The Principate under Pressure: Gaius Caligula

Catalog description

Hactenus quasi de principe, reliqua ut de monstro narranda sunt (Suet. Cal. 22.1). Suetonius here captures the view of ancient sources (and some modern scholarship) that the principate of Gaius, which began with great expectations, degenerated into a crisis with a madman as the head of state. Revisionist scholarship has argued, however, that the empire functioned according to design during the brief but disconcerting principate of Gaius. In this seminar, we will look at the contemporary literary, documentary, and material sources for Gaius' principate (and slightly beyond, both before and after), with a focus not on the biography of the princeps but on the institutions constitutive of the principate. Sessions will be devoted to: the provinces and cities of the empire, Italy, literary and material cultural productions and spectacle, the army and praetorian guard, social groups and social mobility, the senate, client rulers, the ruler cult, the fiscus and imperial holdings, the treasury and taxation, the courts, the domus Augusta. Readings will be drawn from Suetonius, Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, Seneca, the Garland of Philip, Tacitus, and others. The documentary and material record for this period is richly varied, so we will be looking at papyri, inscriptions, coins, and archaeological discoveries.