

There's a restaurant near me called Little Boots...Ive always called it Caligulas lol

The first part of this story I would challenge is the tale that Caligula remained unconscious for a month. I'm not a doctor, or an expert in medical methods of the time. However, I did study human biology to quite a fair level at university, so I am not a total armchair expert. I would question whether at the time it was possible for someone to remain unconscious, i.e. in a coma, and survive for a month. The issue is how he remained nourished and hydrated. The latter is most important, because whilst it is possible to survive for a month without feeding, it is impossible to survive for a month without hydration. It would have been necessary for someone to be placed on some sort of intravenous drip feed for someone to survive a month's unconsciousness, as someone unconscious cannot drink, and any attempt to pour liquid down their throat, would drown them. I am not aware of any medical knowledge during the Roman period that would allow someone to be hydrated for such a long period of time, when they were unconscious. If no such medical ability and knowledge at the time was available, the whole story that he was unconscious for a month unravels. Maybe he was feverish for a month, bedridden for a month, but not unconscious. However, the problem is if that part of the story was untrue, this calls into question the whole veracity of the narrative of this transition between the relatively sane ruler, to the insane i.e. was this whole narrative just invented to explain how a mental incompetent was made Roman Emperor. Yes, you can posit a narrative where Caligula wasn't actually unconscious for a whole month. The trouble is that when you do this, it calls into question the accuracy of the whole narrative we have been told about Caligula. If you accept that the whole story of unconsciousness for a month as untrue, then there is no part of the narrative of Caligula, that can be regarded as reliable.

Simon I'm gonna need a list of all your channels I can't keep up

Simon casting doubt on the claims about Caligula reminds me of the things that are said about Wu Zetian, China's only female Emperor. There are all sorts of stories about her alleged cruelty and depravity abd general wickedness. However, it's worth noting that the male Confucian scholars writing these tales would likely have regarded her ascension to we imperial throne as an unmatural abomination.

If it wasn’t for a big red circle and arrow in the thumbnail, never would have seen how crazy this man was 😱😳🤯

Having recently watched the sleeping sickness episode I am curious if that could be an explanation for the change. Extended sleep followed by change in personality and extreme paranoia are all part of the illness.

I feel like "rulers starting out good and then going mad" is just a perfect, prime example of "if you do not treat mental illnesses, they get worse". A lot of these kinds of people I learn about, I'm thinking to myself whether it's more likely that their mental illnesses got symptomatic but they had no treatment. There are some mental disorders that cause permanent brain damage (like schizophrenia) and some that can cause progressive memory impairment (depression, I think ADHD too?), if left untreated. Some disorders get progressively WORSE without any treatment (Bipolar, Cluster B PDs). And considering the era, any mentally ill people are also being subjected to war, lead or other toxins in the environment, poor food (amount and quality), poor hygiene, etc. These people consistently poisoned themselves as healthcare so it's easy to imagine ANY mental illness becoming WAAAY out of control back in those days, and it's especially an issue when the Emperor of your country succumbs to has a severe mental illness and then drinks cocaine and opium to treat their sore throat. Now you have someone with [insert mental illness] who is also hopped up on hard drugs and I think any mentally ill people in the comments can agree that generally speaking, those kinds of drugs are pretty bad for us. Imagine you give the emperor cocaine and that triggers a severe manic episode w/ psychotic features, which there is literally no diagnosis, let alone treatment, for. That's gonna bode poorly for the entire country :') or at least I would imagine so

I think it's worth mentioning that although his name was Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, he was known by the nickname Caligula, which is a very childish sobriquet. When he was a small child, his mother had a Roman soldier's uniform made for him complete with the sandal/boot hybrid called a "caliga." The soldiers under his father's command began calling him Caligula, which translates as "Little Boots." I'm thinking that could have had an affect on him. Also, it's my feeling that Tiberius most likely sexually abused him during his time on Capri.

I'm really impressed with the accuracy of your videos. Keep up the excellent work!

3:40 is a little confusing. Agrippina's brother was Nero Caesar. Then she has a son which became known as Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus or simply Nero. He was the last ruler of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty.

Question to the editor: How did the Prima Porta Augustus (the metal statue approx. 1 min in, as well as some chapter titles and at 10:38) sneak into the Caligula images? :) Beyond this sneaky boy, great video. And a fun fact for those who care: Caligula means "little boot", because the boy had accompanied his father in on his campaigning and had become the soldiers' pet with his little military boots.

Wow this is by fair the best rundown of Caligula I have ever seen. So many people are quick to just write him off as crazy when life is never that black and white. Really a good job on this video. I am very impressed.

18:27 About that, Caligula told his soldiers to attack the sea to show the futility of fighting their gods.

Given the use of lead to store drink in back in those times to add sweetness (lead oxide is a sweet-tasting substance), especially for wine, it's probably no surprise that he was suffering from lead poisoning, along with other pre-existing mental health conditions, turning him into an utter nutjob...

Amazing videos! I love all your videos please more crazy rulers? Unbelievable job on the video!

He was in a coma for a month, and something else came back with him.

Love your work Simon, always learn something new. ❤

This makes me wish I had a Chronovisor to watch them all, like tiny chaotic, insane Sims.

I really don’t know much about Caligula tbh, thanks for the great subject TangentBoi 👍🏻

Great video. Please do more :)! Love the edge you've created.

Could the mystery illness be a case of The Sleeping Sickness? It did potentially change the person after they got better, so.

Hitler in under 10 seconds; yeah I don't think this one is getting monetize. Top tier content from the blaze lord and of course he keeps top tier writers as well.

Has Elagabalus ever been covered in a video? Because he kinda makes Caligula and Nero seem tame by comparison. He's the most unpopular of all the Roman emperors.

He wasn't called Caligula, by any contemporary writers. He was called that as a toddler but not as an adult. Writers only started calling him that some three centuries after his death. He was the Emperor Gaius and woe betide anybody who called him anything else.

5:48 wrong Nero, that's a statue of emperor Nero who wasn't born till a decade later.

On the subject of exaggerated accounts of madness, the same thing may have happened to rulers like Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory. Both were said to be brutally violent and incredibly mad, but these accounts come from extremely biased sources; political rivals in the case of Bathory and kingdoms conquered by Vlad. Both of these sources would have a lot to benefit from portraying these rulers as evil and insane. It's hard to believe stories about a woman murdering hundreds of beautiful peasant girls to bathe in their blood, but easy to believe someone would make it up in an attempt to grab her title. Now the truth about many such people are obscured by the lies.

What a fine and totally sane guy. He clearly cared about the common person.

Ooooo, that transition music was so perfect and really framed the mood of this piece.

Being called Bootsy your whole life is enough to drive anyone over the edge.

Very good. Of course all is speculation. Leaving aside Julius Caesar and his relatives seemed to have been a particularly badly wired lot, Caligula was probably a pretty decent ruler by the standards of his day right up to his mysterious illness. Speaking as a (thank God!) retired UK doctor my best guess is he had some kind of meningitis, the resulting brain damage giving him among other things a form of frontal lobe syndrome. So less 'mad' and more 'broken'. PS Even by the standards of the day the Romans were a society of mildly deranged 'psychos', the richer you were the worse it got. There is some reasonable speculation this may be in part the result of chronic lead poisoning. Rich Romans liked their lead pipes and interestingly it was noted even then that lead probably wasn't good for you. While a work of fiction, and a thoroughly good one, "I Claudius" gives a pretty darn good feel for what it must have been like to be a powerful Roman and in particular a fly on the wall of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. If anyone is interested and doesn't want to read it the BBC (back when it actually was a public service broadcaster) did a darn good TV adaptation that's still kicking about the internet. Maybe a little dated on the technical front, but still thoroughly worth a watch. The KZfaq Channel Historia Civilis has a fantastic long-running series on Julius Caesar - just keep in mind that for all his achievements they were done over the bodies of thousands if not millions - rather like Napoleon, another monster we unaccountably celebrate simply for being successful while killing so many innocents we see it as a statistic rather than a crime of epic proportions.

omg imagine if caligula had access to tiktok lmao

I appreciate your covering this- it's not a topic I'm particularly familiar with.

How do I keep coming across more and more channels with this guy 😂 the work rate is crazy

I think it's worth noting that almost all of the information we have on him comes from his enemies. History is written by the victors, after all.

The craziest and strangest Roman emperor surely was Elagabalus.

"Well to do family..." lol. One of the most illustrious families in history.

I'd love to see a video about the Pazzi Conspiracy. The aftermath of that is pretty intense.

This should be good! Thanks Simon and Co.

"Let's begin with incest" erm no I don't think I will...

Great video! Very interesting! You are a very busy man, how many channels do you have!? And they’re all very good!

Great vid, loving the walk out 🤣🤣

I'm pretty sure your image of Caligula's older brother, Nero Iulius Caesar, at 3:23 is actually an image of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus) who was emperor following the reign of Claudius.

I know Roman medicine was pretty advanced but I wonder how they sufficiently fed and kept Caligula hydrated for the month he was unconscious?

Your content lately has been👌

good stuff, as per usual, good sense of humour overall videos :-)

Caligula's is a very difficult case. Not only the information we have about him comes from ancient sources that are prone to embellishments, but the majority of those sources lived after the emperor himself and were in service to another dynasty of rulers which sought to destroy the legacy of the preceding one. In other words, the sources we have worked for the competition. Caligula was also something like a pet to Tiberius, himself a poignantly misunderstood person both in his time and well, practically forever after. Caligula lived with his uncle for 5 years on the island of Capri in isolation and was exposed to all sorts of unspeakable violence presented as recreation. What sort of effect do you believe would this have on a young and heavily impressionable mind? Regardless, my personal opinion is that he had always targeted the elite. It was embedded in his mind that the Roman elite was the sole reason for his family's tragedies and he dedicated his rule to seeking vengeance.

I wouldn't mind being remembered as "insanely depraved". Beats being forgotten.

The last insult they threw on him was the name "Caligula," which was a childhood nickname roughly meaning "Little Boots."

I would love to see someone do a Simon Whistler type video about all the YT channels Simon presents and go into the same detail describing all of his channels 😂

Of the Julians I think Tiberius was probably worse, in that his tyranny lasted a lot longer than Caligula. He was personally debauched as an old man and 'outsourced' government to a succession of strong men, the most notorious being Sejenus, the commander of the Praetorian guard. Incidentally, when Sejenus was finally toppled and executed, his children were also put to death, strangled by the State executioners in the underground prison where such deeds were carried out. Because his daughter (11, I think) was a virgin, she could not be executed. So they had the executioners gang rape her before strangling her.... The past, as Simon always says, was the worst.

Am I the only who thinks total power is to much for people and that’s why so many go clinically insane. On one hand they can have and do as they please and never hearing no and having no boundaries means that the lust for more is never tamed. However on the other hand I feel most people myself included would be crushed under the power of trying to help and do better for my people, only to find that some and or many want the exact opposite so you end up jumping fro. One extreme to another in the pursuit of good while never really achieving anyone.

Your content is always interesting, Simon. Another content creator did a study on Caligula and she thought a bit of the problem was his nickname "Little Boots". She felt he had a self-esteem problem from having that nickname and that with his prestige and resultant ego, once he gained absolute power, he was going to strike out and prove that "Little Boots" was now THE emperor. And, I can tell you, if he had, for example, bipolar mood disorder and no one reigning him back, he could easily become monstrous. Of course, being around Tiberius didn't help either.

Bro how many KZfaq channels does this guy have? It’s like I see a new one every day.

I recommend Dr. Mary Beard for a good , enjoyable lecture on this topic. She's great.

I've never been completely sold on the mainstream view that he was batsh*t crazy - the stories were circulated by his enemies and there's interpretations about some of his supposed deeds that throw very different angles on them. Jury's out for me.

Look Fact Boy I am subscribed to like half a dozen of your channels and being a avid viewer of Decoding the Unknown and The Casual Criminalist How did I miss this channel

Decades ago the local PBS (Masterpiece Theater?) used to run *I, Claudius* (I, Clavdivs) starring Derek Jacobi which was a quite uncensored portrayal of this stuff based on a novel IIRC. Worth watching if you can find it now.

Didn't this episode happen on biographics about 3 years ago

The problem whit all these history is that they started write down 100 or so years after they had died. So a lot is hear say and it is the winner of history that writes the book.

Algo Help 4 Whistler! Thanks 4 The Show!

Every Time this channel videos are good 😉

Viruses and lead contamination could be blamed for insane and inhumane rule, but a spiritual dimension cannot be ruled out. That all begins with how a kid is brought up. If a child witnesses adults acting like brutes and fools, then, it's a sure bet the child will follow in like manner. Many thanks, Simon.

You should do an episode on the October Crisis and the FLQ, until the recent illegal declaration of the emergencies act to suppress legitimate opposition too unpopular government policies that was the only time that the war measures act (the forerunner of the modern emergencies act) was used in canada during peacetime.

Another day another Simon channel I find

I'd love to see an episode about the Severan Dynasty, specifically Elagabalus.

Wrong Nero statue.

Lead poisoning 👀 also his name means Little Boots

This is a great episode of Into the Biographics.

Guessing by the decision to go with "Chinese whisper" line near the beginning, the writer of this script is from Australia. This is only the second time i have heard this phrase, the other was during a podcast called The Dollop, when Will Anthony mentioned it. Next time, just use "telephone game".