Therefore, among rulers in whom there was no real mental illness, we so frequently encounter personalities who constantly made miserable fools of themselves in certain areas – in part because their position contains the compulsion and urge to stand out in all things, in part because the environment preserves their belief that they are accomplishing something brilliant and immensely impressive, even where the kindest, honest judges would shake their heads with apprehension.
One particular area in which Caligula strove to stand out was eloquence; he liked to speak a lot and publicly, and we are told that he did have a certain talent for it (43), that he, especially, possessed the art of hurting and insulting others. He had a special penchant for taking on the eminent authorities of literature. It is said that many a caustic word against them did not come off badly at all. Yet his uninformed fanaticism went so far that he wanted to ban classic authors like Homer, Virgil, and Livy from all libraries (44).
For all that, it seems that he sometimes liked to use quotes from the hated authors in epigrammatically pointed words to describe his own position. Thus he once barked at his guests the famous verses from Homer: “Let there be one ruler, and one king!” (45) Most famous is his favorite quote (46) from a tragedian, “Oderint dum metuant,” that is, let them hate me as long as they fear me – no doubt the most pointed expression of his Caesarean conception of the relationship between the ruler and his people.
* * *
The pleasure in ruthless violence – expressed in the frequent use of this saying as the highest leitmotif, as it were, of his practice of government – dominated his position on all relationships within public life.
Leaving aside positive acts of cruelty for now, it is typical, after all, for these Caesars to almost make it their exclusive prerogative to let everyone feel their power, as with Caligula; nothing enrages them more than the feeling that they are encountering limits to that power, and they regard the spread of fear and terror as the most effective means for nipping all resistance by their subjects in the bud. Like Caligula, they tend to utter the boastful words – in countless variations – that everyone shall be made to feel their power. This is often repeated in Roman imperial history, and there are also plenty of examples outside of it. Even such brilliant Caesarean types like Napoleon were not exempt from it. Happy is the nation in which such rulers are compelled, by the force of external circumstances, to content themselves with mere threats, and are not – like Caligula – able to put them into action.
(43) Suetonius 53. Dio Cassius 59.28.
(44) Suetonius 34.
(45) Suetonius 22. – See also the quote from Virgil in Suetonius 45.
(46) Suetonius 30.
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