EMPERORS BEHAVING WELL. Caligula, Nero, Tiberius….The mention of the Roman emperors calls up images of appalling misconduct. Most of the lurid stories go back to Suetonius. My Latin professor pointed out that Suetonius was thought to have had access to Roman imperial files, but he also said that many scholars thought that Suetonius was unreliable.
Mary Beard alludes to “a few brave, revisionist attempts to rehabilitate some of the most notorious imperial monsters”. She points out that it is the emperors who were assassinated who have the blackest reputations and that their successors had reason to blacken their reputations: “…Gaius [Caligula] may have been assassinated because he was a monster, but it is equally possible that he was made into a monster because he was assassinated.”
Tom Holland’s “DYNASTY” seems to attribute Caligula’s monstrosity to Tiberius. Essentially that Caligula was raised a hostage and was aware of what was happening to his family members who had threatened Tiberius. In addition, that Tiberius’ home on Capri had turned into a fortress of paranoia and absurd sexual humiliation for nobility and their families.
But again, I don’t know how you separate that out from the rumors of the time that perhaps were circulated out of political expedience. Very fair point to question the X-Y relationship of those two events.
Robert Graves did Claudius a big favor, given some less flattering portrayals of his reign