Hey everyone Sebastian here as the title of today's episode suggests I'm going to be discussing the Roman Emperor

Caligula if you're going to talk about the life of Caligula then you also have to explore

some pretty dark subject matter including

sexual violence of all sorts. So if you do not want to hear that or you are

listening with younger people be advised.

Thanks so much and enjoy the show. There's a story that in the year 39 AD, the Roman Emperor Gaius, better known as

Caligula, embarked on a military campaign so utterly ridiculous,

vain, and ultimately useless that it became remembered as one of the most insulting uses of the Roman legions in the

empire's long history. We're told that by the year 39, Caligula had completely lost his mind and was being ruled by only his most base instincts.

But despite the Emperor's alleged insanity, he still had a keen sense of his own legacy.

In Roman society, there was no glory greater than military glory, and the young Emperor

was the first person to ascend to his position without having

first padded his resume with prestigious commands and battlefield victories.

Caligula may have been the son of Germanicus who a generation earlier had been celebrated as one of Rome's finest generals.

But by the age of 26, Caligula had yet to personally command soldiers in the field. So now in the year 39 he sought to remedy that.

Now if we're to believe the ancient literary sources the campaign of year 39 amounted to

little more than a cruel joke on the dignity of the legions.

Suetonius, the ancient Roman historian most hostile to Caligula, tells us that while

the young emperor had hoped to imitate his late father, Germanicus, and score some impressive victories against the tribes on the far side of the Rhine,

he quickly proved too cowardly and incompetent to do anything of substance.

And so the campaign devolved into a kind of absurd theater.

According to Satonius, Caligula was too erratic and pigeon-hearted to take on any real

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