Was Caligula mad—or just misunderstood?

Murder? Check. Incest? Maybe. The brutal exercise of political power? Definitely. In the annals of infamous emperors, few come close to Caligula, whose reign as the Roman Empire’s third emperor made him a member of a small club of the world’s most hated—and remembered—rulers.

But was Caligula really that bad?

“He was a terrible emperor,” says Anthony A. Barrett, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia and author of Caligula: The Abuse of Power and other research on the notorious ruler. “But he wasn’t that bad if we’re using bad in the sense of extravagant, ridiculous behavior.”

Here’s how the young Roman emperor earned his bad reputation—and why it may be worth rethinking his brief, brutal reign.

Who was Caligula? 

Born Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, he was the son of one of Rome’s most revered leaders, the general Germanicus. But Caligula—or “little boot,” as he was dubbed during childhood—didn’t inherit his father’s leadership skills. Instead, after his father’s untimely death, Caligula spent much of his childhood in exile, only to return to Rome as the uneasy protégé of Tiberius, the paranoid emperor who had cast him and his family out. When Tiberius died in 37 A.D., 24-year-old Caligula became Rome’s next emperor.

What happened next is the stuff of legend: A rule characterized by cruelty, excess, caprice, and political wrangling. But at first, says Barrett, the youthful emperor looked like he might follow in his respected father’s footsteps. “No one knew anything about him,” he says. “They probably thought they could control him.” Young, charming, and seemingly capable, Caligula began his reign reasonably.

Mental issues? 

But then things changed. About six months into his reign, the emperor’s demeanor changed. Some historians attribute the personality shift to a severe illness. But to Barrett, it’s simpler—the honeymoon was over, and the pressure was on. He believes that once the reality of the administrative and political burdens of being emperor became clear, the immature and unprepared leader struggled to live up to his title. Without training and lacking the political skills to keep the trust of both his subjects and the Senate, Caligula began to falter.

Soon, Caligula was striking out at his enemies, demanding expensive and ill-advised military campaigns, and even ordering the death of his wife. Rumors circulated that the hedonistic emperor had sexual relationships with his own sisters, Julia Livilla and Agrippina the Younger (the future mother of Emperor Nero). Caligula eventually exiled them after discovering what seems to have been behind-the-scenes scheming against his reign. He courted controversy, goading and humiliating the Senate and ordering assassinations left and right.

This capricious behavior—and accusations he did things like pit physically incapable gladiators against wild beasts for sport—has long fueled speculation that Caligula suffered from some kind of mood disorder or mental illness. Retroactive diagnoses blame everything from epileptic psychosis to encephalitis.

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But Barrett thinks Caligula was sane—a fact that sheds an even more sinister light on his casual brutality.

“Right up until the end, Caligula made rational decisions,” says Barrett, comparing him more to a Joseph Stalin as opposed to a deranged Hitler figure. “He could distinguish reality from fantasy.” But the monarch’s reality was one suffused in total power—a privilege he wielded strategically and at will.

That power would have gone to anyone’s head. “When he entered the city, full and absolute power was at once put into his hands by the unanimous consent of the senate and the mob,” claimed Suetonius, a historian known for his biographies of the Caesars. From the first, though, Caligula’s imperial might was bathed in blood of thousands of animal sacrifices. “So great was the public rejoicing,” said Suetonius, “that within the next three months…more than a hundred and sixty thousand victims are said to have been slain in sacrifice.”

Trustworthy sources?

Despite those excesses, says Barrett, it’s important to question the accounts of Caligula’s contemporaries. Their work was informed by his political enemies and distorted by hearsay. The most trustworthy chronicler of his day, Tacitus, did write about Caligula, but unfortunately his work has been lost. The histories that remained contain “ridiculous and absurd” accounts of the emperor, says Barrett, who compares Suetonius and his contemporary, Cassius Dio, to tabloid reporters in search of a scoop on the embattled emperor.

Caligula’s behavior was definitely cruel but likely a little less juicy than Dio and Suetonius would have you believe. Take Caligula’s widely reported demands to be treated like a god. That would have been standard practice in Roman colonies, which were forced to recognize the so-called “imperial cult” of Rome. But Barrett says there is no evidence like coinage that would support a similar demand within Rome or even Italy.

Then there’s the infamous tale of making his horse a consul—a threat that never came to fruition. Barrett attributes that episode to an annoyed emperor mocking his enemies in the senate—enemies he considered so incompetent and feckless, they could easily be replaced by an animal.

Bad reputation?

But even if Caligula never engaged in the most outrageous exploits attributed to him, the fact of his outsized and extremely long-lasting reputation remains. What accounts for the ongoing notoriety of a man whose rule lasted less than four years nearly two millennia ago?

“Humans love villains,” says Barrett, and Caligula enjoys ongoing fame thanks to a combination of personal charisma and stubborn enmity among his contemporaries. There’s another factor, says Barrett: The passage of time. Because so many years have passed since his exploits, Barrett says, “Caligula belongs to a world that is so alien to us now that we can enjoy his villainy with a clear conscience.”