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Killer Kings Season 1 Episode 2
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00:01Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.
00:05He was a terroristic ruler.
00:09History remembers him by the nickname he hated, Caligula, or Little Boots.
00:15There are several unusual rumours about Caligula's conduct as emperor.
00:20He seems to have enjoyed watching the execution of his victims,
00:23having them executed in the most torturous way possible.
00:27There's a casual cruelty to everything that he does.
00:33We know Caligula is reported to say,
00:36let them hate me so long as they fear me.
00:40He ruled the world's greatest empire.
00:44But behind the crown was a mind unravelling and a rain soaked in blood.
00:51Even Tiberius, the archetypal debauched emperor,
00:54is shocked at how willingly he participates
00:57in the most shocking forms of torture and sexual immorality.
01:02Using groundbreaking AI imagery to show his world as never before,
01:08we examine the myths that launched the mystery.
01:11Will new evidence help re-evaluate Caligula's brutal reputation?
01:17The fact that he can't distinguish between the inappropriateness of what he's doing
01:23tells me we've got a psychopath on our hands.
01:26Rulers come and go, but what legacy will the sands of time leave behind?
01:32Caligula, was he truly a killer king?
01:36A killer king.
02:04Caligula, reputedly Rome's most tyrannical and erratic emperor.
02:11But before he was emperor, before he was feared, he was adored.
02:19He comes from the royal family.
02:21His father was Germanicus, who was for a time the leading general in Rome under the emperor Tiberius.
02:28And his mother was Agrippina.
02:31Agrippina was the granddaughter of the first Roman emperor, Augustus.
02:36His father Germanicus was a great hero of the Roman Empire, to the extent that he is mentioned in the same breath as Alexander the Great.
02:45He's almost superhuman in his heroics.
02:48And it's clear that Caligula's relationship with Germanicus led to him being very popular with the people.
02:53Rome is at war.
02:59Germanicus is leading campaigns in Germania to avenge the devastating loss of three Roman legions in the Tutorperc forest.
03:08With him is his youngest son, just a child, but already a presence in the camp.
03:17The son was adored by the troops.
03:20He was taken under the wing of his father's soldier and kind of adopted the young Caligula as a mascot for the legions.
03:29They used to dress the son of their general up in kind of a miniature soldier's uniform.
03:36The Roman soldiers wore boots called caligar, which were hobnail boots issued to all soldiers.
03:41And the diminutive form of caligar is caligulan, meaning little boots.
03:45He always endeared himself to the soldiers to get this pet name.
03:52But spending time with his father at such a young age, directly on the front line, right there in the heat of the battle,
04:01learning about all the strategies, seeing all the horrific physical injuries.
04:08The sorts of things that people wouldn't be exposed to, let alone as a tiny child.
04:13Gaius marched with one of Rome's greatest generals across a volatile frontier.
04:26His presence wasn't purely ceremonial.
04:29He was used as a talisman to steady the ranks of restless soldiers on the brink of mutiny.
04:34When Germanicus felt that the troops were going to turn upon him and might kill him and his family,
04:41he dispatched the women of the camp and Caligula to the local Gallic city.
04:47The troops saw that matters had reached a level of severity, that civil war was going to break out in the camp.
04:54There was also an emotional attachment to Caligula, possibly to his mother.
05:00And at that point, the mutiny came to an end.
05:03This will have shaped Caligula absolutely fundamentally.
05:12It will have desensitized him to extreme violence, of course.
05:15I think it will have sown the seeds for the development of a really hyper-masculine personality.
05:25He bonded in this context of violence, of being a man, of being involved in war.
05:32Germanicus is recalled to Rome a hero.
05:41But the glory was short-lived.
05:44At the end of that campaign, he was brought back to Rome,
05:47and then he was almost immediately sent off to Syria.
05:52Officially sent to assert Roman authority over the empire's client kingdoms,
05:57many believed it was a political move by the Emperor Tiberius.
06:00A wildly popular general, Germanicus was sent far from Rome,
06:06into a region known for its volatile politics.
06:10And the reason for this is supposedly because of Tiberius' jealousy.
06:15He was given sweeping powers in the east,
06:18but very quickly he fell out with the governor of Syria,
06:22a man named Gnaeus Piso.
06:26While in the province that Piso was the governor of,
06:28Germanicus falls very ill.
06:31And he is convinced that he is ill because Piso is poisoning him.
06:35All sorts of accusations then flew,
06:39that Piso was using witchcraft, that he was trying to poison Germanicus.
06:42Germanicus's health continues to deteriorate, and then, aged just 33, he dies in agony.
06:57Germanicus died under circumstances which were regarded as suspicious.
07:03The empire mourned.
07:06But for Caligula then only seven years of age, the loss was shattering.
07:11Dr. Donna Youngs is an investigative psychologist who has been looking at the life of Caligula.
07:22Having bonded so profoundly to his father, to then lose his father, both at such a young age and in circumstances that he probably didn't understand,
07:34will have set the stage for Caligula to become very suspicious, very paranoid, very fearful.
07:40The adored son of Rome's brightest star became a child shadowed by grief, betrayal and silence.
07:51Caligula's mother makes a big show of returning to Rome with his ashes,
07:59and she is rapturously received by the populace of Rome because Germanicus was so popular.
08:04And she arrives very kind of dramatically clutching her husband's ashes and her infant son Caligula.
08:09But this triumphal return goes down badly with the increasingly paranoid Tiberius.
08:17Tiberius had Agrippina arrested and sent into exile.
08:23The two older sons were also arrested and exiled,
08:27and eventually Tiberius had all three of them killed,
08:30Agrippina probably by being starved to death.
08:34Caligula is the only survivor of the purge of his family,
08:40and only then because Tiberius needs a successor with royal blood running through his veins.
08:51We see Caligula, when he turns 19, joining Tiberius, the emperor, on Capri.
08:57And this is where Caligula is kind of brought under Tiberius' wing.
09:00Tiberius, Rome's second emperor, had once ruled with discipline and caution.
09:06But by the time Caligula joined him on the island of Capri,
09:10the ageing ruler had withdrawn from Rome and from restraint.
09:19Capri was a pleasure palace.
09:21Tiberian culture was luxurious and, to a large extent, immoral.
09:27They're astonishing stories of Tiberius bringing young men and women to the palace and sexually exploiting them.
09:38Tiberius uses his retreat on Capri to indulge all of his worst vices,
09:45and he lives a life of excess, of gluttony and sexual immorality.
09:49The island became Gaius' classroom.
09:53But what was Tiberius teaching his young apprentice?
09:59Caligula was incredibly vulnerable.
10:03He was a blank page ready for Tiberius and all his exploits to be written on.
10:08He was absolutely defenceless psychologically, emotionally, to what he would be exposed to.
10:17To survive, Caligula must adapt.
10:20He learned how power truly worked, how fear could rule men more effectively than law.
10:27He had learned that to be a man's man, to fit in, to get Tiberius' love and support in the same way that he'd got his father's.
10:37One thing was crucial, and that was his participation in the activities.
10:43Even the debauched Emperor Tiberius is shocked at the extreme nature of Caligula's personality.
10:48He's almost a little bit scared by the savagery that Caligula displays.
10:54Caligula did more than fit in. He played the game,
10:59cementing his position as the heir presumptive to Tiberius' throne.
11:05Tiberius complained that people were turning to Gaius as the rising sun and worshipping him,
11:13whereas the setting sun, Tiberius himself, was slipping away from their attention.
11:19The empire is still in its infancy in this period.
11:23Tiberius is only the second Roman emperor,
11:26and so there is no kind of constitutional basis for the transfer of power.
11:33And when Tiberius dies suddenly, Caligula is perfectly positioned to take power.
11:39Some say, too perfectly.
11:41Tiberius dies in 37 AD, and the events surrounding his death are kind of shrouded in mystery.
11:51There are always rumours around deaths of emperors.
11:54Our sources do not agree on the specific circumstances.
12:03In one version of events, Tiberius is starved to death by Caligula.
12:07In another, he is poisoned by Caligula.
12:09And in a third, he is smothered and suffocated to death with a pillow.
12:22He survived war, purges, and the twisted mentorship of a dying tyrant.
12:27Now, Rome waited for him.
12:32And no one, not even Tiberius, could predict what Caligula would become.
12:37Tiberius is dead.
12:48The empire turns to 24-year-old Caligula, the great-grandson of Augustus Caesar,
12:55and the son of one of Rome's greatest generals.
12:59And for a moment, Rome rejoices.
13:03So the first months of Caligula's reign are received very well by the Roman populace.
13:11Tiberius was a hated emperor.
13:14By the end of his reign, there had been what the historian describes as a reign of terror.
13:18He was so hated that the people gathered in the streets and chanted to the Tiber with Tiberius,
13:24demanding that his body be thrown into the river Tiber.
13:26And so the people of Rome and the Senate see Caligula's rise to power as freeing them from the tyranny of Tiberius.
13:36Tiberius's death was celebrated, and the accession of Gaius was welcomed as a new golden age.
13:45He was seen as a new man, a man who would change the oppressive and violent age of Tiberius,
13:52and bring a new and golden age to Rome.
13:58In his first weeks, he pardons prisoners.
14:02He gives out bonuses to the army.
14:05He buries Tiberius with respect and promises the Senate a new era of peaceful collaboration.
14:11We're seeing all the honour and leadership capabilities of his father, the great Roman general, coming out through Caligula.
14:20We're seeing little boots coming into his manhood as emperor.
14:25One of his first acts is to end the practice of Maestas, which is the practice of treason trials that were very prominent under Tiberius.
14:39He makes a big public display of not only taking the law of Maestas off the books,
14:44but publicly burning all of the court records of people previously convicted of Maestas and people who were currently under suspicion.
14:51What he seems to have been very anxious to do in this fairly stage was to represent himself as a fresh start,
15:01a new model emperor for Rome, and to bring together the various factions in Roman society,
15:06and especially amongst the Roman aristocracy.
15:08This is a new time where the people are going to be free and prosperous and not living under the reign of terror of Tiberius.
15:18For six months, Rome lives in a dream.
15:22But the dream is about to shatter.
15:27The key turning point, according to our sources, is Caligula becomes ill six months into 37 AD.
15:34We don't know what it is, we don't know how serious it was, but there was at least some thought that he would die.
15:44And this illness seems to have changed his personality significantly.
15:49He starts to exhibit certain behaviours that signal to the senate and to the people that all is not well
15:55and that Caligula perhaps isn't the saviour from the turn of Tiberius that they had initially hoped for.
16:04Caligula suffers some kind of severe seizure, some kind of rare form of epilepsy.
16:11We hear reports of bizarre behaviour, him laughing without motivation.
16:17We hear reports of severe insomnia, of all sorts of emotional incontinence,
16:23contrasting so sharply with the regimented, disciplined, powerful, potent, virile Caligula up to this point.
16:33The city is frozen with concern.
16:39Their golden boy, hailed as a new beginning, is slipping away.
16:45Caligula's illness seems to have caused massive concern among the populace of Rome.
16:50In fact, several prominent Romans vowed their lives to the gods as human sacrifices if Caligula could recover.
16:59There was a massive outpouring of grief among the populace of Rome
17:04who see Caligula as their saviour after the tyrannies of Tiberius.
17:10Caligula makes a recovery, but Rome soon realises the man who emerged is not the one they had crowned.
17:17Ancient sources tell us he became erratic, paranoid, cruel.
17:24Several historians have debated the nature of the illness that afflicted Caligula,
17:29whether it was physical in nature or whether it was more mental.
17:33However, what is clear from the sources is that things change after his illness.
17:36So we see emerging a very different person from the young, bold and strong, charismatic leader before this.
17:48Instead, we see somebody who seems to have, rather than a disciplined, organised military mind,
17:54we see somebody who seems to have very little control of his emotions.
17:57The man who once promised peace now ruled with violence.
18:04Rome had placed its hopes in Caligula, but public affection quickly turned to fear.
18:12And even those closest to him were not safe, as one of his most loyal supporters was about to find out.
18:18Macro had been one of Caligula's earliest supporters.
18:23He had been instrumental in bringing the army over to Caligula's side to support his claim to the throne.
18:28And yet, by early 38, it's clear that Macro has fallen from favour.
18:33Macro, the powerful Praetorian Prefect, had been instrumental in securing Caligula's rise.
18:39But shortly after his illness, the Emperor begins to see his old friend as a threat, too influential, too close to the throne.
18:50The events surrounding Macro's death are not clear at all from our sources.
18:56He is potentially implicated in some kind of conspiracy against the Emperor.
19:00Again, whether this is based in fact or whether this is Caligula's paranoia is up for debate.
19:04However, by 38 AD, he has been forced to take his own life.
19:13Macro was ordered to commit suicide.
19:18It was a rather brutal realignment of the politics of the moment.
19:25Caligula shows himself willing to eliminate even his closest allies.
19:29After Macro, no-one around Caligula was safe.
19:34The fall of Macro was a really significant change in political activity.
19:39It comes at the same time as a realignment of the Imperial family.
19:46Next to get cause in the young Emperor's crosshers, his cousin, Gemellus,
19:51the grandson of former Emperor Tiberius, whom Caligula has sworn to protect.
19:56Gamellus' death comes about in late 37.
20:00Caligula, having recovered from his illness, is convinced that Gamellus is plotting against him.
20:06Whether Gamellus was involved in a conspiracy against Caligula
20:09or whether this is Caligula's paranoia is lost to history.
20:12During Caligula's illness, Gamellus had also stepped up into a more public role
20:16to take the place of his cousin
20:17and had perhaps been received quite well by the populace.
20:22And this had perhaps signalled to Caligula that there was someone else waiting in the wings
20:27who could potentially challenge him for power.
20:30He perceived him as being a threat as he grew older.
20:37And Gaius used that as an excuse, and he sent his soldiers to kill him.
20:42In quite a poignant scene, Gamellus is handed a sword with which to take his own life.
20:51Because Gamellus is very young and naive, he doesn't really know how to actually do the act itself
20:57and he has to be helped to take his own life because he's never held a sword before.
21:00The early optimism of Caligula's reign shifted to a darker, more paranoid time.
21:20Rome becomes a political minefield.
21:23In public, he'd once burned the records of treason trials against members of the Senate.
21:30But now, the old laws returned.
21:34By 39 AD, relations with the Senate have soured,
21:38and he's addressing the Senate to rebuke them for their criticism of Tiberius.
21:42He feels that their open criticism of the previous emperor should not be permitted
21:46and that they should actually bear in mind that many of Tiberius' treason trials
21:50that he had been holding were perfectly legitimate.
21:53And it's at this point that Caligula reveals that the records of the treason trials,
21:58which he had burned publicly in a great show of departure from the reign of Tiberius early in his reign,
22:03he actually had kept copies.
22:06He tells the Senate that he is reintroducing the law of maestas, the law of treason,
22:10and from now on, the Senate will be living in fear.
22:13The trials were more than legal proceedings.
22:18They were tools for eliminating rivals, seizing wealth, and asserting absolute control.
22:24Charges could be based on rumours or even symbolic dreams and gestures.
22:30We see Caligula, with no hesitation, murdering political rivals.
22:36For Caligula, his way of doing politics is reflecting those early days of training on the front line.
22:45Going about politics as if war.
22:49No hesitation, not just to remove political rivals, but to have them murdered.
22:54And it's not enough for Caligula to lay waste to his enemies.
23:01He wishes to be anointed as a living god while he does it.
23:05One of the biggest controversies of Caligula's reign seems to have been his desire to be worshipped as a god.
23:12Roman emperors could be deified after their death.
23:16It was, however, a big no-no for an emperor to be worshipped as a god during his lifetime.
23:21The controversy in Caligula's reign is that he seems to have explicitly desired to be worshipped as Jupiter.
23:29And to have set up temples to him in Rome during his lifetime.
23:34This is a significant violation of Roman religious norms.
23:41This is all for the Romans' difficult behaviour.
23:45Caligula, the man who promised peace, now insists that he wasn't just favoured by the gods, but was a living god himself.
24:05So progressively Caligula associates himself with the divine.
24:12He had temples and altars built in his honour with priests dedicated to his cult.
24:19And demanded sacrifices to diverse Caligula, divine Caligula.
24:24It's one thing to erect a statue of yourself to be celebrated, but to have the, it's not even audacity, it's the lack of judgement.
24:35The insanity to insist that you be worshipped as a god by your people is a clear indication of somebody who is insane.
24:43Roman relationship with deities was to be much closer than we understand today.
24:53But this was a step further than even the hated Tiberius had dared to take.
24:58Dressing up as the divine seems to have been something that members of the Roman aristocracy did from time to time.
25:05What was different was that he seems to have demanded a level of worship of himself while he was a living being.
25:17In later traditions, this is seen as evidence of an unstable mind.
25:22At the time, it was certainly extreme, but doesn't seem in itself to have been regarded as madness.
25:30Nevertheless, living with a god was probably hard.
25:36When a man is worshipped as a god, who is left to hold him accountable?
25:42With no limits left, Caligula's cruelty became something more than policy.
25:48It became power, performance.
25:52He throws his uncle into the river for some imagined slight.
25:57He makes a senator beg for his life because he'd put up a statue to Gaius which was interpreted as being not quite praising him enough.
26:09Caligula liked to put people to death via many, many small wounds that would cause the most pain over the longest period of time before they actually succumbed to death.
26:20He seems to have enjoyed watching the execution of his victims and not only executing his victims but having them executed in the most torturous way possible.
26:29Mixed with the brutality, there were power games.
26:37He helps the dinner party and at the dinner party, he starts to laugh and everybody wonders what he is laughing at.
26:47The most powerful person in the room starts to laugh. Do you laugh along?
26:50And he tells them, it's just occurred to me that I can have any of you killed.
26:57Now that's fun, obviously, for Gaius, it is not fun for everyone else.
27:02He forces a man to watch the execution of his family and then forces that man to attend a dinner party with the emperor at which the emperor is very jovial and tries to engage his victim in light-hearted conversation and make him kind of laugh and joke about the brutal murder of his family.
27:24And he dined and he played along. And when he was asked why he did so, he said, I have another son.
27:37And these games were not just for private pleasure. Caligula was keen to extend his bloodlust for public pleasure.
27:45One thing that Caligula is accused of is feeding criminals to the wild beasts that are kept for beast hunts in the arena.
27:52Upon being told that feeding cattle to these wild beasts is quite expensive and these animals are needed for displays in the arena,
28:03Caligula points out that it would be much cheaper to feed criminals to them.
28:07This is not a punishment. This is a steady diet for the animals to replace the costly expense of buying cattle to feed to them.
28:14Now, one of the things that marks out somebody whose brain has become psychopathic is the complete inability to what we call emotionally calibrate, to distinguish, to differentiate between what's an appropriate behavior and what's a non-appropriate behavior.
28:31The inappropriateness of what he's doing in turning criminals into the food of wild beasts tells me we've got a psychopath on our hands.
28:45But how much of this is true?
28:49There is a hysteria to the stories which begin to sound like just good stories.
28:55Caligula is one of the better attested of the Roman emperors.
28:58We have a whole range of sources about him, some of which are contemporary or near contemporary.
29:03The most influential accounts on Caligula come from the historian Cassius Dio,
29:07who is writing in the third century, so more or less 200 years after Caligula's death.
29:15And Suetonius, the biographer, who was writing about eight years after his death.
29:22Suetonius essentially lists a long list of various shocking deeds that Caligula did.
29:29He starts his biography narrating Caligula's early life,
29:32and when he gets to the point after his illness when Caligula seems to have made a turn for the worse,
29:36Suetonius says he's finished narrating the history of Caligula the emperor,
29:41now he's turning to tell the story of Caligula the monster.
29:48The near contemporary histories written off Caligula are sensationalist, salacious, morally outraged.
29:57Roman emperors attracted gossip, and this was in an age before you had libel laws
30:01or you had any journalistic integrity.
30:03Stories circulated, and stories circulated whether they were true or not.
30:09They might have been believed by some.
30:10The stories might have been just too good to miss out of their historical accounts.
30:17Suetonius tells us that Caligula condemned a man to death,
30:20had him thrown to wild beasts in the arena,
30:22and as the man was screaming for his life,
30:25Caligula has him brought forth out of the arena.
30:27The man thinks he's been rescued by the emperor,
30:30at which point Caligula complains about his screaming,
30:32has his tongue cut out and has him thrown back to the wild beasts.
30:36Women would come along to dinner parties.
30:40He would decide which one was the prettiest,
30:42or which of the husbands he would wish to offend,
30:45and then he'd carry them off into a side room
30:48before returning and discussing their sexual prowess.
30:52The basic level of humiliation of members of the Roman aristocracy.
31:02One of the other most famous stories about Caligula
31:05is the story that he supposedly made his horse a consul.
31:09And again, that's the story that has been treated to an extreme interpretation.
31:16Caligula was very fond of his horse, Incitatus,
31:21and this horse lived a life of luxury.
31:24Its stable was made from marble,
31:28it ate from an ivory manger, it had its own house.
31:32This, according to Suetonius, culminates in Caligula deciding
31:35that this horse is going to be made a consul of Rome.
31:40Maybe that's true, maybe that's not.
31:46But perhaps the most notorious story about Caligula
31:49is the claim that he had an incestuous relationship with his sisters,
31:53and one in particular, Drusilla.
31:57His sisters are a really interesting case.
32:01He puts them front and centre,
32:03he presents them as if they were graces or muses
32:08or certainly divinities.
32:10This gives rise to various accusations
32:14that he has had sexual relations with all three of his sisters,
32:18that he pimps out his sisters.
32:21I think we have to view these rumours with a great deal of scepticism.
32:26This probably stems from the fact that early in his reign
32:28he changes the oath of allegiance that is sworn to the emperor
32:33to also include Caligula's sisters.
32:36This seems to have been an unprecedented honour
32:39for members of the imperial family,
32:41and this is perhaps the root of some of the stories of incest
32:44that are preserved by writers like Suetonius and Cassius Dio.
32:46But it does seem clear that he doesn't mind those stories circulating.
32:54Those stories seem to increase his status as being someone
32:58who is able to break all social conventions,
33:02including deeply held moral conventions.
33:04The only other people who can do that are the gods.
33:14Caligula's belief in his own divinity
33:17fuelled an unwavering self-confidence that no-one could touch him,
33:21a confidence enforced by his ever-present
33:24and utterly ruthless Praetorian god.
33:27There's a part of him, I think, that thinks he is invincible.
33:31Whatever he did, he was immune.
33:34The guard was there, the guard would protect him.
33:37He could make fun of people, but there would always be those
33:40who would stand at his side.
33:43He didn't think that they would even dare to take him on.
33:48He didn't think that they would kill him.
33:50Caligula is confident, untouchable, worshipped.
34:09In just four years, he's reduced the Senate to spectators in their own government.
34:14He's mocked them, ignored protocol and forced them to treat him as a god.
34:18His private god, the Praetorian god, is insulted, bypassed and cruelly punished.
34:26Rome is simmering with anger and humiliation.
34:31The very randomness of this violence made everybody afraid.
34:35The fact that he was also erratic in his personal behavior,
34:40that he was sexually rapacious,
34:43that he seized women and subjected them to sexual violence and rape,
34:48that he pretended to be associated with the gods.
34:54He used random violence as an act of terror against the Roman aristocracy.
34:58They were terrified.
35:02A plan is hatched to bring Caligula down.
35:08But the stakes were incredibly high.
35:11Failure meant torture, execution and the destruction of your entire family.
35:16Moving against the Roman emperor was an extremely dangerous activity.
35:23If they found out, you'd get killed.
35:26If your attempted assassination was unsuccessful, you'd get killed.
35:30If your attempted assassination was successful, but you didn't have the kind of political support, you'd get killed.
35:37The risk was massive, but so was the fear of what might happen if no-one stopped him.
35:43And so the planning begins.
35:46Slowly.
35:49In secret.
35:50It's not clear exactly how many people were involved and how many of them were senators.
35:58They took six months to try and find the right opportunity to kill him.
36:03January 24th.
36:05A corridor beneath the Imperial Palace is the place they identify for the hit.
36:10What happens is that during a celebration games in the Appeal Palace...
36:16They found a moment when he would leave the theatre.
36:18He would progress down a corridor and there they would meet him.
36:26Masterminding the assassination attempt, the Praetorian Guard.
36:30The elite team of soldiers assigned as the emperor's personal protection.
36:35Normally, these soldiers were loyal unto death.
36:39But Caligula had made the mistake of even mocking and undermining them.
36:43The Praetorian Guard were the people responsible for looking after, for protecting,
36:47Gaia's.
36:49Leading this group, Cassius Correa.
36:52And it's believed that, for Correa, this was personal.
36:56Cairea, as part of his service on the Praetorian Guard, was often mocked by Caligula for being effeminate.
37:02And when Caligula would hold out his hand for Cairea to kiss it, he would then pull it back and make an obscene gesture mocking Cairea.
37:09Gaius would always give the Praetorian Guard the watchword.
37:14So he was always giving Correa watchwords which would be embarrassing for him to transmit to the troops.
37:21Correa met Caligula in this corridor.
37:35He asked for the watchword. He was given a watchword at which point he pulls out his sword and he strikes Caligula across the face.
37:47Caligula fell down and the fellow conspirators then plunged in their swords.
37:54Blood everywhere.
37:59And then they fled.
38:04The historian Cassius Dio provides us with almost the one funny line.
38:17He says that after three years, nine months and 28 days, Gaius Caligula discovered that he was not a god.
38:24Little Boons, raised on a battlefield, anointed as a god, dies violently in a squalid hallway beneath the Imperial Palace.
38:38But even in death, he appears to have the last laugh.
38:42The aftermath of Caligula's assassination is quite interesting because it kind of reveals the lack of a clear aim on the part of the conspirators.
38:56The Praetorian Guard, having killed Caligula, they then go throughout the Imperial household finding his relatives and putting them to death as well.
39:05But they realise that if they kill off the entire Imperial family, their role as the Praetorian Guard, the elite bodyguards of the Emperor, becomes obsolete.
39:12And actually, it's a much cushier job being stationed in Rome protecting the Emperor than it is being out on the front lines in the provinces.
39:20And so, as they are roaming through the Imperial Palace, they come across Caligula's uncle Claudius.
39:26He thinks he's about to be killed, so he's hiding behind a curtain.
39:31And the Praetorian Guard find him, they pull the curtain back, and instead of killing him, they proclaim him Emperor.
39:36A reputation as one of the most infamous tyrants in history.
39:50A byword for madness, cruelty and excess.
39:55Written off by ancient historians as insane, monstrous and perverse, with stories so wild they sound like mythology.
40:04But was he in fact just damaged goods, shaped as all are by experiences and traumas early in life, and raised to a position for which he was completely unqualified?
40:19We know that Caligula was exposed to a lot. As a very young boy, he was exposed to extreme violence on the front line.
40:27We know that then, as a sexualized teenager, he was exposed to all sorts of vices and depraved sexual activity.
40:38His illness meant that his ability to keep these experiences that he's been exposed to throughout his life at bay was eradicated.
40:52And that's what we see manifesting in all these acts of madness.
40:56A legacy shaped by fear, betrayal and failure.
41:03There's a very famous phrase that Caligula was fond of quoting.
41:09It's a quotation from the Roman tragic playwright, Accius.
41:13And the quote is, let them hate me so long as they fear me.
41:16This totally encapsulates the psychology of this man, the way he thought.
41:23And that's all that matters to him, that they fear me.
41:26They feared him. And they hated him.
41:36But in the end, that fear wasn't enough to protect him.
41:43How will the sands of time judge his legacy?
41:47There is nothing you can point to which will suggest that this man was anything but a monster.
41:54And that seems to have been how he was received, discussed, from within a generation of his life.
42:02Is that fair to him?
42:08Does Caligula deserve the title Killer King?
42:11He's definitely implicated in a lot of deaths.
42:15He was living in a brutal time.
42:18He had seen many of his family murdered.
42:20This was the way in which Roman dynastic politics worked.
42:28There was no sympathy for the dead.
42:31There was no compunction about killing those people who were close to you.
42:40Caligula ascends the imperial throne on a wave of optimism and hope.
42:44He dies a hated autocrat who ruled through fear, violence and personal whim.
42:53He was a terroristic ruler who ruled by hatred, who ruled through fear.
43:00He wanted to be known as somebody who killed others with an arbitrary, almost random violence.
43:13Without doubt.
43:16A Killer King.
43:17A Killer King.
43:18A Killer King.
43:19A Killer King.
43:32Transcription by CastingWords
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