Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gam3rBlake, post: 7642570, member: 115909&quot;]Edit: First of all I want to apologize for the length of this post. I kind of got going and it was huge before I realized it. Feel free to skim.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yeah he did alot of bizzare and awful stuff but I mean look at his life.</p><p><br /></p><p>As a young boy he is marched from war camp to war camp with his father. I&#039;m guessing he saw a lot of post-combat carnage even if he wasn&#039;t actually fighting. That wouldn&#039;t just traumatize a little boy it would also de-sensitize him to violence and suffering.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then his father is poisoned by Tiberius. His mom (a woman with intelligence &amp; influence) starts making a fuss implicating Tiberius had ordered Germanicus killed so Caligula&#039;s mom gets exiled along with his 3 sisters. </p><p>His older brothers are killed.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for his fate he is taken hostage in Rome under house arrest by Tiberius, the same man who destroyed his family, and lived every single day wondering if some praetorian guard member would show up and slit his throat as he slept. Living with that fear every single day while also being alone with no family contact for years would&#039;ve impacted him emotionally for life.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m just saying I can understand why he might have believed he was surrounded by enemies. The brain fever and coma definitely didn&#039;t help.</p><p><br /></p><p>Basically I&#039;m saying what do you expect when you take a horribly traumatized 20 something year old man and hand him all the power of Emperorship?&#039;</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>He was generally a good person with good intentions in his earlier years. The first 7 months of his reign it&#039;s said that Romans were extremely pleased with him and everything he did the people loved.</p><p><br /></p><p>For example he funded construction projects like the aquaduct &quot;Aqua Claudia&quot; (which was completed under the reign of his successor &amp; uncle Claudius).</p><p><br /></p><p>He did spend ALOT of money that&#039;s for sure. Estimates are 3 billion sesterces (750 million denarii) in the first year of his reign alone. Although he spent a lot of that on himself not just public works and stuff for the people.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then the &quot;Brain Fever&quot; (noone knows exactly what) and coma and he completely transformed.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s a shame. He could&#039;ve been an amazing Emperor. He would&#039;ve been familiar &amp; knowledgeable about politics &amp; warfare via living &amp; learning alongside his father Germanicus on his war campaigns. Generals like Germanicus needed to be skilled politicians as they dealt with leading legions and had to deal with the Senate &amp; people regarding what they were supposed to do with said legions. Even today US military generals are regularly speaking before Congress, President, etc., so the political aspect of generalship is still there.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;Everyone loved Germanicus and they expected (and I believe Caligula originally wanted) him to be a younger Germanicus. An Emperor who would reign for many decades and bring a golden age to the Empire.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Honestly it&#039;s one of my big &quot;What Ifs?&quot; thoughts about history.</p><p>&quot;What if Caligula hadn&#039;t gotten the brain fever?&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Photo of the &quot;Aqua Claudia&quot; (The waters of Claudius): Construction begun by Caligula and completed under Claudius.</b></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1314184[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in