Emperor Caligula: When Rome's Emperor Lost His Mind

Caligula started as Rome's most beloved ruler and ended as its most feared madman. In just four years, he went from promising young emperor to a tyrant who declared himself a living god, had conversations with statues, and committed acts so bizarre that Romans wondered if he was possessed by demons.

He allegedly made his favorite horse Incitatus a senator and planned to make him consul, built the horse a marble stable with an ivory manger, and invited it to dinner parties where it drank wine from golden goblets. He declared war on Neptune and ordered his soldiers to stab the ocean and collect seashells as "spoils of war" from his victory over the sea god. He built a two-mile floating bridge across the Bay of Naples just so he could ride across it wearing Alexander the Great's breastplate, purely to prove a fortune teller wrong.

But Caligula's madness turned deadly. He had senators executed on a whim, forced fathers to watch their sons die, committed incest with all three of his sisters, and demanded to be worshipped as a god in temples across the empire. He emptied Rome's treasury on extravagant parties and projects, once spending an entire province's tax revenue on a single banquet. After four years of terror, his own Praetorian Guard assassinated him in a palace tunnel.

This episode explores what turned Rome's golden boy into a monster - brain fever, absolute power, or genuine insanity?

Keywords: weird history, Caligula, Roman emperors, ancient Rome, Roman history, mad emperors, Imperial Rome, Roman scandals, insane rulers, ancient history

Perfect for listeners who love: Roman history, tales of madness and power, imperial scandals, and rulers who went completely off the rails.

Another unbelievable episode from Weird History - where power and insanity collide.