ROYAL CALIGULA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21549, 22 January 1932, Page 14

ROYAL CALIGULA

MURDER FOR PLEASURE The life of the third Roman Emperor has always presented a puzzle to historians on account of its grotesque inconsistencies and violent changes of character. As a young man Caligula lived for a few years in the household of the Emperor Tiberius, and displayed the most astonishing self-control in a difficult situation. Tiberius hated the Julian family, to which Caligula belonged, and shrank from no crime that would prevent the succession to the Imperial throne from passing into that family. Among others he murdered the two elder brothers of Caligula, but Caligula himself received into the royal household and surrounded with spies, whose duty it was to report to the Emperor any trace of sedition in the shape of expressions of sympathy for his oppressed relations. But in spite of the fact thai he was reputed to be hot-tempered, the young, man never once said or did anything that could be interpreted as disapproval of the Emperor’s conduct. This behaviour seemed to point to the settled purpose of a strong character, and yet during his brief reign Caligula’s behaviour wag marked by reckless expenditure and wholesale murders with no bettei motive apparently than the satisfaction of passing whims. How can we reconcile the disciplined conduct of the young man who successfully evaded the malevolence of Tiberius with the completely undisciplined behaviour of the Emperor Caligula? Dr Hans Sachs has now attacked the problem from the point of view of psychoanalysis, and has offered a solution that is likely to supersede all others. He has found the answer partly in a callousness that went far beyond what was customary in the Roman aristocracy of the time, partly in the feud between the Claudian family, to which the Emperor Tiberius belonged, and the Julian family, of which the Emperors Augustus and Caligula were members, and partly in the manner of his upbringing, which was a direct consequence of the family feud. Tossed from one environment to another at an early age, and subjected to a succession of divergent influences, young ' Caligula was pressed into so many moulds that when he came to man’s estate there was neither form nor substance in his own character unless we may called the negative attribute of callousness his character. Thus when he came into contact with Tiberius he had np difficulty in shaping his outward behaviour to the pattern of the wicked old emperor. The truth of this theory is convincingly demonstrated by Dr Sachs’s brilliant analysis of Caligula’s behaviour as Emperor. When Tiberius died he was like n, child without a nurse, but a child surrounded by admiring adults who praised him and told him what a good boy he was going to be. His subjects thereby provided a pattern on which he could mould his life, and for nine months he was content to be a model ruler. But, like a child, he grew tired of being good. Before long he realised that he aid not need to please his subjects, for he was Emperor and could do what he liked. And what he liked he did, with the direst consequences to Rome and to himself. His misdeeds “ reminded one of a man who, out for a walk, casually pokes nis stick into an antheap or treads on a beetle. The most typical of his actions of this nature is found in the story of the building of the bridge of Baiae, which begins like a fairy tale and ends in horror and confusion.” An astrologer had once assured Tiberius that Caligula was as little likely to become Emperor as-he was to cross the Bay of Baiae on horseback. One half of the prophecy having proved false, Caligula decided to prove that the other was false as well.

Accordingly, he collected ships from far and nearer, heedless of the fact that he was paralysing the trade of the Empire and endangering the people’s food supply, anchored them in a double row several miles in .length across the bay, covered them with earth, and rode across them in solitary splendour. Next day he drove a chariot at the head of a procession across this useless bridge. “ Crowds of spectators had foregathered all around the bridge, and when the fairy-play was over the Emperor condescended to invite them to step on to the bridge. Soon after he gave orders to push whole batches. of those within reach into the sea, and to cast off any who might be clinging to the ships. What was i_t that so suddenly caused him to commit this mass-murder which had certainly not been included in his plans from the beginning? Was it misanthropy, cruelty, sadism, madness? It was none of these; he did it for the fun of watching the paroxysms of the drowning.”