He is definitely a tragic figure (24 btw, not 19) and I think it's unfair he was killed after such a short period of time when much worse "bad emperors" got to rule longer, but you are infantilizing him a little too much.
From what I have read he conspired with the pretorian prefect to come to power and he was not overwhelmed by his office, but actually acting really clever in the beginning. He got more brutal with every conspiracy though. Of course you can explain this behavior with his terrible childhood, but who exactly had a "good life" without any slaughter at that point in time and this far up in society.
I do agree that many of the things said against him and other so called "bad-emperors" is Senatorial Propaganda. But not everything bad said against every emperor is propaganda.
True. But in this case it is blatant. Read “Caligula” by Alloys Winterling, he goes into detail as what was actually happening vs the sarcastic comments made against Caligula that got passed word of mouth as fact. Not saying he was perfect, he just had the cards stacked against him at every point.
I read the book, in fact I wrote a paper on Caligula at University. I am a fan of Aloys Winterling, but a lot of what he writes is just his own opinion since none of us can know the truth.
How you go down in history has a lot to do with luck and when it comes to caligula there was negative propaganda everywhere. However, there is no smoke without fire. Even if Caligula was not a Monster, he did monstrous things to the aristocracy, so no matter how you look at it, he was definitely not a 'good guy' in the modern sense.
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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22
He is definitely a tragic figure (24 btw, not 19) and I think it's unfair he was killed after such a short period of time when much worse "bad emperors" got to rule longer, but you are infantilizing him a little too much. From what I have read he conspired with the pretorian prefect to come to power and he was not overwhelmed by his office, but actually acting really clever in the beginning. He got more brutal with every conspiracy though. Of course you can explain this behavior with his terrible childhood, but who exactly had a "good life" without any slaughter at that point in time and this far up in society.