Caligula has now become known as Rome’s most capricious tyrant, and the stories told about him are some of the most extraordinary told about any Roman emperor. He was said to have made his horse a consul, proclaimed himself a living God, and indulged in scandalous orgies – even with his own three sisters – and that’s before you mention building vast bridges across land and sea, prostituting senators’ wives and killing half the Roman elite seemingly on a whim. All that in just four short years in power before a violent and speedy assassination in a back alley of his own palace at just 29-years-old. But how much of his story is true? Travelling across the Roman world – from Germany and Capri in the bay of Naples to the astonishing luxury of his life in imperial Rome – Mary attempts to peel away the myths.
