Was Caligula Rome's Most Depraved Emperor? Facial Reconstructions & History Revealed | Royalty Now

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We hope you enjoyed the video! The first 1,000 people to click the link will get a full year of Premium membership to Craftsy for only $1.49: https://go.craftsy.com/royaltynowstudios/ 0:00 Caligula’s Background 5:53 Life Before Becoming Emperor 9:11 Life as Emperor Caligula 17:49 What did Caligula Look Like? 19:48 Re-Creations Revealed Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by his nickname Caligula was a Roman empire during the 1st century AD, known for his irrationality, cruelty, and unpopularity. At the age of just 24, Caligula succeeded his predecessor, Tiberius, in 37 AD. While much of Caligula’s life is made up of myth and legend (it seemed everyone in the generations after him had their own “Crazy Caligula” story), some of it is true. He was apparently a fair and generous ruler at the start of his reign, and then quickly grew depraved, sadistic, and murderous, leading scholars to speculate what caused this sudden change. We have a few contemporary images of Caligula, but not as many statues or coins as you might expect - many were destroyed after his tyrannical reign, thrown in the Tiber river or re-carved as the faces of his successors. Caligula’s statues fall within the Julio-Claudian artistic tradition - combining Greek idealism with Roman realism. Their main goal was to stylistically associate Caligula, a weak emperor, with the stronger emperors of his past, like his great-grandfather Augustus. Even though we can see markers of his cruelty - a frown on his pursed lips for example - we also see the same full head of hair, strong shoulders, symmetrical features, and large, steady eyes as his predecessors. However, there are different versions of his statues which are less flattering. The National Museum of Rome statue head, for example, shows a strongly asymmetrical jaw and less pleasing features. The Metropolitan Museum’s statue is the most flattering, and then we have some that are kind of in between. But all of these are hiding the truth - that according to Suetonius, Caligula was described as having an ill-proportioned large head and skinny neck, sunken eyes and temples, and a receding hairline with baldness on the back of his head. He apparently practiced menacing expressions in the mirror, trying to evoke fear in his subjects. Now, Suetonius is a source whose reliability is argued. He was writing almost 100 years after Caligula’s life, and may have taken some satirical or inflated accounts of Caligula and written them as fact. However, as it stands, he is the only scholar who described caligula’s appearance. According to statues where pigments could still be found, he had medium to light brown hair, tan skin, and brown or hazel eyes. It was reported that Caligula slept very badly, only about three hours a night, and was constantly disturbed by paranoia, so I imagine he looked quite weathered and older than his years. Find us here: Instagram: @Royalty_Now_ X: @Royalty_Now Tik Tok: @RoyaltyNow Patreon: Patreon.com/RoyaltyNow RoyaltyNowStudios.com This video creation and final image are ©Royalty Now.