Coming soon to Emperors of Rome, we'll be doing some by request episodes.

You see, when we do these episodes, we're looking just at the Emperors,

but there's lots of other interesting characters, significant events,

public buildings or Roman ways of life that we have to gloss over.

So if there's anything in particular that you'd like to know more detail about during the Roman Empire, say during the

Giulio-Claudean dynasties, drop us a line on Facebook or on Twitter, and we'll do some by request

episodes not too long after Nero. But now here's the podcast. Arve, and welcome to Empress of Rome, a podcast series about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Riana Nevins, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode X IV, The Madness of Calicular.

While in his early days of rural Calicular may have shown promise as an emperor,

that didn't exactly last for long.

And the deeds that he is best known for should not be spoken of in modest

podcasts. Of course this is anything but a modest podcast but before we delve

into his deviances Dr. Ian and Evans tells us where we get our knowledge about

Caligula. Well we've got two main sources, we've got Suitonius's life which is, you know,

gives us a lot of detail and we've got a Greek source from a hundred years later

Diocassius. What we don't have and we really would like is the Tacitus bit on Caligula. So Tacitus is Annals should cover from the

death of Augustus right up to 68 CE when Nero dies. So he wrote about it, but we're missing a bit.

We've got some bits about him being on Capri in Tacidas.

But Tacidas would be a really great source to have.

What we've got instead, really is our main source is Suetonius, which I love to read, and

...