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Pythagoras’ Greed Cup and Other Lesser-Known Ancient World Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 31, 2020 34 min

Roman Empire - Roman emperor — The assassination of Caligula. Quora

17. When Teasing Backfires

Caligula’s craziness included the time when he declared war on the sea god Neptune. He marched his legions to the sea, and had them collect seashells to show the deity who was boss. Caligula eventually declared himself a god, removed the heads from various deities’ statues, and replaced them with his own. However, it was not the weirdness that doomed Caligula, but his grievous error in offending his own bodyguards.

His security detail’s commander, Chaerea, had a high-pitched voice, and Caligula got a kick out of mocking him as effeminate. He thought it hilarious to come up with derogatory daily passwords that had to do with homosexuality, and whenever Chaerea was due to kiss the imperial ring, Caligula made sure it was on his middle finger, and waggled it obscenely. Chaerea finally had enough, and in 41 AD, he hatched an assassination plot with other Praetorian Guards, and hacked Caligula to death.

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.