Saturday, December 11, 2010

Born Too Soon : #3 - Gaius Caligula

The next in our series of "Great /b/tards From History" is Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as the Emperor Caligula.

 Sup /b/?

Born in 12 AD, the son of the great general Germanicus, the little blond poppet Gaius was the darling of the legions - who gave him the nickname Caligula or "little boot". There was widespread rejoicing in Rome when, in 37 AD, Caligula succeeded his unpopular uncle, the Emperor Tiberius. Then things started to go wrong as one by one, Caligula pioneered the most popular themes of <a certain image board>.


Wincest! (With all three of his sisters.)

Furry thread : Consulting with Senator (& lover?!) Incitatus

It's a trap! (Rate me /b/)

You laff, you lose - God mode.

His behavior grew increasingly erratic: on one occasion, when presiding at the Games, he grew bored and had an entire section of the crowd thrown to the lions during the intermission. Then, in 40 AD, Caligula declared himself a god - somewhat limiting the scope of atheism threads.

One of the Emperor's ceremonial roles was to set the daily watchword for the Praetorian guards stationed in and around Rome. With hindsight, this wasn't a suitable job for a /b/tard. The army took offense at being obliged to greet each other with words like "cock", "whore" and "big boy" and, in 41 AD, they killed Caligula, his wife and daughter.

The above pictures are from the brilliant BBC dramatization of Robert Graves' books I,Claudius and Claudius the God - probably the greatest miniseries ever made. A word of warning though, the series was made in 1976 and may be a little stagey for modern tastes. (You might prefer Rome or Spartacus.)

Finally, if you're at all interested in reading history, you'll enjoy The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. It's a chatty, gossipy biography of the first twelve Roman emperors, written by a palace insider around 119 AD.

28 comments:

  1. Emperor Caligula looks like a total HO in these photographs

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  2. Those screencaps and their captions are perfect. I think you're right - so many people are born before or after the time they are truly meant to live in. Caligula was just a neckbeard born to a rich family - he should be in his parent's basement, subjugating the world with his "legion".

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  3. that first pic looks like Julian Assange

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  4. I don't associate with /b/, but Caligula really does seem to have been born in the wrong time. He would have fit right in with the ADD-riddled internet crowd.

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  5. wincest first thing that went through my mind when i hear caligula.

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  6. Very accurate captions indeed. He'd be the new queen on /b/ for sure.

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  7. Man how do you come up with this stuff? I lol'd hard at the "it's a trap!" pic. He'd associate well with /b/

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  8. Lol at the last caption you laff, you lose - god mode

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  9. lol at god mode. Will def check out that book

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  10. I remember watching the movie. That was some f'd up stuff.

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  11. i'll probably watch that miniseries now. thanks for the recommendation.

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  12. there was an I,Claudius BBC show with patrick stewart... with hair

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  13. lol looks like even Rome had it's special class. Although feeding half an audience to lions is pretty ballsy and probably made up for the drag.

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  14. he just got bored and threw an entire group of people to the lions?? WTF man... someone has male menstruations...

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  15. Great post. Thanx. Just started watching the IClaudius miniseries. Heard about it a month ago. It is awesome.

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  16. He liked to do it all...at the same time!

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  17. Julius Caesar the Roman geeser killed his wife with a lemon squeezer.

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