The Assassination of Caligula

Chapter Two

Caligula, "Neos Helios" as he wished to be worshipped, was eight and twenty twelvemonths old. He was lean, bald, brown-eyed and possessed a countenance that was perpetually cruel. He was wearing a purple loincloth and was ... whichever type of gladiator armor he fancied really, his sanity was so far gone he looked like a fool's idea of a gladiator. He was holding a sword but no shield, so sure of his divinity that he did not even bother with one.

Standing in the arena, his eyes stared at the gate, waiting for which gladiator was to come out first to face him. He was a man haunted, haunted by the ghosts of his past. He saw them all: his great-grandfather Augustus, his great-grandmother Livia, his sister Julia Drusilla but no haunted him more than Tiberius, his great-uncle, adoptive grandfather and predecessor whom Caligula had personally assassinated smothering him with a pillow.

"You are dead, leave me be!" he would say, his voice deep and gravelly. "I am a god and I command it!"

To him Augustus would say: "You have not expired yet, boy, and who is to say that the Senate will deify you once you have passed? Thus speaks, the Divine Augustus."

The Divine Augustus... The Divine Augustus was nothing. He was Neos Helios, the New Sun! When he moved to Alexandria, to Egypt, they would worship him and he would be treated as a god deserved to be!

"You made me a goddess, brother." Julia Drusilla would say. "Illness took me, just as illness made you a god. Does it vex you that I do not live alongside you now to enjoy our divinity together?"

Livia would then say: "All the divinity you want is for yourself, monster. You granted divinity to your sister but to none other shall you. My grandson Germanicus never should have fathered you, my step-granddaughter Agrippina Major never should have bore you. Nero, Drusus, they had enough sons with just those two. You are the one who never should have been, monster. All that is Rome falls into chaos under you."

And as always, Tiberius would come and say: "Naming you my heir was a mistake. My grandson Tiberius Gemellus should have been my sole heir, I never should have named you and him joint-heirs."

"Your grandson, my cousin and adoptive son is dead and so are you." Caligula would respond.

That day, Tiberius' shade said something new. "And soon you will join me, your death is coming soon, Little Boots. My son's arrival comes with it."

Caligula stood there, staring at what only he could see. "Son?" he inquired. "What son? The son you fathered is dead and so are the sons you adopted. You have no sons left! The Drusi, my father Germanicus, my brother Nero, they are all dead! You have no son who lives, unreal mockery!"

"But yet I do." Tiberius said. "Only now that I am dead, do I recognize him as my son!"

"What talk is this, horrible shadow?" Caligula asked, his eyes wild with anger. "Who is this son I know nothing of? Uncle Claudius? Venus? A senator? Who is he? I demand his identity be spoken to me, Neos Helios!"

But alas, Tiberius did not answer. He merely faded away, as he always eventually did, as they all eventually did.

Left standing in the arena, those who were there to watch would only stare. Their First Citizen was mad and there was nothing they could do about it. He had thrown a portion of an amphitheatre audience to wild beasts simply because he had been bored. There was no telling what he would do! Would the tyranny of Caligula ever come to an end? Would Rome ever once more know the just rule of one like Augustus?