я Tacitus does not survive for Caligula: we have Dio ux and Suet. Calig. The acta of the Arval Brethren survive for the period January 58 to June 40 (= GCN 1-11). Caligula's personality continues to attract interpretations in terms of psychosis. The most far-reaching attempt at a rehabilitation remains Balsdon 1934 (c 331). For a conservative account, see Barrett 1989 (c 333).
n Timpe 1962 (c 403)', for date of acclamation and recusatio, Jakobson and Cotton 198) (c 358).
Communities and officials in East and West swore their loyalty to Caligula and to his domus. Caligula's speech at Tiberius' funeral on 3 April emphasized that he was Germanicus' son, and proclaimed a return to the style of Augustus. Although the dead emperor's apotheosis was duly reported, as Augustus' had been, he was too unpopular for the Senate to grant him divine honours. (The mint at Lyons erroneously struck aurei and denarii depicting Tiberius as divine.) Caligula promised formally to adopt Gemellus and honoured him as princeps iuventutis. This both labelled him as too young to be a serious alternative to Caligula, and removed any justification his supporters might have for resentment against the emperor.[420]
The immediate requirement if the new regime was to establish itself was the distribution of beneficia to Romans of all classes. Tiberius' will had promised the praetorians a donative of 5 00 sesterces each; by giving them twice as much, Caligula set the precedent that the loyalty of the guard should be bought by their new imperator, instead of being rewarded by the old one at his death. The fact that sesterces representing the emperor addressing his praetorian cohorts appear to have been produced throughout his reign suggests that these donatives were repeated. Caligula also demonstrated his care for the people; inscriptions confirm that 75 sesterces were distributed to the entire citizen population of Rome on 1 June and 19 July. In pointed contrast to Tiberius, Caligula spared no expense in providing the plebs with games; the very first privilege he requested from the Senate was for permission to exceed the statutory number of gladiators. He is also said to have returned the right to elect praetors to the comitia. What that meant in practice was that potential candidates for the praetorship — notably the aediles - would try to win popularity by putting on much more lavish games than they had needed to under Tiberius. Caligula also inaugurated a grandiose programme of public building, on the Palatine hill and elsewhere, to make up for Tiberius' years of neglect. It will have been these plans, rather than the distributions of cash (which cannot have come to more than 150 million sesterces) that lie behind the accusadon that Caligula squandered the 2.7 billion sesterces reported to have been left by Tiberius.
At the same time, Caligula did what he could to win the support of the upper classes; he refused the title pater patriae on the grounds that he was too young, recalled exiles, and made a public show of burning Tiberius' private papers without (he claimed, falsely) having read the contents. An early sestertius with the legend 'For Citizens Saved' advertises his claim to have restored the security of the law. The backlog of legal business for which Tiberius' absence from Rome was blamed was tackled by adding a fifth panel of jurors and allowing magistrates' sentences to be carried out without the need for imperial confirmation.31
The new emperor's policy towards client kings should also be seen primarily as an attempt to ensure that the network of hellenistic rulers which was an integral part of the Roman empire had close personal links with the reigning Caesar. The fact that some of them were related to Caligula through Antony, and some had been brought up together with him in the house of Antonia the Younger, also helped to bind them and their territorial resources to him; but the great-grandson of Antony had no grand plan to resolve the conflict between East and West.32 The three Thracian princes, Cotys, Polemo and Rhoemetalces, to whom he granted the kingdoms of Lesser Armenia, Pontus and eastern Thrace, were probably cousins. The son of the last king of Commagene was given back his father's kingdom, plus the taxes extracted by the Romans over the intervening twenty years. The Jewish prince Marcus Iulius Agrippa (usually known as Herod Agrippa I) was also presented with extensive domains. We should be sceptical of later accusations that these kings trained Caligula in the ways of oriental (ie. hellenistic) despotism.
Caligula was particularly keen to draw attention to his family relationships in order to stress that (by implication, unlike Tiberius) he deserved loyalty because he was a Caesar by descent and not just by adoption. He went in person to bring back to Rome the ashes of his exiled mother and brother Nero for interment in the mausoleum built for the Caesars by Augustus. Coins show his mother Agrippina and grandfather Agrippa, his brothers Nero and Drusus on horseback, and his sisters Agrippina, Drusilla and lulia Livilla holding the attributes of 'Security', 'Concord' and 'Good Fortune'. The three sisters were given the honours due to Vestal Virgins. Caligula's uncle, Claudius (who had not been adopted into the imperial household), was honoured as befitted Germanicus' brother; he became Caligula's colleague in his first consulship, held from 1 July to 31 August (so as not to impair the respect due to the regular consuls). The memory of Livia was also honoured: Caligula began the construction of a temple and cult, voted but never undertaken at her death. When his grandmother Antonia died on 1 May, the prestige of the imperial family was emphasized again by the grant of similar honours.
The losers were those who had supported Tiberius. It is hardly
» ADLOCVT СОН, OB CIVES SERVATOS. For Caligula's coinage, cf. Sutherland 1987 (в }j8) chs. 26-9; GCN 81-6. Congiaria: Fasti Ostienses= GCN 31 = AN 174. Building programme: Thornton 1989 (p 594). The 2.7 billion sesterces was perhaps the value of the patrimoniunr. Suet. Ca/ig. 37.3.
12 Ceaujescu 1973 (c 337) (at a time when Rumania was seeking to play a similar role as mediator between East and West). Cf. Sherk 42; Braund 1984 (c 254) 41-6; Sullivan 1983 (e 1224) (Judaea).
surprising that Gemellus was soon required to commit suicide on the charge of having taken an antidote, ie. implicitly accusing Caligula of wanting to poison him. Caligula executed Tiberius' long-term associate Marcus Iunius Silanus (cos. a.d. i 5), the father of his deceased wife Iunia Claudilla, and presumably a supporter of Gemellus. Caligula accused him of attempting a coup while he was away, possibly during his trip to recover his mother's ashes. Macro, too, soon met his end: Caligula had no intention of making the mistake of being as dependent upon him as Tiberius had been on Sejanus. It is interesting that while later tradition accuses Caligula of having been too friendly with client kings, there are no references to his being under the influence of his freedmen or even prefects: Caligula did not shift the responsibility for his own actions onto others.
The way in which Caligula built up support and eliminated potential opposition shows that the new emperor had learnt a great deal from Tiberius. These executions also suggest that attempts to divide his reign into a 'good' beginning followed by unremitting atrocities, or even lunacy, are misplaced. It is useless to date the turning-point to before the death of Antonia (two months after his accession), an illness in the autumn of a.d. 37 which is supposed to have affected his brain, or the death of his sister Drusilla on 10 June 38. (According to the ancient sources, Drusilla was so dear to him that he was accused of incest with her, and modern historians have suggested that she was a 'restraining influence' on him.) We cannot judge how genuine Caligula's affection for his sisters was; but it is clear that he knew from the start that their children, and their husbands, were his rivals. We are told that when his sister Agrippina and her husband, Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, had a son on 15 December 3 7, Caligula insultingly suggested that he be named after Claudius. The death of Ahenobarbus in 39 meant that Agrippina and her child — the later Nero — were not an immediate threat.