So have you ever heard of a guy named
Caligula? - I have.
- You have, okay, maybe you know some of this then. For
the audience, he was a Roman Emperor and
he was an emperor for only about four years.
And Caligula was actually a nickname of
his, I don't know if you know that.
- I didn't know. - Yes.
- I thought that was his name. - No, his full name
is Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus
Germanicus. - That's a lot of names.
- It is a lot. And like half of those are names of other Roman
emperors, so it was probably a good call
for him to pick up a nickname. But, uh, it was
a nickname from when he was a kid,
actually, and he hated it. It means like
"little boot" because as a kid like when
he visited his dad he wore like little
soldiers boots, like when he hung out
around his dad's soldiers, and so he got that
nickname. And it stuck not only through
his life, but also through history, which
I think is hilarious because he hated it.
- Wow. - Yeah. So he first came to power in
year 37, and people like totally loved
him, he got rid of these like treason
trials that his predecessor had, and like
brought people back from exile, and gave
bonuses to all the soldiers and
everything, and so people were big fans.
But then he like got super sick, or
maybe he was poisoned, we don't really
know, but after that he got real weird.
I'll give you a little highlight reel
of his accomplishments at that time.
- Yeah. - He ordered the construction of like
a two mile bridge just so he could ride
his horse on it. Like back and forth, just
that was the purpose of it. - Okay.
- He made his soldiers go to the beach and
collect shells which seems like a worthy
job, you know it's pretty exciting.
- That's it, that's the end of that part
is just collect shells.
- Yep. - No purpose. All right.
- And he practiced facial contortions
to terrify people. So... - All right.
- Yeah, so, pretty normal guy, you know.
- Totally - My favorite though, is he had
a horse that he just loved. His horse's
name was Incitatus. And he built like
a huge house, for his horse and he would
invite people over like in his horse's
name, be like "oh, Incitatus invited you over
for dinner" and just stuff like that and...
- Okay. - He appointed his horse as a priest
and wanted to appoint him into a
government position ultimately. - No.
- Anyways, well also this guy also had his
problems, not just being weird. You know,
like killing and exiling people he
considered political threats. - Sure.
And lots of incest with his sisters or at
least rumors such, so... - Great.
- Yep. And so naturally when you're being weird and
killing people as an emperor in the
Roman Empire, you get assassinated. So he
got four years as an emperor and then he
was killed. But here's the thing about
this whole story is that we don't know
if any of that is true. Like any of what
i just said. Because the, like, primary
historians who reported on him
didn't come until like a couple hundred
years later, and so a lot of that is like
based on legend. And so I like cannot
find any solid, like, one way the other.
Like, he actually did this stuff, he
didn't actually do this stuff, like,
everyone believes different things.
Do we, like, do we know he was real?
Do you at least know he existed? I think so.
I think that part is pretty clear. But
there's some people who say that like
all of that was embellished by people
who didn't like him, or that even some
people think he was like faking madness,
and so it's kind of all over the place. I
personally... I just really hope the horse
stuff is real. Like I just want that to be real so bad.
- God, yes please. - Because it's, like, so iconic. Like,
inviting people over to your house for your horse.
I just love it. - Maybe Caligula was
just like a regular guy, and this was all
just like political mudslinging that
stuck in history. - It's possible. He got
stuck with the name, so maybe he got
stuck with a bunch of other stuff too.
- Yeah, if we know that he didn't like the name,
and that's why-- what we know him as,
that's something. I think frankly it-- I
think it's more interesting if
none of it's true, and he was just like
trying to get shit done in Rome.
- He did actually make a lot of progress for the
Roman Empire as far as getting more land
in Britain. Like that was his main
accomplishment during that time. Which,
you know, conquering isn't what I would
consider a great accomplishment, but at
the time that was his cool thing that he
did so... - For the Romans, they were fans
of that. - Yeah, exactly.
To me, it kind of puts the whole Roman
Empire into question at least a little
bit, if there's so much we don't know
about Caligula. Like I mean there's
certainly some things about the Roman
Empire that we have records of but maybe
there's more of it that could have just
been embellished or legend or anything.
But I think that's true a lot of history
even more modern. - Sure, absolutely.
That's a great point too, is what else does
it throw into question. Maybe there was no
Rome. Or did I just blow everyone's minds.
- Well, thanks for chatting with me about
Mr. Caligula. - Thank you. Thank you
for for enlightening everyone. And it
just goes to show that in history maybe
truth doesn't matter so much.
So I've been chatting here with Mike
Egan, who has a super cool channel Eganworks
that you should go check out. - Aww.
- Over on his channel we talked about a conspiracy
theory about-- I don't know if I should spoil it or
not. It's about a certain video game and
a certain popstar. So definitely worth
checking out. - What could it be?
Thank you all so much for
watching, I love you very much and I will
see you guys next week.
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