Caligula: Mad Tyrant or Misunderstood Ruler?
When you think of history’s worst leaders, one name almost always comes up: Caligula. Over the years, films and books have painted him as the ultimate villain—cruel, paranoid, sexually perverse, and hopelessly corrupt. He became emperor in his twenties, and within just a few years, he was assassinated.
It’s easy to see why he’s remembered as the ultimate “bad ruler.” But here’s the twist: many of the most shocking stories about him probably aren’t true.
Take the infamous tale of him making his horse consul. Great story, but ancient sources suggest it never really happened. Same with the rumours about incest with his sister—his enemies never mentioned it at the time, which makes it pretty unlikely. Even his supposed unpopularity has been exaggerated. In reality, it looks like later historians—and Hollywood—added layers of scandal to make him seem even more monstrous.
So, what was really going on with Caligula?
The Medical Mystery
In 2024, I stumbled across a fascinating paper on Google Scholar that tried to answer this question. The researchers weren’t debating his politics—they were trying to diagnose his health.
The leading theory? Epilepsy. Members of the Julian family (to which Caligula belonged) were known to have it, and ancient writers mention he suffered from the “falling sickness” as a child. He would lose consciousness, suffer fevers, and—according to sources—barely sleep more than three hours a night. Combine that with anxiety and erratic moods, and the picture of an unstable young emperor starts to make sense.
But epilepsy wasn’t the only possibility. Another factor could have been alcohol. Romans often sweetened their wine with sapa—a grape syrup boiled in lead pots. That meant every sip contained traces of lead acetate. Modern tests on Roman bones show aristocrats had much higher levels of lead than slaves—because they drank more wine. If Caligula was a heavy drinker, his mental decline may well have been made worse by lead poisoning.
When you put all that together, his bizarre behaviour—sudden mood swings, strange laughter, cruelty, hypersexuality, depression, paranoia—reads less like random madness and more like symptoms of epileptic psychosis, possibly worsened by lead toxicity. Some historians even think he suffered a severe seizure in 37 CE that left him permanently changed.
A Childhood in Trauma
Even before becoming emperor, Caligula’s life was scarred by tragedy. He suffered seizures as a toddler. When he was seven, his father was assassinated. By fourteen, his mother and brothers had been executed by Emperor Tiberius, and his sisters were exiled. Strangely, ancient writers note that he showed little emotion through it all.
By twenty, he was living with Tiberius on Capri—the very man who had destroyed his family. Tiberius himself was painted by historians as a reclusive tyrant, infamous for cruelty and disturbing behaviour. Growing up in that toxic environment almost certainly shaped Caligula’s own brutal reign.
The Bigger Picture
Corrupt emperors like Caligula didn’t just terrorise their inner circles. They poisoned the entire system. Fear trickled down from the palace into every corner of Roman life. Violence, paranoia, and corruption spread like wildfire. Public life became dangerous, politics a death trap, and the very foundations of Roman society began to rot. Caligula may have been sick, traumatised, and unstable. But he was also emperor—and when absolute power mixes with personal instability, the result can devastate a whole civilisation.
"All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilisation ... Those virtues that befit his dignity are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness towards all the peoples and kindreds of the earth".
Baháʼí Writings
