Everyone knows Caligula as one of the maddest and most cruel emperors. In fact, he may not have started as such. In his youth he had seen much of his family murdered or die of natural causes (its hard to tell since the evidence is scanty). While he had not been brought up expecting to rule himself, he had nevertheless been brought up as a spoiled prince in a privileged imperial family. It would not be any surprise, therefore, if Caligula had possessed both a weak character and unhealthily large ego. But Caligula did not obviously turn bad until suffering a mysterious illness about 18 months into his rule. Contemporary writers say he began to act capriciously from that point, and it may well have been that fever had damaged his mind.

Caligula was not his real name. It was a nickname meaning "Little Boots" or "Booties", given to him as a child when his mother paraded him around the army camps. It has been reported that he both liked and hated the name, so who knows. After a couple of years everyone had had enough of the young emperor though, and he was ambushed in a passageway between his palace and the circus, and stabbed to death. His wife and infant daughter were murdered at the same time. Belatedly his German body guards arrived and started killing everyone in sight. By the time everyone heard the knews, solidiers began searching the imperial residence and discoverd old uncle Claudius cowering behind some curtains. Pulled out of his hiding place, Clausius was certain he was about to be killed, but to his surprise, the soliders hailed him emperor! Caligula was dead, but the Julio-Claudian line had another couple of emperors to go.

Since Caligular ruled for only two or three years, he didn't have much time to issue much coinage in his own image. It is rather hard to come by in my experience, whether bronze or silver. After a couple of years of hoping for the best at the local coin shows I decided to proactively search the internet. I located this so-so example of a bronze as (pronounced "oz") for about $200. (My usual dealer confirmed it was worth about that.) Around the outside of the face is the name Caius (or Gaius) Caesar Augustus Germanicus, and two of his more important offices Pontifex Maximus (chief priest), and Tribuniciae Potestates (power of the tribune).