Caligula's name means little boot, a joke from his army childhood
As a toddler, Gaius Julius Caesar tagged along on his father's campaigns in Germania wearing a miniature soldier's outfit, army boots included, that his mother had made to charm the troops. The legionaries nicknamed their small mascot Caligula, or little boot. He grew to dislike the name, but history never dropped it.
His childhood began in glory. Born at Antium on 31 August AD 12, he was a great-grandson of Augustus through his mother, Agrippina the Elder, and his father, Germanicus, was the army's darling and a likely future emperor. The six-year-old Gaius rode in his father's triumphal chariot through Rome and gave a public speech at Assos during a tour of the provinces. Then Germanicus died at Antioch in AD 19.
What followed was a slow family catastrophe. Agrippina feuded bitterly with Emperor Tiberius, who feared her ambitions, and one by one she and Caligula's two older brothers died in exile, leaving him the only surviving son. In 31 he was brought to live under Tiberius' eye on Capri, where the Praetorian prefect Macro vouched for him as loyal and obedient. When Tiberius died in March 37, Caligula became emperor at 24.
The notorious picture of his reign, the self-proclaimed living god who scorned senators and supposedly wanted his horse Incitatus named consul, comes mostly from senators and aristocrats writing long after his death. Many modern historians treat much of it as exaggeration, mockery or malicious fantasy. Less colourful records show him pushing to concentrate power in the emperor's hands while spending heavily on racetracks, theatres, roads and ports, and starting two aqueducts, the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus. Mauretania became a province, while a planned invasion of Britain was abandoned.
His reign lasted under four years. On 24 January AD 41 he was assassinated by a plot of Praetorian officers, senators and courtiers, some perhaps hoping to restore the Republic. The Praetorians instead chose his uncle Claudius as emperor, and Caligula's death ended the male line of the Julii Caesares.
Source: Caligula
