Caligula

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

With Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

Part of Life of Caesar

The last of three episodes of live commentary on the 1979 film, eighty-six minutes of it. Watching two historians react to Tinto Brass and Gore Vidal is a way into the reception of Caligula that no straight narrative gives you.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Eighty-four minutes putting the case that Caligula was a young man handed an empire after Tiberius, and scoring him against it. The aqueducts and the harbour works sit in the same episode as the cruelty, which is what makes the score hard.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy-five minutes on the plot that killed him, including the praetorian commander who swung the sword. The episode follows how a suspicion of conspiracy produced a real one.

Part of Our Fake History

Caligula began his reign repairing relations with the Senate damaged by Tiberius and following the model set by Augustus, but something changed and he ended up at war with the Senate.

Part of Our Fake History

Ancient sources call Caligula's four year reign one of cruelty, sexual excess and bloodlust, but those same ancient writers rank among the most untrustworthy sources from the Roman period.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy minutes on one of Caligula's first acts, releasing Herod Agrippa from prison, and on what that did in Judaea. The New Testament Herod and the Roman emperor turn out to share a story here.

Part of Life of Caesar

The second half of the same demolition, ending with why a film this bad still shapes what people think they know. Seventy minutes.

Part of Our Fake History

Caligula's reign is remembered for bizarre stories, from declaring war on the ocean to building a floating bridge across the sea, yet the only eyewitness account calls him arrogant, not insane.

Part of Life of Caesar

The Partial Historians as guests, arguing about how much of Suetonius can be used at all. An hour and a bit of two shows disagreeing about evidence.

Part of Life of Caesar

The German and British expeditions, ending with soldiers ordered to gather shells on the beach. An hour and a bit on campaigns that produced a triumph and no conquest.

Part of Life of Caesar

The temple, the statue meant for Jerusalem, and the question of whether Caligula believed any of it. An hour and a bit on divinity as a weapon against the senate.

Part of Life of Caesar

The turn of 39, when the trials came back and the senate learned that the good years were over. An hour and a bit on how quickly a reign can reverse.

Part of Life of Caesar

The 1979 Penthouse film taken apart scene by scene, with what the sources actually say beside it. Just over an hour, and the gap is wider than the defenders admit.

Part of Life of Caesar

The first months, when he emptied the prisons, published the accounts and was cheered for it. An hour on a beginning that nobody expected to curdle.

Part of Life of Caesar

The family: a father poisoned in Syria, a mother and two brothers dead in exile, and a boy raised in the house that did it. An hour on where the paranoia came from.

Part of Life of Caesar

The aqueducts begun in his reign and finished under Claudius, plus the harbour works. An hour on the building programme the stories leave out.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part three of the emperors run, sixty-five minutes on Caligula, built largely on Suetonius, who was writing eighty years later with the archives open and a taste for the worst version.

Part of Life of Caesar

Lindsay Powell on whether the madness is diagnosis or invective, and what a hostile senatorial tradition does to a reputation over four centuries. An hour.

Part of Life of Caesar

The illness of 37 and the reign that came out the other side of it. An hour on the turn the sources all describe and none of them explains.

Part of Life of Caesar

The last day, from the words at the sacrifice to the corridor under the palace. An hour on an assassination that left Rome briefly without an emperor and briefly a republic again.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-three minutes on the sister he deified, the first Roman woman to be made a goddess by vote of the senate.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-three minutes on the incidents the sources use to prove Caligula's character, weighed one at a time for what could be behind them.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-three minutes putting the question straight, and working out how much of the record comes from men writing under the dynasty that replaced him.

Beard takes the maddest emperor and asks the awkward question: how much of this is Suetonius settling scores a century later? A masterclass in reading a hostile source.

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour on two enormous pleasure barges raised from a lake in the 1930s and burnt in 1944, the best physical evidence of the reign that existed.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-nine minutes on the turn to treason trials, confiscations and a senate that learned what the reign had become.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-three minutes on the court and the household, where the stories about the emperor's private life start and mostly stay.

Part of The Ancients

With LJ Trafford

L J Trafford on Caligula, who ruled for under four years and has been paying for it ever since. Forty-seven minutes, including what the story about the horse actually says.

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

With Sam Moorhead

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Caligula measured against the model his great-grandfather left, which is the comparison his own court kept making. Twenty minutes on how quickly the settlement could be worn the wrong way.

Part of Understanding Rome · Agnes Crawford, licensed guide in Rome

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Emperors of Rome

Fifteen minutes on the reign that began with public joy: the treason trials stopped, the exiles recalled, and the accounts published. The first six months are the part usually left out.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Emperors of Rome

Killed in a corridor by his own guard officers after less than four years. Thirteen minutes on a murder that had no plan for the morning after.

Part of Emperors of Rome

The bridge of boats at Baiae, the campaign against the sea, the horse and the consulship. Twelve minutes asking which of these are stories and which are policy misread on purpose.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Life of Caesar

On the ceremonial humiliations of senators, which is the sort of detail that survives because it was told and retold in the senate house.