Drusilla was married to Lucius Cassius Longinus; Caligula gave her instead to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, member of one of the wealthiest surviving republican dynasties, long associated with Augustus' family.33 His father (cos. a.d. 6) was one of those allegedly described by Augustus as suitable for imperial office (see p. 204f. above); he was related to the younger Iulia's husband Aemilius Paullus, exiled in a.d. 8; and his sister Aemilia Lepida had been the wife of Caligula's brother Drusus. Caligula trusted Lepidus to the extent that they were said to have been homosexual lovers, and more significantly he gave his seal-ring to Lepidus during his serious illness in a.d. 37 — the customary sign that Lepidus, as Drusilla's husband, was to administer the household if Caligula were to die without issue.
33 Syme 1970 (в 178) ch. 4; 1986 (a 95); PIR.
When Drusilla died, Caligula had her deified (23 September 38).There was nothing un-Roman about her cult: as a Julian, she was associated with Venus, the ancestor of the Iulii. The title 'Panthea' associated her with the Magna Mater, but that cult too (notwithstanding its hellenistic origins) had been at home in Rome for over two centuries. And there was nothing 'oriental' about the new goddess' elephant-drawn biga (male divi like Augustus had their image drawn by a quadriga of elephants), nor about the requirement that Roman women should swear by Drusilla (Claudius made the women of his household swear by the diva Livia).
The deification of Drusilla raises the question of whether Caligula had a 'religious policy', wanting to be adored as a god in the style of hellenistic monarchs. 'Emperor-worship' can no longer be dismissed as an irrational oriental superstition (see ch. 16 for a discussion of the various cults); if Caligula saw himself, or his office, as divine, then this was an attempt to express the reality of his position as a mediator between the Roman community and the world of the gods. It was not fantastic to express this position as analogous to that of Hercules, the man whose labours made him divine (and, like later emperors with a special devotion to Hercules, Caligula liked to be seen as a gladiator, imposing law and order upon wild beasts and criminals), nor strange to commune with Jupiter. That monotheism made it impossible for the Jews to accept the emperor as divine in this sense was beyond the comprehension of Caligula, as of so many other Romans. Recent excavations suggest that some anecdotes about Caligula's claims to divinity (eg. that Castor and Pollux were his 'doorkeepers') were based on his building activities on and around the Palatine.34
A number of the peculiar stories told about Caligula suggest that, more clearly than other emperors, he saw that the emperor's role symbolized the struggle of man against nature. Although unable to swim, he seems to have been particularly keen to impose his will upon the sea: according to Suetonius' grandfather, the astrologer Thrasyllus had once told Tiberius that Caligula had no more chance of being emperor than of riding a horse across the sea. To refute him, he built a bridge of boats from Baiae to Puteoli and rode across. Soon after his accession he braved the elements to sail to the island of Planasia, where his mother and brother had died in exile, in order to demonstrate his piety towards them; and control over the Ocean also featured in his military expeditions. In a successful emperor, such attempts to control nature were divine, but — like Xerxes' bridge over the Hellespont - they might also be the acts of a tyrant. It is not surprising that Caligula is reported to have suffered from nightmares in which he pitted himself against the Mediterranean Sea.
34 Buildings and religion: Wiseman 1987 (e 140); Barrett 1989 (c 553) ch. 13.
Sexual licence was another characteristic of the typical tyrant. Stories of incest and homosexuality have to be understood as representing Caligula's tight political control over his family, and over others who might threaten him. We are told that he intervened to prevent a marriage between C. Calpurnius Piso (the man who was to lead the conspiracy of a.d. 65) and Livia Orestilla, presumably a relative of Livia's; he slept with her himself, to ensure that, if there were any children, it would not be clear that they were Piso's. Caligula took steps to control other Pisones, too. When Lucius Piso (consul in 27, and urban prefect under Tiberius) was proconsul of Africa in 39/40, he felt it necessary to remove the Third Legion from the proconsul's command (a decision which later emperors did not think it politic to rescind).
The threats represented by his sisters as well as by more distant relatives would be much less immediate if Caligula had a child of his own. In 38, he married Lollia Paulina, the granddaughter of Augustus' general (and Tiberius' enemy) the consul of 21 в.с. Paulina did not please Caligula, and she was divorced after a year (but survived to rival Agrippina for the hand of Claudius). His last wife was Milonia Caesonia, whose mother Vistilia was famous for marrying six husbands in succession; one of Caesonia's stepfathers, Cnaeus Domitius Corbulo (father of Nero's general), was given a suffect consulship in 39. Caesonia provided Caligula with a daughter, lulia Drusilla; he was delighted, and his position vis-a-vis potential successors was greatly strengthened. Marcus Lepidus was no longer the heir-apparent, and could be dispensed with.
In the autumn of 39, Caligula claimed to have uncovered a major conspiracy to replace him with Lepidus; although the exact sequence of events is impossible to reconstruct, it is clear that he acted swiftly and decisively. He publicized the striking failure of the consuls to offer prayers on his behalf on his birthday on 31 August. Cnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, consul in a.d. 26 and in command of the upper Rhine legions since 30, could be represented as constituting a military threat. Caligula gave orders for a major military force to be concentrated in Upper Germany, and marched north himself with the praetorians (he pretended that the object of the expedition was to levy Batavians for his personal bodyguard). Lentulus Gaetulicus' own legions were overawed by the display of imperial might, and he was executed; a considerable number of tribunes and centurions had to be retired.
Caligula had kept Lepidus, Agrippina and Livilla by his side during this expedition. Lepidus was now formally tried and executed; correspondence was produced incriminating both sisters, and Caligula sent to Rome three daggers with which he claimed they had intended to kill him. Agrippina and Livilla were condemned on the standard charge of adultery, and exiled. In a parody of the return of their grandfather Drusus' and father Germanicus' ashes to Rome, Caligula forced Agrippina to return bearing those of her 'lover' Lepidus. The future emperor Vespasian, who was praetor in that year, distinguished himself by his attacks on Agrippina in the Senate. The records of the Arval Brethren inform us that on 27 October 39, the promagister L. Salvius Otho sacrificed in thanksgiving for the unmasking of the conspiracy. The deaths of Calvisius Sabinus (the legate of Pannonia) and his wife at about the same time may have been connected with the conspiracy, pretended or real.35