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Decadent and Depraved Roman Emperors Who Shocked their Subjects

Khalid Elhassan February 11, 2025 15 min

18. From Decadent to Depraved

On one occasion, Caligula began to cackle uncontrollably at a party. When asked what was funny, he replied that he thought it hilarious that with a mere gesture of his finger, he could have anybody present killed on the spot. Displeased by an unruly crowd at the Circus Maximus, Caligula pointed out a section to his guards, and ordered them to execute everybody “from baldhead to baldhead”. On another occasion, bored at an arena when told that there were no more criminals to throw to the beasts, he ordered a section of the crowd thrown to the wild animals. Caligula’s depravities included i-n-c-e-s-t with his sisters. At dinner parties, he frequently ordered guests’ wives to his bedroom. After he bedded them, he returned to the party to rate them, and berate the cuckolded husbands for any perceived deficiency in their wives’ performance.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.