The plans for the campaign in Germania were drawn up in conjunction with other measures in the Greek and eastern parts of the Empire. There was a string of Roman-dominated client kingdoms extending from the Bosporus through Thrace and Syria to Palestine, some of which Tiberius had brought under Roman administration as a result of domestic political upheavals and the spread of Parthian influence. In the year 37 Caligula had already placed two kings on the throne, Julius Agrippa in Judaea and Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Commagene, and had supplied both with substantial gifts of funds. Both of them had spent part of their youth in Rome and continued to reside there after their coronations. Agrippa, who had been in close contact with Caligula since his time on Capri at the latest (but possibly as early as his stay in the house of Antonia), was even granted the insignia of Praetorian rank by the Senate after Caligula became emperor.
At the end of the year 38 Caligula granted further territories in Asia Minor and the Near East. Three sons of Cotys, the king of Thrace — Rhoemetalces, Polemon II, and Cotys, who as great-grandsons of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra had family ties to the emperor — were granted kingdoms, as were Sohaemus, the scion of an indigenous princely family, and Mithridates, a great-grandson of the famous Mithridates VI. Taken together their kingdoms stretched from the region of the Black Sea to Lesser Armenia. Caligula had these grants confirmed by the Senate, and formally installed the kings himself in solemn ceremonies on the Rostra in the Forum. It is possible that Caligula envisioned these new client kingdoms as part of more extensive plans for the eastern regions of the Empire. Thus it is reported that he intended to rebuild the palace of Polycrates on Samos and also to dig a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Both projects would have aligned him vividly with the traditions of Hellenistic kings, and also with the great dictator Julius Caesar, who had made the most recent attempt to create a canal there (following the Corinthian tyrant Periander and King Demetrius Poliorcetes of Macedonia). More will be said below about Caligula’s plans for a journey to Alexandria and the East, which took on more definite shape two years later and owed much to the example of his father, Germanicus.
What sort of picture would the Roman senatorial aristocracy have had of Caligula, then twenty-six years old, toward the end of the year 38? How did all his varied activities fit together? Within a short time he had acted directly and without scruple to rid himself of both rivals for the throne and of Tiberius’s powerful favorites. Within Roman political institutions he had skillfully played the role of an emperor willing to accommodate the Senate. In his own household he had established himself on a plane above his fellow nobles with lavish displays of great extravagance. At the Circus and the theater he had shared the enthusiasm of the common people and won their hearts. He had acquired a political profile with a broad spectrum of sensible and necessary measures, ranging from expanding the equestrian order to improving Rome’s water supply, projects to which virtually no objections could be raised. He had visited cities in Sicily, reorganized the regions on the eastern borders of the Empire, maintained friendly relations with rulers in the East, and planned extensive military actions against the Germanic tribes, which if successful would significantly strengthen his position as emperor. And he accomplished all this within twenty months, despite having been confined to his bed by illness perhaps for two of them.
It is safe to assume that some of the venerable old aristocrats of consular rank who set the tone in the Senate had begun to feel uneasy. Disquieting stories circulated: When Caligula was entertaining some royal guests — perhaps the kings named above — at a banquet in Rome, they began quarreling about the respective nobility of their ancestry. In response Caligula is said to have quoted Homer: “Let there be one king, one ruler!” (Iliad 2.204–5).
THREE
The Conflicts Escalate
“As for Gaius, he administered the Empire quite high-mindedly during the first and second years of his reign. By exercising moderation he made great advances in popularity both with the Romans themselves and with their subjects.” With these words Josephus characterizes the period of Caligula’s reign described up to this point (Jos. Ant. 18.256). The emperor stressed his respect for the Senate at the very beginning of 39 by some symbolic acts. When he assumed his second consulship on 1 January and resigned from it after only thirty days, he made a point of taking the oaths on the Rostra in the Forum as consuls normally did, behaving as one senator among others. His fellow consul, L. Apronius Caesianus, remained in office for six months, and Caligula was replaced as consul by Sanquinius Maximus, the city prefect. “During these and the following days,” writes Cassius Dio in an abrupt end to his account of the start of the year 39, “many of the foremost men perished in fulfillment of sentences of condemnation (for not a few of those who had been released from prison were punished for the very reasons that had led to their imprisonment by Tiberius), and many others of less prominence in gladiatorial combats. In fact, there was nothing but slaughter” (Dio 59.13.2–3).
Figure 4. Bust of Caligula. Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek 637a (Inv. 2687). Photo: Jo Selsing.
What had happened? What had led suddenly to these events, which come as a complete surprise after the first two years of Caligula’s rule? Why were so many men condemned, including numerous “leaders” (prōtoi), a term by which Dio usually means the highest category of senators, the consulares or former consuls? That some of them had been prosecuted for similar crimes under Tiberius and then released by Caligula suggests that they were convicted of the crime of maiestas. And since there are no indications at all of defamatory writings or verbal insults to the young emperor, the crime may have taken the most serious form of all, namely a conspiracy. Dio’s reference to verdicts handed down by a court shows that the conspirators were found guilty in orderly trials in accordance with the law, presumably conducted by the Senate. But Dio, our sole source, who usually makes an effort to maintain chronological order, offers no information on the precise course of events and says not a word about whether there was actually a conspiracy or whether the condemned were just snared by denunciations. There are other passages in Book 59 of his Roman History in which Dio sometimes fails to discuss the motives behind actions, but here, at the decisive turning point of Caligula’s reign, one has the impression that the author — or possibly the sources on which he based his account — intentionally passes over the background to these events in silence.
Other sources provide no further help. Suetonius just speaks in general terms about various conspiracies and provides a date only for the last one, which succeeded. Nor do Caligula’s contemporaries Seneca and Philo show any interest in conspiracies against the emperor that might explain his later actions. Given the limited information provided by the sources, most modern biographies of Caligula shed no light on the early months of the year 39, the phase in which the relationship between emperor and aristocracy underwent a fundamental transformation.