8. Caligula Slept With All of His Sisters
The epic perversions of Caligula (12 – 41 AD) might be explained by his upbringing: he was raised by his uncle, the Roman emperor Tiberius, a notoriously seedy creep. Tiberius spent much of his reign as a recluse in a pedophiliac pleasure palace, only surfacing every now and then to order the execution of enemies, real or imagined. His victims included Caligula’s mother and two brothers, whom Tiberius accused of plotting against him. He also probably had Caligula’s father poisoned. Such an environment was bound to mess up Caligula. He hid whatever resentments he might have harbored against his homicidal uncle, and succeeded to the throne – reportedly after smothering a bedridden Tiberius to death with a pillow.
Once on the throne, Caligula plunged into an orgy of extravagant spending and hedonistic living. His deviancy became legendary, ranging from wanton murders, to raping the wives of party guests, to turning the imperial palace into a whorehouse. It extended to his own family, and Caligula was in the habit of telling his wife, whenever he kissed her: “you know, I can have that lovely neck slit whenever I want“. He also had sex with his own sisters – as contemporaries put it: “He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above“.
