Caligula: a biography

by Winterling, Aloys

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Title Statements

Full title :Caligula : a biography / Aloys Winterling ; translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider, Glenn W. Most, and Paul Psoinos.

Summary

The infamous emperor Caligula ruled Rome from A.D. 37 to 41 as a tyrant who ultimately became a monster. An exceptionally smart and cruelly witty man, Caligula made his contemporaries worship him as a god. He drank pearls dissolved in vinegar and ate food covered in gold leaf. He forced men and women of high rank to have sex with him, turned part of his palace into a brothel, and committed incest with his sisters. He wanted to make his horse a consul. Torture and executions were the order of the day. Both modern and ancient interpretations have concluded from this alleged evidence that Caligula was insane. But was he?

This biography tells a different story of the well-known emperor. In a deft account written for a general audience, Aloys Winterling opens a new perspective on the man and his times. Basing Caligula on a thoroughly new assessment of the ancient sources, he sets the emperor's story into the context of the political system and the changing relations between the Senate and the emperor during Caligula's time and finds a new rationality explaining his notorious brutality. --Book Jacket.

Edition Statements

Publication Date:©2011.
Edition:[English ed.]

Publication Statements

Publisher(s):University of California Press
Place of Publication:Berkeley
Language:eng
Publication Date:©2011.

Notes

Originally published [in German]: München : C.H. Beck, 2003.

The Physical Object

Description:vii, 229 pages : : illustrations ; : 22 cm.

Edition Identifiers

ISBN:9780520248953, 0520248953
oclc:ocn761463085
LC Classification:DG283
Dewey Decimal:937/.07092

Introduction: A mad emperor? -- Childhood and youth -- Two years as princeps -- The conflicts escalate -- Five months of monarchy -- Murder on the Palatine -- Conclusion: Inventing the mad emperor -- Epilogue to the English edition.

Subjects

Biographies Caligula,, Emperor of Rome Empereurs -- Biographies. -- Rome Emperors Emperors -- Biography. -- Rome History Rome -- Histoire -- 37-41 (Caligula) Rome -- History -- Caligula, 37-41 Rome (Empire)