Status
Available
Call number
Series
Publication
Penguin Classics (2015), Edition: 01, 64 pages
Description
This edition of the Roman historian Suetonius' life of the notorious emperor Caligula includes an introduction giving historical background, the Latin text,and commentary/notes on the text.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Petroglyph
This was a fun read!
Written some eighty years after Caligula's death, Suetonius devotes about a fifth of his account of the emperor's life to his immediate ancestry, the circumstances leading up to his ascension to the throne, and some of the public works and his initial favourability ratings.
The culture that Suetonius describes is undeniably foreign/ancient -- things like decimating legionnaires, honorable suicide, or capital punishment for minor transgressions are spoken of as though they are entirely normal. But at the same time the genre of this text is undeniably a biography, which makes the whole thing very recognizable and eminently easy to read. And then there's the fun of reading outrageous gossip about the high and mighty.
All in all: very enjoyable.
Written some eighty years after Caligula's death, Suetonius devotes about a fifth of his account of the emperor's life to his immediate ancestry, the circumstances leading up to his ascension to the throne, and some of the public works and his initial favourability ratings.
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After that, he says, the account must be concerned with Caligula the Monster. A long list of grievances follows, detailing Caligula's megalomaniacal thuggishness and his brutal and wanton cruelty-for-cruelty's-sake. All the incest, the indiscriminate wife-stealing, the dinner table tortures, and a whole host of whimsical but vicious bullying and racketeering serve to paint a picture of an unrestrained megalomaniac out to display his self-aggrandizement at any given opportunity. The culture that Suetonius describes is undeniably foreign/ancient -- things like decimating legionnaires, honorable suicide, or capital punishment for minor transgressions are spoken of as though they are entirely normal. But at the same time the genre of this text is undeniably a biography, which makes the whole thing very recognizable and eminently easy to read. And then there's the fun of reading outrageous gossip about the high and mighty.
All in all: very enjoyable.
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LibraryThing member meandmybooks
Horrifying, but also weirdly fascinating. It's sort of amazing that Caligula was tolerated as emperor as long as he was (nearly four years), given the level of his vicious, flamboyant insanity, but according to Suetonius he was initially quite popular among the common people and the military. He
Furthermore, Suetonius tells us that, always desperate for the spotlight, ”Anger incited him [Caligula] to a flood of verbiage; he moved about excitedly while speaking, and his voice carried a great distance. At the start of each speech he would threaten to 'draw the sword which he had forged in his midnight study'; yet he so despised more elegant and melodious styles that he discounted Seneca...
Gaius [Caligula] practiced many other arts – most enthusiastically too. He made appearances as a Thracian gladiator and a charioteer, as a singer and a dancer; he would fight with real weapons and drive chariots in the circuses that he had built in many places. Indeed, he was so proud of his singing and dancing that he could not resist the temptation of supporting the tragic actors at public performances, and would repeat their gestures by way of praise or criticism. On the very day of his death he seems to have ordered an all-night festival so that he could take advantage of the free-and-easy atmosphere to make his stage debut. He often danced even at night, and once, at the close of the second watch, summoned three senators of consular rank to the palace; arriving half-dead with fear, they were conducted to a stage upon which, amid a tremendous racket of flutes and castanets, Gaius suddenly burst, dressed in a shawl and an ankle length tunic; he performed a song and dance, and disappeared as suddenly as he had entered.”
One wonders whether it was ultimately his erratic savagery or his sheer ludicrousness that inspired the tribunes and Praetorian prefects who ultimately murdered him. Likely both, I suppose. Anyway, Suetonius's narrative, offered here as No. 17 in Penguin's “Little Black Classics” series and extracted from Robert Graves's translation of Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars, is appalling but... lively.
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started by staging some spectacularly extravagant performances and making some dramatic shows of sympathy for wronged Roman citizens, and it required truly egregious behavior to exhaust the tolerance of his supporters. But he was up to the task and then some. Unrestrained lechery, exhibitionism, egomania, sadism, paranoia... Suetonius tells us that ”He nearly assumed a royal diadem then and there, transforming an ostensible principate into an actual kingdom. However, after his courtiers reminded him that he already outranked any king or local ruler, he insisted on being treated as a god – arranging for the most revered or artistically famous statues of the gods, including that of Jupiter at Olympia, to be brought to Greece and have their heads replaced by his own.... He established a shrine to his own godhead, with priests, the costliest possible victims, and a life-sized golden image, which was dressed every day in clothes identical with those that he happened to be wearing.”Furthermore, Suetonius tells us that, always desperate for the spotlight, ”Anger incited him [Caligula] to a flood of verbiage; he moved about excitedly while speaking, and his voice carried a great distance. At the start of each speech he would threaten to 'draw the sword which he had forged in his midnight study'; yet he so despised more elegant and melodious styles that he discounted Seneca...
Gaius [Caligula] practiced many other arts – most enthusiastically too. He made appearances as a Thracian gladiator and a charioteer, as a singer and a dancer; he would fight with real weapons and drive chariots in the circuses that he had built in many places. Indeed, he was so proud of his singing and dancing that he could not resist the temptation of supporting the tragic actors at public performances, and would repeat their gestures by way of praise or criticism. On the very day of his death he seems to have ordered an all-night festival so that he could take advantage of the free-and-easy atmosphere to make his stage debut. He often danced even at night, and once, at the close of the second watch, summoned three senators of consular rank to the palace; arriving half-dead with fear, they were conducted to a stage upon which, amid a tremendous racket of flutes and castanets, Gaius suddenly burst, dressed in a shawl and an ankle length tunic; he performed a song and dance, and disappeared as suddenly as he had entered.”
One wonders whether it was ultimately his erratic savagery or his sheer ludicrousness that inspired the tribunes and Praetorian prefects who ultimately murdered him. Likely both, I suppose. Anyway, Suetonius's narrative, offered here as No. 17 in Penguin's “Little Black Classics” series and extracted from Robert Graves's translation of Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars, is appalling but... lively.
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LibraryThing member SashaM
Fascinating and clear look at a gory Roman emperor. Easy to read and make me want to know more
LibraryThing member TheCrow2
A short story about the life and reign of Caligula, origin of the widely known legends about him.
Language
Original language
Latin
ISBN
0141397926 / 9780141397924
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