For the second time, the fantastic idea of a conquest of the world’s oceans returned. The young emperor seems to have had an exceptional fondness for the sea, appealing in and of itself, but once again distorted into something pathological. I have already mentioned the especially ostentatious furnishings of his yachts. We are repeatedly told that he undertook shorter and longer sea voyages, and it seems that he also went to sea in the beauty of the storm. This passion must have been quite inconvenient for his entourage; for he seems to have ruthlessly demanded that all share his predilections, and for poor Silenus, who once remained behind in stormy weather, his fear of seasickness proved his undoing, since Caligula, at that time already in a bloody rage from blind mistrust, suspected other motives behind this action (37).
* * *
Caligula’s play-acted campaigning and soldiering, which we have come to know, his whims about discipline, and the triumphal processions obviously contain a comical element, which is characteristic of the pathological picture of Caesarean madness. In the case of Caligula, it was not limited to military comedies. We are told of his immense passion for theater and the circus – and even more: we are told how he sometimes began to act along himself, how he was dominated by a strange fondness for conspicuous clothes and for constantly changing them (38), how this playful dress-up degenerated to the point where he liked to see himself in the masks of the various divinities (gods and goddesses!) (39) – a trait we shall return to in a different context – how he also had his own acting talents admired, for example, rousing senators from their beds at night merely to perform for them (40); we are told that he appeared in public as a circus fighter, as Nero did later (41), and even as a gladiator (42), as Commodus did later, that is, in a role that, at that time, drew the curse of social ostracism upon the unfortunate man who filled it.
There are probably two things that enter into this comical trait of Caesarean madness: first, a pathological-imaginative tendency – the arrested penchant of the child, as it were – to fuse images of fantasy with the real world, a tendency that is preserved best under conditions where, instead of simple naturalness, so much weird comic play-acting, so many fictions are dominant, as is the case at an imperial court; second, the need to shine everywhere and in all spheres, a need that is also pathologically nourished by the peculiar position of the absolute ruler.
(37) Suetonius 23.
(38) Suetonius 52. Dio Cassius 59.26.
(39) Suetonius 22.
(40) Suetonius 54.
(41) Suetonius 54.
(42) Dio Cassius 59.5. – See Suetonius 32.
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