Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.

- He was a terroristic ruler.

NARRATOR: History remembers him by the nickname he hated:

Caligula or "Little Boots".

- There are several unusual rumours about Caligula's conduct as emperor.

He seems to have enjoyed watching the execution of his victims,

having them executed in the most torturous way possible.

- There's a casual cruelty to everything that he does.

- We know Caligula is reported to say,

"Let them hate me, so long as they fear me."

NARRATOR: He ruled the world's greatest empire.

But behind the crown was a mind unravelling -

and a reign soaked in blood.

- Even Tiberius, the archetypal debauched emperor,

is shocked at how willingly he participates in the most shocking

forms of torture and sexual immorality.

NARRATOR: Using groundbreaking AI imagery

to show his world as never before,

we examine the myths that launched the mystery...

Will new evidence help re-evaluate Caligula's brutal reputation?

- The fact that he can't distinguish between the inappropriateness

of what he's doing tells me we've got a psychopath on our hands.

NARRATOR: Rulers come and go,

but what legacy will the sands of time leave behind?

Caligula - was he truly... a killer king?

Caligula reputedly Rome's most tyrannical and erratic emperor.

But before he was emperor, before he was feared, he was adored.

- He comes from the royal family.

His father was Germanicus,

who was, for a time, the leading general in Rome under Tiberius,

and his mother was Agrippina.

Agrippina was the granddaughter of the first Roman emperor Augustus.

- His father, Germanicus, was a great hero of the Roman Empire

to the extent that he is mentioned

in the same breath as Alexander the Great.

He's almost superhuman in his heroics.

And it's clear that Caligula's relationship with Germanicus

led to him being very popular with the people.

NARRATOR: Rome is at war.

Germanicus is leading campaigns in Germania

to avenge the devastating loss of three Roman legions

in the Teutoburger Forest.

(battle clamour)

NARRATOR: With him is his youngest son.

Just a child but already a presence in the camp.

- The son was adored by the troops.

- He was taken under the wing of his father's soldiers

and adopted the young Caligula as a mascot for the legions.

They used to dress the son of their general up

in a kind of a miniature soldier's uniform.

The Roman soldiers wore boots called caliga,

which were hobnail boots issued to all soldiers,

and the diminutive form of caliga is caligula, meaning "little boots."

- He obviously endeared himself to the soldiers to get this pet name,

but spending time with his father at such a young age,

directly on the front line, right there in the heat of the battle,

learning about all the strategies,

seeing all the horrific physical injuries...

(battle clamour)

...the sorts of things that people wouldn't be exposed to,

let alone as a tiny child.

(battle clamour)

NARRATOR: Gaius marched with one of Rome's greatest generals

across a volatile frontier.

His presence wasn't purely ceremonial,

he was used as a talisman

to steady the ranks of restless soldiers on the brink of mutiny.

- When Germanicus felt that the troops were going to turn upon him

and might kill him and his family,

he dispatched the women of the camp and Caligula

to the local Gallic city.

The troops saw that matters had reached a level of severity

that civil war was going to break out in the camp.

There was also an emotional attachment to Caligula,

possibly to his mother, and at that point, the mutiny came to an end.

- This will have shaped Caligula absolutely fundamentally.

It will have desensitised him to extreme violence of course.

I think it will have sown the seeds for the development

of a really hyper-masculine personality.

He bonded in this context of violence, of being a man,

of been involved in war.

NARRATOR: Germanicus is recalled to Rome a hero.

But the glory was short-lived.

- At the end of that campaign, he was brought back to Rome

and then he was almost immediately sent off to Syria.

NARRATOR: Officially sent to assert Roman authority

over the Empire's client kingdoms.

Many believed it was a political move by the Emperor Tiberius.

A wildly popular general, Germanicus was sent far from Rome

into a region known for its volatile politics.

- And the reason for this is

supposedly because of Tiberius's jealousy.

- He was given sweeping powers in the east, but very quickly,

he fell out with the governor of Syria -

a man named Gnaeus Piso.

- While in the province that Piso was the governor of,

Germanicus falls very ill.

And he is convinced that he is ill because Piso is poisoning him.

- All sorts of accusations then flew that Piso was using witchcraft,

that he was trying to poison Germanicus.

NARRATOR: Germanicus' health continues to deteriorate... and then,

aged just 33, he dies... in agony.

- Germanicus died under circumstances

which were regarded as suspicious.

NARRATOR: The Empire mourned.

But for Caligula, then only 7 years of age, the loss was shattering.

Dr Donna Youngs is an investigative psychologist who has been

looking at the life of Caligula.

- Having bonded so profoundly to his father to then lose his father,

both at such a young age and in circumstances that

he probably didn't understand will have set the stage for Caligula

to become very suspicious, very paranoid, very fearful.

NARRATOR: The adored son of Rome's brightest star

became a child shadowed by grief, betrayal, and silence.

- Caligula's mother makes a big show of returning to Rome with his ashes.

And she is rapturously received by the populace of Rome

because Germanicus was so popular.

And she arrives very kind of dramatically

clutching her husband's ashes and her infant son, Caligula.

NARRATOR: But this triumphal return goes down badly

with the increasingly paranoid Tiberius.

- Tiberius had Agrippina arrested and sent into exile.

Her two older sons, were also arrested and exiled.

And eventually Tiberias had all three of them killed.

Agrippina probably by being starved to death.

NARRATOR: Caligula is the only survivor of the purge of his family

and only then because Tiberius needs a successor with royal blood

running through his veins.

- We see Caligula, when he turns 19,

joining Tiberius, the emperor, on Capri.

This is where Caligula is kind of brought under Tiberius's wing.

NARRATOR: Tiberius, Rome's second emperor,

had once ruled with discipline and caution.

But by the time Caligula joined him on the island of Capri,

the ageing ruler had withdrawn from Rome and from restraint.

- Capri was a pleasure palace.

Tiberian culture was luxurious

and to a large extent immoral.

There are astonishing stories of Tiberius bringing young men

and women to the palace and sexually exploiting them.

- Tiberius uses his retreat on Capri to indulge all of his worst vices,

and he lives a life of excess, of gluttony and sexual immorality.

NARRATOR: The island became Gaius's classroom.

But what was Tiberius teaching his young apprentice?

- Caligula was incredibly vulnerable.

He was a blank page ready for Tiberias

and all his exploits to be written on.

He was absolutely defenceless, psychologically, emotionally,

to what he would be exposed to.

NARRATOR: To survive, Caligula must adapt.

He learned how power truly worked,

how fear could rule men more effectively than law.

- He had learnt that to be a man's man,

to fit in, to get Tiberius' love and support in the same way

that he'd got his father's, one thing was crucial -

and that was his participation in the activities.

- Even the debauched Emperor Tiberius

is shocked at the extreme nature of Caligula's personality.

He's almost a little bit scared by the savagery that Caligula displays.

NARRATOR: Caligula did more than fit in. He played the game,

cementing his position as the heir presumptive to Tiberius' throne.

- Tiberius complained that people were turning to Gaius

as the rising sun and worshipping him,

whereas the setting sun, Tiberius himself,

was slipping away from their attention.

- The Empire is still in its infancy in this period.

Tiberius is only the second Roman emperor.

And so there is no kind of constitutional

basis for the transfer of power.

NARRATOR: When Tiberius dies suddenly,

Caligula is perfectly positioned to take power.

Some say, too perfectly.

- Tiberius dies in 37 AD,

and the events surrounding his death are kind of shrouded in mystery.

- There are always rumours around deaths of emperors.

- Our sources do not agree on the specific circumstances.

In one version of events, Tiberius is starved to death by Caligula.

In another, he is poisoned by Caligula,

and in a third, he is smothered and suffocated to death with a pillow.

NARRATOR: He survived war, purges,

and the twisted mentorship of a dying tyrant.

Now, Rome waited for him,

and no one not even Tiberius could predict what Caligula would become.

Tiberius is dead.

The Empire turns to 24-year-old Caligula, the great grandson

of Augustus Caesar and the son of one of Rome's greatest generals.

And for a moment, Rome rejoices.

- So the first months of Caligula's reign

are received very well by the Roman populace.

Tiberius was a hated emperor.

By the end of his reign, there had been what the historians

describe as a reign of terror.

He was so hated that the people gathered in the streets

and chanted, "To the Tiber with Tiberius,"

demanding that his body be thrown into the River Tiber.

And so the people of Rome and the Senate

see Caligula's rise to power

as freeing them from the tyranny of Tiberius.

(bells tolling)

- Tiberius' death was celebrated,

and the accession of Gaius was welcomed as a new golden age.

He was seen as a new man, a man who would change the oppressive

and violent age of Tiberius

and bring a new and golden age to Rome.

NARRATOR: In his first weeks, he pardons prisoners.

He gives out bonuses to the army.

He buries Tiberius with respect,

and promises the Senate a new era of peaceful collaboration.

- We're seeing all the honour and leadership capabilities

of his father, the great Roman general coming out through Caligula.

We're seeing Little Boots coming into his manhood as emperor.

- (crowd cheering)

- One of his first acts is to end the practice of Maestas,

which is the practice of treason trials,

that were very prominent under Tiberius.

He makes a big public display of not only taking

the law of Maestas off the books,

but publicly burning all of the court records of people previously

convicted of Maestas and people who were currently under suspicion.

- What he seems to have been very anxious to do in this early stage

was to represent himself as a fresh start,

a new model emperor for Rome,

and to bring together the various factions in Roman society

and especially amongst the Roman aristocracy.

- This is a new time where the people are going to be free

and prosperous and not living under the reign of terror of Tiberius.

NARRATOR: For six months, Rome lives in a dream.

But the dream is about to shatter.

- The key turning point, according to our sources,

is Caligula becomes ill six months into 37 AD.

- We don't know what it is, we don't how serious it was,

but there was at least some thought that he would die.

- This illness seems to have changed his personality significantly.

He starts to exhibit certain behaviours

that signal to the Senate and to the people that all is not well,

and that Caligula perhaps isn't the saviour

from the tyranny of Tiberius that they had initially hoped for.

- Caligula suffers some kind of severe seizure,

some kind of rare form of epilepsy.

We hear reports of bizarre behaviour.

Him laughing without motivation.

We heard reports of severe insomnia,

of all sorts of emotional incontinence

contrasting so sharply with the regimented, disciplined, powerful,

potent, virile Caligula up to this point.

NARRATOR: The city is frozen with concern.

Their golden boy - hailed as a new beginning - is slipping away.

- Caligula's illness seems to have caused massive concern among

the populace of Rome.

In fact, several prominent Romans vowed their lives to the gods

as human sacrifices if Caligula could recover.

There was a massive outpouring of grief among the populace of Rome

who see Caligula as their saviour after the tyrannies of Tiberius.

NARRATOR: Caligula makes a recovery,

but Rome soon realises the man who emerged

is not the one they had crowned.

Ancient sources tell us he became erratic, paranoid, cruel.

- Several historians have debated the nature of the illness

that afflicted Caligula, whether it was physical in nature

or whether it was more mental.

However, what is clear from the sources

is that things change after his illness.

- So, we see emerging

a very different person from the young, bold and strong

charismatic leader before this.

Instead, we see somebody who seems to have,

rather than a disciplined, organised military mind,

we see someone who seems very little control of his emotions.

NARRATOR: The man who once promised peace, now ruled with violence.

Rome had placed its hopes in Caligula,

but public affection quickly turned to fear.

And even those closest to him were not safe...

...as one of his most loyal supporters was about to find out.

- Macro had been one of Caligula's earliest supporters.

He had been instrumental in bringing the army over to Caligula's side

to support his claim to the throne.

And yet, by early 38, it's clear that Macro has fallen from favour.

NARRATOR: Macro, the powerful Praetorian prefect,

had been instrumental in securing Caligula's rise.

But shortly after his illness, the emperor begins to see his old friend

as a threat too influential, too close to the throne.

- The events surrounding Macro's death

are not clear at all from our sources.

He is potentially implicated in some kind of conspiracy

against the emperor. Again, whether this is based in fact

or whether this is Caligula's paranoia is up for debate.

However, by 38 AD, he has been forced to take his own life.

- Macro was ordered to commit suicide.

It was a rather brutal realignment of the politics of the moment.

NARRATOR: Caligula shows himself willing to eliminate

even his closest allies.

After Macro, no one around Caligula was safe.

- The fall of Macro was a really significant change

in political activity.

It comes at the same time as a realignment of the imperial family.

NARRATOR: Next to get caught in the young emperor's crosshairs

his cousin, Gemellus, the grandson of former emperor Tiberius,

whom Caligula has sworn to protect.

- Gemellus' death comes about in late 37.

Caligula having recovered from his illness is convinced that

Gemellus is plotting against him.

Whether Gemellus was involved in a conspiracy against Caligula

or whether this is Caligula's paranoia is lost to history.

During Caligula's illness, Gemellus had also stepped up

into a more public role to take the place of his cousin

and had perhaps been received quite well by the populace,

and this had perhaps signalled to Caligula that there was someone else

waiting in the wings who could potentially challenge him for power.

- He perceived him as being a threat as he grew older.

Gaias used that as an excuse, and he sent his soldiers to kill him.

- In quite a poignant scene, Gemellus is handed a sword

with which to take his own life.

Because Gemellus is very young and naive,

he doesn't really know how to actually do the act itself,

and he has to be helped to take his own life,

because he's never held a sword before.

NARRATOR: The early optimism of Caligula's reign

shifted to a darker, more paranoid time.

Rome becomes a political minefield.

In public, he had once burned the records of treason trials

against members of the Senate.

But now, the old laws returned.

- By 39 AD, relations with the Senate have soured

and he's addressing the Senate

to rebuke them for their criticism of Tiberius.

He feels that their open criticism of the previous emperor

should not be permitted,

and that they should actually bear in mind

that many of Tiberius' treason trials that he had been holding

were perfectly legitimate.

And it's at this point that Caligula reveals

that the records of the treason trials which he had burned publicly

in a great show of departure from the reign of Tiberius

early in his reign, he actually had kept copies.

He tells the Senate that he is reintroducing the law of Maestas,

the law of treason, and from now on the Senate will live in fear.

NARRATOR: The trials were more than legal proceedings,

they were tools for eliminating rivals, seizing wealth,

and asserting absolute control.

Charges could be based on rumours,

or even symbolic dreams and gestures.

- We see Caligula, with no hesitation,

murdering political rivals.

For Caligula, his way of doing politics is reflecting

those early days of training on the front line.

Going about politics as if war, no hesitation,

not just to remove political rivals, but to have them murdered

NARRATOR: It's not enough for Caligula

to lay waste to his enemies.

He wishes to be anointed as a living god while he does it.

- One of the biggest controversies of Caligula's reign seems to have

been his desire to be worshipped as a god.

Roman emperors could be deified after their death.

It was, however, a big no-no for an emperor to be worshipped

as a god during his lifetime.

The controversy in Caligula's reign

is that he seems to have explicitly desired to be worshipped as Jupiter.

And to have set up temples to him in Rome during his lifetime.

This is a significant violation of Roman religious norms.

- This is all, for the Romans, difficult behaviour.

NARRATOR: Caligula, the man who promised peace, now insists

that he wasn't just favoured by the gods, but was a living god himself.

- So progressively, Caligula associates himself with the divine.

He had temples and altars built in his honour,

with priests dedicated to his cult.

And demanded sacrifices to Divus Caligula - "divine Caligula."

- It's one thing to erect a statue of yourself, to be celebrated,

but to have the...

It's not even audacity, it is the lack of judgement,

the insanity to insist that you be worshipped as a god by your people,

it's a clear indication of somebody who is insane.

NARRATOR: Roman relationship with deities

was much closer than we understand today.

But this was a step further than

even the hated Tiberius had dared to take.

- Dressing up as the divine seems to be something that

members of the Roman aristocracy did from time to time.

What was different was that he seems to have demanded

a level of worship of himself while he was a living being.

In later traditions, this is seen as evidence of an unstable mind.

At the time, it was certainly extreme,

but doesn't seem, in itself, to have been regarded as madness.

Nevertheless, living with a god was probably hard.

NARRATOR: When a man is worshipped as a god,

who is left to hold him accountable?

With no limits left, Caligula's cruelty became something more

than policy, it became power, performance.

- He throws his uncle into the river for some imagined slight.

He makes a senator beg for his life

because he'd put up a statue to Gaius

which was interpreted as being not quite praising him enough.

Caligula liked to put people to death via many, many small wounds

that would cause the most pain over the longest period of time

before they actually succumbed to death.

He seems to have enjoyed watching the execution of his victims,

and not only executing his victims,

but having them executed in the most torturous way possible.

NARRATOR: Mixed with the brutality, there were power games.

- He holds a dinner party and at the dinner party,

he starts to laugh, and everybody wonders what he is laughing at.

The most powerful person in the room starts to laugh,

do you laugh along?

And he tells them, "It's just occurred to me

that I can have any of you killed."

Now that's fun, obviously, for Gaius it is not fun for everyone else.

- He forces a man to watch the execution of his family,

and then forces that man to attend a dinner party with the emperor,

at which the emperor is very jovial and tries to engage his victim

in light-hearted conversation and make him kind of laugh

and joke about the brutal murder of his family.

- And he dined and he ate, and he played along.

And when he was asked why he did so,

he said, "I have another son."

NARRATOR: These games were not just for private pleasure.

Caligula was keen to extend his bloodlust for public pleasure.

- One thing that Caligula is accused of is feeding criminals

to the wild beasts that are kept for beast hunts in the arena.

Upon being told that feeding cattle to these wild beasts

is quite expensive and these animals are needed

for displays in the arena,

Caligula points out that it would be much cheaper

to feed criminals to them.

This is not a punishment, this is a steady diet for the animals

to replace the costly expense of buying cattle to feed to them.

- Now one of the things that marks out somebody

whose brain has become psychopathic

is the complete inability to what we call emotionally calibrate.

To distinguish, to differentiate between what's an appropriate

behaviour and what's a non-appropriate behaviour.

The inappropriateness of what he's doing

in turning criminals into the food of wild beasts

tells me we've got a psychopath on our hands.

NARRATOR: But how much of this is true?

There is a hysteria to the stories

which begin to sound like just good stories.

- Caligula is one of the better- attested of the Roman emperors.

We have a whole range of sources about him,

some of which are contemporary or near contemporary.

The most influential accounts on Caligula

come from the historian Cassius Dio,

who was writing in the third century,

so more or less 200 years after Caligula's death.

And Suetonius, the biographer,

who was writing about eight years after his death.

- Suetonius essentially lists a long list of various shocking deeds

that Caligula did.

He starts his biography narrating Caligula's early life

and when he gets to the point after his illness when Caligula

seems to have made a turn for the worse,

Suetonius says he's finished

narrating the history of Caligula the emperor,

now he's turning to tell the story of Caligula the monster.

NARRATOR: The near contemporary histories written of Caligula

are sensationalist, salacious, morally outraged.

- Roman emperors attracted gossip, and this was in an age before you

had libel laws or you had any journalistic integrity.

Stories circulated and stories circulated

whether they were true or not.

They might have been believed by some.

The stories might have just been too good

to miss out of the historical accounts.

- Suetonius tells us that Caligula condemned a man to death,

had him thrown to wild beasts in the arena,

and as the man was screaming for his life,

Caligula has him brought forth out of the arena.

The man thinks he has been rescued by the emperor.

At which point, Caligula complains about his screaming,

has his tongue cut out and has him thrown back to the wild beasts.

- Women would come along to dinner parties.

He would decide which one was the prettiest, or which

of the husbands he would wish to offend, and then he'd carry them off

into a side room before returning and discussing the sexual prowess.

A basic level of humiliation of members of the Roman aristocracy.

- One of the other most famous stories about Caligula

is the story that he supposedly made his horse a consul.

- Again, that's a story that has been treated

to an extreme interpretation

- Caligula was very fond of his horse, Incitatus.

And this horse lived a life of luxury.

(horse neighing)

Its stable was made from marble; it ate from an ivory manger,

it had its own house.

This, according to Suetonius, culminates in Caligula deciding

that this horse is going to be made a consul of Rome.

- Maybe that's true, maybe that's not.

NARRATOR: But perhaps the most notorious story about Caligula

is the claim that he had an incestuous relationship

with his sisters and one in particular, Drusilla.

- His sisters are a really interesting case.

He puts them front and centre.

He presents them

as if they were graces or muses or certainly divinities.

This gives rise to various accusations,

that he has had sexual relations with all three of his sisters,

that he pimps out his sisters.

- I think we have to view these rumours

with a great deal of scepticism.

This probably stems from the fact, that early in his reign,

he changes the oath of allegiance that is sworn to the emperor to also

include Caligula's sisters.

This seems to have been an unprecedented honour

for members of the imperial family.

And this is perhaps the root of some of the stories of incest

that are preserved by writers like Suetonius and Cassius Dio.

- But it seems clear he doesn't mind those stories circulating.

Those stories seem to increase his status as being someone who

is able to break all social conventions,

including deeply-held moral conventions.

The only other people who can do that are the gods.

NARRATOR: Caligula's belief in his own divinity

fuelled an unwavering self-confidence

that no one could touch him.

A confidence enforced by his ever present

and utterly ruthless Praetorian Guard.

- There's a part of him I think that thinks he is invincible.

- Whatever he did, he was immune.

The Guard were there, the Guard would protect him.

He could make fun of people, but there would always be those

who would stand at his side.

He didn't think that they would even dare to take him on.

He didn't think that they would kill him.

NARRATOR: Caligula is confident, untouchable, worshipped.

In just four years, he has reduced the Senate to spectators

in their own government.

He's mocked them, ignored protocol,

and forced them to treat him as a god.

His private guard the Pretorian Guard is insulted, bypassed

and cruelly punished.

Rome is simmering with anger and humiliation.

- The very randomness of this violence made everybody afraid.

The fact that he was also erratic in his personal behaviour,

that he was sexually rapacious,

that he seized women and subjected them to sexual violence and rape,

that he pretended to be associated with the gods,

he used random violence as an act of terror

against the Roman aristocracy.

They were terrified.

NARRATOR: A plan is hatched to bring Caligula down.

But the stakes were incredibly high.

Failure meant torture, execution

and the destruction of your entire family.

- Moving against a Roman emperor was an extremely dangerous activity.

If they found out, you'd get killed.

If your attempted assassination was unsuccessful, you'd get killed,

if your attempted assassination was successful,

but you didn't have the kind of political support, you'd get killed.

NARRATOR: The risk was massive,

but so was the fear of what might happen if no one stopped him.

And so the planning begins.

Slowly... in secret.

- It's not clear exactly how many people were involved

and how many of them were senators.

- They took six months to find the right opportunity to kill him

NARRATOR: January 24th.

A corridor beneath the imperial palace

is the place they identify for the hit.

- What happens is that during a celebration games

in the imperial palace...

- They found moment when he would leave the theatre,

he would progress down a corridor, and there they would meet him.

NARRATOR: Masterminding the assassination attempt -

the Praetorian Guard, the elite team of soldiers

assigned as the emperor's personal protection.

Normally, these soldiers were loyal unto death.

But Caligula had made the mistake of even mocking and undermining them.

- The Praetorian Guard were the people responsible

for looking after, for protecting Gaius.

NARRATOR: Leading the group - Cassius Chaerea.

And it's believed that for Chaerea, this was personal.

- Chaerea, as part of his service on the Praetorian Guard,

was often mocked by Caligula for being effeminate.

And when Caligula would hold out his hand for Chaerea to kiss it,

he would then pull it back and make an obscene gesture mocking Chaerea.

- Gaius would always give the Praetorian Guard the watchword,

so he was always giving Chaerea watchwords which would be

embarrassing for him to transmit to the troops.

Chaerea met Caligula in this corridor.

He asked for the watchword. He was given a watchword,

at which point, he pulls out his sword,

and he strikes Caligula across the face.

Caligula fell down

and the fellow conspirators then plunged in their swords.

Blood everywhere.

And then they fled.

The historian Cassius Dio provides us with almost the one funny line.

He says that after three years, nine months, and 28 days,

Gaius Caligula discovered that he was not a god.

NARRATOR: Little Boots, raised on a battlefield,

anointed as a god,

dies violently, in a squalid hallway beneath the imperial palace.

But even in death, he appears to have the last laugh.

- The aftermath of Caligula's assassination is quite interesting,

because it kind of reveals the lack of a clear aim

on the part of the conspirators.

The Praetorian Guard, having killed Caligula,

they then go throughout the imperial household,

finding his relatives and putting them to death as well.

But they realise that if they kill off the entire imperial family,

their role as the Praetorian Guard,

the elite bodyguards of the emperor, becomes obsolete.

And actually, it's a much cushier job

being stationed in Rome protecting the emperor

than it is being out on the front lines in the provinces.

And so as they are roaming through the imperial palace,

they come across Caligula's uncle Claudius.

He thinks he's about to be killed, so he's hiding behind a curtain.

And the Praetorian Guard find him, they pull the curtain back,

and instead of killing him, they proclaim him emperor.

NARRATOR: A reputation as one of the most infamous tyrants in history,

a byword for madness, cruelty, and excess.

Written off by ancient historians as insane, monstrous and perverse,

with stories so wild they sound like mythology.

But was he in fact just damaged goods,

shaped as all are, by experiences and traumas early in life

and raised to a position for which he was completely unqualified?

- We know that Caligula was exposed to a lot.

As a very young boy,

he was exposed to extreme violence on the front line.

We know that then, as a sexualised teenager,

he was exposed to all sorts of vices and depraved sexual activity.

His illness meant that his ability to keep these experiences that

he's been exposed to throughout his life at bay, was eradicated.

And that's what we see manifesting in all these acts of madness.

NARRATOR: A legacy shaped by fear, betrayal, and failure.

- There's a very famous phrase that Caligula was fond of quoting.

It's a quotation from the Roman tragic playwright Achaeus.

And the quote is, "Let them hate me so long as they fear me."

- This totally encapsulates the psychology of this man,

the way he thought.

And that's all that matters to him, that they fear me.

NARRATOR: They feared him, and they hated him.

But in the end, that fear wasn't enough to protect him.

How will the sands of time judge his legacy?

- There is nothing you can point to which will suggest that this man

was anything but a monster and that seems to have been how

he was received, discussed from within a generation of his life.

Is that fair to him?

- Does Caligula deserve the title, Killer King?

He's definitely implicated in a lot of deaths.

- He was living in a brutal time.

He had seen many of his family murdered.

This was the way in which Roman dynastic politics worked.

There was no sympathy for the dead,

there was no compunction about killing those people

who were close to you.

NARRATOR: Caligula ascends the imperial throne

on a wave of optimism and hope.

He dies a hated autocrat

who ruled through fear, violence,

and personal whim.

- He was a terroristic ruler who ruled by hatred,

who ruled through fear.

He wanted to be known as somebody who killed others

with an arbitrary, almost random violence.

Without doubt, a killer king.

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