The aim of this book is linked to the statement (p. vi) that the material from which one might cobble together a biography of Caligula is so ‘incoherent and often inconsistent’ that it would be better, rather than to read biographies, to go to the sources. This book includes ‘over three hundred translated passages’ from literary texts, coins, and inscriptions. The audience is ‘serious readers’ and students ‘in the broadest sense’ (p. vi), but explicitly not Classicists. Indeed, a researcher will regret that it is not exhaustive in its collation of parallels, but it might be a good book for someone to read beside a traditional biography. The authors say that the ‘bright side’ of the many and varied sources is that Caligula can be a good case study for students on how to use evidence. In its current form, I would not give it to students without close supervision, but it might make a suitable textbook for a later-year course on dealing with historical problems, especially if the publisher will withdraw it and reissue with fewer errors.
Before the text there are a glossary, timeline, map, and family tree. The glossary would be useful in a teaching context. The introduction, a summary of Caligula’s life in the order used in the rest of the book, is integrated into the book and would not stand alone (especially because references to other sections of the book are always made by the chapter and section of the volume, rather than to the ancient source). The rest of the book expands the introduction, in the form of the authors’ reconstruction of the biography of Caligula, with some of the relevant ancient sources translated or shown below the summary. Each chapter is followed by a short list of ‘further reading’ and the final part of the book has selected bibliography.
The introduction starts with about five pages on Caligula’s life (in fact beginning all the way back at 44 BCE) and then an overview of the sources, with background on the literary sources for a general audience. The authors say that the ‘Caligulan paradox’ is that there is lots of evidence, but little is reliable. Sources mentioned in the ‘Literary sources’ section are: Seneca the Younger, Philo, Josephus, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, Suetonius. The title of the book might raise expectations of engagement with the literary sources, and literary sources do preponderate (usually first- and second-century authors; Aurelius Victor is mentioned in the notes but not used as a ‘source’; but the fifth-century poet Namatianus is used as a source in chapter 4), but the authors seem not to want to get into the weeds of dealing with those texts. Throughout the book, the authors are quick to dismiss some story in a literary source as implausible or unlikely, without explanation, and have chosen not to engage with the modern scholarship on the ancient authors as creative and literary authors, although they are certainly aware of this body of scholarship (p. 11 on Dio). The introduction to these sources consists mainly of their various failings: particularly regretting the loss of Tacitus, we have only Suetonius (‘a writer quite incapable of resisting an entertaining anecdote’, p. v) and Dio, supposedly not much better (see p. 12, Dio ‘primarily accumulates information’, but at least he attempts chronological order).
While the ‘literary sources’ section mainly deals with the problems of such texts, the section on ‘coins and inscriptions’ (one paragraph on each) goes rather the other way, strong on the benefits and less so on the problems. The authors are aware that there are problems even with such sources (e.g. p. 14 on inscriptions: ‘errors in titles and nomenclature are not uncommon, as are mistakes in dates’) but offer no suggestion of how we are to deal with this. Anyone setting this book for a class will want to supplement this section.
The last part of the introduction (p. 14 ‘The problem’) gives two examples of problems that arise from the life of Caligula, one where the literary sources contradict each other (Caligula’s reforms in Africa, demonstrating a real issue but without suggesting a solution) and one where a coin seems to contradict the literary source, specifically Suetonius’ claim that Caligula was embarrassed about his grandfather Agrippa. It is worth noting that while the first problem cannot be solved, the second apparently can. The way the Agrippa problem is dealt with demonstrates a general tendency of these authors to prefer a physical source, such as an inscription or coin, over a literary source, sometimes without good grounds or justification. Suetonius says: ‘He did not wish to be either considered or referred to as Agrippa’s grandson because of the man’s poor pedigree, and would fly into a rage if anyone slipped him in among the ancestors of the Caesars either in an oration or in poetry. He even used to claim that his own mother was born through incest committed by Augustus with his daughter Julia.’ (Suet. Cal. 23, translation from the book under review, p. 74). The authors think Suetonius has been misleading about the generality of this attitude and adduce a coin, showing Agrippa in a positive light, as evidence that Caligula was in fact happy to advertise Agrippa as his family member. It is not really made clear why a coin is definitely more reliable than the literary source, but this assumption does recur throughout the book. I wondered if the coin could be attributed to a particular part of Caligula’s reign, such as the beginning or the end, which might make a certain interpretation more likely, but the coin later (p. 75) turns out to be undated and not definitely Caligulan, which to my mind rather weakens the argument.
In the course of this case study of the Agrippa coin, the authors criticise Suetonius’ tendency to create a general pattern of behaviour from what they think is more likely to be one passing comment or event. They are not alone in doing so: it is rather conventional to dismiss Suetonius’ ‘generalising plurals’ and these authors do so with tedious regularity (p. 117, 131, 141), which seems rather to perpetuate a stereotype about Suetonius’ unreliability in an area where it cannot be verified. Such assertions made without further analysis seem damaging in view of David Wardle’s commentary on Divus Augustus[1] where he has done a commendable job of checking the ‘generalising plurals’ in the Augustus and found that only a few of these seem unlikely to be genuine plurals. Again, anyone setting this book for a class will want to supplement with some analysis of the literary texts.
Contrary to what one might expect from the title, the main section of the book reads rather a lot like a biography, stopping more frequently than usual to put down quotes from the sources. The discussion precedes the sources rather than developing from them. When the same passage is referred to twice, rather than cite the ancient reference to, say, Dio or Suetonius, the reader is referred to a passage, numbered according to its appearance in the book. Inscriptions, coins, and artworks are sometimes illustrated, but the passages from literary texts are not given in the original language. This seems reasonable but it is rather a shame when the translations are not without error, e.g. p. 87 ‘wreaked of’ antidote should be ‘reeked of’ (for oboluisset) and, rather more seriously, the notes refer to Domitius Afer but the translation of the inscription refers to Domitius Ahenobarbus (p. 106).[2]
In the Suetonian manner, chapters 1–4 (‘Family and Childhood’, ‘Young Caligula’, ‘Accession’, ‘Tensions’) are organised chronologically, and chapters 5–7 (‘The Private Caligula’, ‘The Public Caligula’, ‘Outside Rome’) are arranged by theme, followed by a return to chronology with chapter 8 (‘Assassination’). ‘Family and Childhood’ extends further than Caligula himself, to bring in events in the lives of Caligula’s parents, and allow for the inclusion of evidence from Tacitus. Both that chapter and ‘Young Caligula’ are psychologising of what the young Caligula ‘would have’ or ‘may have’ done or thought (despite the authors’ injunctions against ancient sources that claim to read minds, p. 41, 45).[3] ‘The private Caligula’ deals with appearance, personality, intellect, and interests such as entertainments and the stage. This chapter also addresses the question of Caligula’s supposed ‘madness’, in which these authors do not believe (with Winterling),[4] and, perhaps surprisingly, this chapter also includes ‘the meeting between Caligula and Philo’ on the grounds that it demonstrates Caligula ‘in jocular mood’. ‘The public Caligula’ covers aspects of Caligula’s administration and his personality when it is considered to have had an effect on the public, such as his cruelty and his divinity. Under ‘divinity’, the careful explanation of the difference between divinity, genius, and numen is rather muddled by the translation of Suetonius’ numen as ‘divine status’, perhaps to give the opportunity to clarify this in the notes (p. 156–7). The last chapter on a theme, ‘Outside Rome’ looks outwards to Caligula’s interactions with foreign leaders and the military activities that took place during his time in the palace: two sections on ‘Britain and Germany’ and ‘The Jewish world’. Although this is the most ‘historical’ chapter of the book, Caligula himself is presented as the driving force in all these interactions and military decisions, as the literary sources do tend to present him.
Some readers may welcome the pared-down footnotes (compared with the Nero volume from 2016 [BMCR 2017.03.09]). This reviewer regrets the lack of notes when secondary scholarship might have been interesting even to a general reader. We miss out on finding out what topics might be controversial when something is stated as a fact without guiding references. For example, on p. 11 the authors accept that Suet. Cal. 1.4 (on the birthplace) is a response to Tacitus, which seems controversial in view of Power’s argument.[5] Granted, I am not so sure it can be shown definitively either way, but the way it is presented here gives no hint that it might be open to question. When the date of Caligula’s death is mysteriously described as ‘generally accepted as plausible’, one wonders why it should not be. One has to go to Wardle (listed in the ‘further reading’)[6] to find out why the date might not be accepted. This tendency to skip over the controversies has the unfortunate effect of providing no new answers but also not really opening up questions or giving an indication of where a reader might go for more.
My misgivings aside, for the stated audience of ‘serious readers’ there will be benefits to reading this beside a biography of Caligula. The book gives an idea of what sources are available and makes them available in translation for a reader who would not go to the Latin and Greek.
Notes
[1] David Wardle, Suetonius: Life of Augustus. Clarendon Ancient History Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 28–29.
[2] On inspection of the inscription (AE 1973: 138) the name is Afer, not Ahenobarbus.
[3] The biographer’s ‘would have’ see Roy K. Gibson, Man of High Empire: The Life of Pliny the Younger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 24.
[4] Aloys Winterling, Caligula A biography. Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider, Glenn W. Most, and Paul Psoinos (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).
[5] Tristan Power, “Suetonius’ Tacitus,” JRS 104 (2014): 205–25.
[6] David Wardle, “When Did Gaius Caligula Die?” Acta Classica 34 (1991): 158–65.