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>"[Caligula] is supposed to have considered destroying the works of Homer, claiming the same right as Plato, who excluded him from his ideal state. He threatened to remove the busts of Vergil and Livy from the public libraries, on the grounds that the former had no talent, and the latter was a wordy and shoddy historian. In fact Vergil was criticised, especially for plagiarism, in his own day, and obliged to answer the criticisms personally. Moreover Livy was charged with verbosity also by Pompeius Trogus, the Augustan historian (although the same trait was admired by Quintilian as lactea ubertas). This might suggest that Caligula was au fait with the current trends in criticism, but the idea should not be pressed too hard. The comments look very much like the obiter dicta of the young iconoclast. Certainly he had no hesitation in quoting from both Homer and Vergil when the occasion demanded it."
>"To Philo, Caligula was a lunatic, but he was bound to appear as such to a devout Jew, given that he demanded recognition from his people as a god and even planned to expropriate the Temple of Jerusalem for his own worship ... Even Philo admits that by the time the audience was finished Caligula had adopted a milder tone (pros to malakoteron), asserting that the Jews were not criminals but mentally incompetent for not believing that he had a divine nature. Even though the intention of Philo's account is to depict Caligula as unhinged, the final impression is not of a madman, but of a conceited, ill-mannered and rather irrespondsible young ruler."
If Caligula were alive today, would he be shitposting on /lit/?
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>>9355724
Caligula may have been a shitposter.
But Nero would have lurked /lit/. An immature man child who thought himself a great artist.
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He might be disappointed to discover that rulers can no longer fool the people into believing they're gods.
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>>9355742
Nero would've posted poems in the critique thread without bothering to critique any of the posters before him
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>>9355724
I remember a history professor of mine talking about Caligula/nero, and leaders in general. Basically, Caligula and many other Roman emperors that have a bad reputation today were not actually bad/insane rulers or people. If you actually look at the history of their reign, especially the beginning, you'll notice that they (especially in the case of Caligula) were actually pretty good leaders that genuinely cared about Rome and made a sincere effort to better peoples lives. The problem is that Roman emperors were made leaders for life, and after a few years the stress of ruling half the world got to them and broke them down. Caligula just completely broke under the stress, and started to gain a lot of contempt and outright hatred for everything around him. Thee's a reason why we limit terms for the president: the stress of leadership gets to even the best rulers after a while.
That said, considering the fact that Caligula held a lot of contempt for everything and everyone around him, he'd likely be found shitposting on /lit/ today.
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>>9355789
And contrast that with how insanely long Augustus' reign was, I'm really fascinated with what he must've been like as a person
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>>9355940
Augustus was a reactionary /pol/ack. Just look a his moralistic laws.
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>>9355940
Augustus absolutely would've been fascinating. I think he thrived on tension
There's a reason why, outside of ruling, his only hobbies were gambling and having affairs
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