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British and American archaeologists digging in the Roman Forum said yesterday they had uncovered evidence to suggest that the emperor Caligula really was a self-deifying megalomaniac, and not the misunderstood, if eccentric, ruler that modern scholars have striven to create. For several decades historians have been lifting their eyebrows at the Latin authors' portrait of Caligula as a madman who came to believe he was a god. But Darius Arya of the American Institute for Roman Culture said a 35-day dig by young archaeologists from Oxford and Stanford universities had reinstated a key element in the traditional account. "We have...

Did Caligula have a God complex?Stanford, Oxford archaeologists find evidence that depraved tyrant annexed sacred temple BY JOHN SANFORD Archaeologists from Stanford, Oxford and the American Institute for Roman Culture have unearthed evidence that Caligula, in an act of astonishing hubris, extended his palace to the podium of a sacrosanct temple. The discovery, made during the final weeks of a month-and-a-half-long dig this summer in the Roman Forum, appears to support accounts by some ancient historians that the profligate but short-lived emperor was a megalomaniac. "It's the equivalent of Queen Elizabeth taking over St. Paul's Cathedral as an anteroom,"...

I used to do two series of threads. One was about politics and government in the Greco-Roman civilization, and the other was my own columns. Here's a list of them: Ancient Politics and Government The Athenian Constitution, Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five by Aristotle Chapter One of Polybius and the Founding Fathers by Marshall Davies Lloyd Deeds of Augustus by Caesar Augustus Cicero by Plutarch The Conspiracy of Catiline by Sallust Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius JuliusAugustusTiberiusCaligulaClaudiusNeroGalbaOtho The American Constitutionalist-In Defense of "Underage" Drinking -Anarchy vs. the Right to Life -Calling a...

The Portraiture of Caligula in Right Profile- AR Denarii: The Imagery and Iconography By Joe Geranio For photos at portraitsofcaligula.con under basesclaudius tab For some time now I have been fascinated with the portraiture of Caligula in the round! He has typically been portrayed in the round (typology)1 , and his physiognomy. as follows, but first Most of these portraits are based upon official portraits, we can assume as Caligula (Princeps) wished to be portrayed some twelve to 30 sculptural likenesses of Caligula have survived,2 but these identifications can be quite subjective due to familial assimilation. Caligula’s characteristics typical are:...

Archeologists say that they have found the underground passage in which the Emperor Caligula was murdered by his own Praetorian Guard to put an end to his deranged reign of terror. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (AD12–AD41), known by his nickname Caligula (Little Boots), was the third emperor of the Roman Empire after Augustus and Tiberius, and like them a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. His assassination was the result of a conspiracy by members of the Senate who hoped to restore the Roman Republic. However the Praetorian Guard declared Caligula’s uncle Claudius emperor instead, thus preserving the monarchy. Maria...

A significant archaeological finding, a gold coin, has been reported discovered underwater in the area between Limassol and Larnaca by a local amateur fisherman. According to Cypriot authorities, the coin is of great value. Cypriot media reported that it dates back to the first century A.D. and depicts the third Roman emperor called Caligula, well-known for his fierce and brutal policy during his reign. On this coin, Caligula is sacrificing an animal before the Temple of Augustus, which is constituted by six pillars. Many coins of the same age have been found over the course of time, but this one...

A 2,000-year-old artifact that had ended up in the home of a Manhattan antiquities dealer is now in an Italian museum....It was crafted in the first century for the deck of one of two spectacularly decorated ships on Lake Nemi that the Emperor Caligula commissioned as floating palaces. Recovered from underwater wreckage in 1895, the mosaic was later lost for decades, only to re-emerge several years ago as a coffee table in the living room of a Manhattan antiques dealer...Caligula’s rule only lasted from A.D. 37 to 41, but he enthusiastically embraced the trappings of the position, including an opulent...

The fourth of the 12 Caesars, Caligula — officially, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus — was a capricious, combustible first-century populist remembered, perhaps unfairly, as the empire’s most tyrannical ruler. As reported by Suetonius, the Michael Wolff of ancient Rome, he never forgot a slight, slept only a few hours a night and married several times, lastly to a woman named Milonia. During the four years that Caligula occupied the Roman throne, his favorite hideaway was an imperial pleasure garden called Horti Lamiani, the [fake news edited out] of its day. The vast residential compound spread out on the Esquiline Hill,...

Portraits of Caligula: The Seated Figure? Joe B. Geranio Introduction: The purpose of this study is to identify the reverse figure on the consensv dupondii (See coin portrait on this page of seated figure of dupondius) , struck during the reign of the Emperor Caligula. There has been much controversy over this reverse type, which, along with portraits in the round of Caligula, will be examined in some depth. Through numismatic, literary and epigraphical evidence I will study the seated figure, which has been traditionally accepted as Augustus, and not Caligula.+ Backround Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus was born in A.D....

Caligula's Roman palace discovered By Bruce Johnston in Rome (Filed: 08/08/2003) The ancient palace in Rome that provided the backdrop for many of Emperor Caligula's wildest depravities has been found by British and American archaeologists. After two months of digs at the edge of the Forum close to the Palatine Hill, the group - involving Oxford and Stanford Universities, the British School at Rome, and the American Institute for Roman Culture - were confident that they had found the site. While it had been known from ancient sources that the palace was in the area, it had never been located...

Nineteen centuries of foundered orgy looked up at the hydroairplane which last week waltzed high over Lake Nemi in the Alban hills back of Rome. And Giuseppe Cultrera, Etruscan scholar in the plane,* looked down from the vantage of his flying height through Nemi's waters and could see what none but groping divers theretofore had seen—the sunken Golden Barge whereon epileptic Emperor Caligula, great-grandson of Augustus, and his minions held their carouses.

ROME, Aug. 11 — For centuries scholars have debated whether Caligula, the Roman empire’s eccentric third ruler, was a megalomaniac who dared to defy the gods or a maligned emperor whose caprices were exaggerated after his death. NOW A GROUP of archaeologists digging up Caligula’s ancient palace say they have finally found concrete evidence that he was indeed a “maniac” who turned one of Rome’s most revered temples into the front porch of his residence. “Everyone knows this guy was a little crazy. But now we have proof that he was completely off his rocker, that he thought he was...