#Gaius julius caesar house deity full#

Caesar’s family relations placed him on the side of the populares, since his aunt Julia was married to Marius. The years of his youth were dominated by the conflict between the factions of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornilius Sulla in the conflict between the populares and the optimates. Caesar’s father arrived at the praetor-ship, but never won the election for the consulship. The Early YearsĬaesar was born in 102 or 100 BCE into the ancient patrician family of the Iulii who claimed ancestry from Aeneas of Troy, one of the mythical founders of Rome, and the goddess Venus, but few members of the family had distinguished themselves in the previous generations. He was an accomplished writer and orator, a brilliant politician and power-broker and an outstanding general, but he was also totally ruthless in the pursuit of his personal goals and ambitions, which included not only absolute power over the Roman empire, but also divine honours and recognition as a human god. In 2002 a marble statue of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was decapitated by a member of the public concerned over Third World debt.Gaius Iulius Caesar (100-44 BCE) was a central figure of the last decades of the Roman Republic. To this day, images of political leaders remain targets of protest and dissent. Portraits on coins minted during his reign were defaced. And some were simply destroyed by a furious populace. Others were recut to resemble emperors of more blessed memory.

Some were thrown into the Tiber – a great dishonour.

His successor Claudius stopped short of declaring the day of his death a public holiday, but his statues were removed from public view. After his death Caligula was not deified, as Augustus and Tiberius had been, and he suffered a damnatio memoriae – his name was removed from all public buildings and rolls of honour. However unlikely that may be, the Emperor’s body in stone and metal was certainly made to suffer.

#Gaius julius caesar house deity full#

Ĭaligula’s assassins were said to have been so full of loathing for their victim that they ate his flesh. It is in the tradition of portraits of the Julio-Claudian emperors, the first of whom, Augustus, can be seen on the obverse of a coin from the Fitzwilliam, left. It might have once been part of a full-length figure from a domestic shrine in a household keen to advertise their allegiance to the temperamental despot. This is, however, an official image made during Caligula’s lifetime. his face was naturally grim and ugly, and he contrived to make it even more savage by practising all kinds of awful and terrifying expressions in a mirror' In an extended description of the Emperor’s uncomely appearance, this writer tells us that: Nor is he quite as physically repulsive as Suetonius, the first-century Roman historian, would lead us to believe. This small bronze head does not, of course, look like the monster of depravity that subsequent historians have painted Caligula to be. Caligula was said to have been so sensitive about his premature baldness that he made it a capital offence for anyone to gaze upon the hairless imperial pate, or to mention a goat in his presence. He built a shrine to house a golden statue of himself, which was dressed every day in an outfit to match whatever the emperor himself was wearing. Unlike his predecessors, he assumed absolute power and demanded that he be treated as a god in his lifetime. Paranoid about his own security, Caligula murdered those he suspected of plotting against him, including the leader of his guard, Macro, who had eased his succession in the first place. The great affection the people held for him was extended to his son, and when the unpopular Tiberius died in 37 CE, there was a sense of optimism about his young successor, only the third emperor Rome had known. Germanicus had been adopted by the Emperor Tiberius as his heir but died suddenly in 19 BCE. Caligula means ‘little boots’ and was an affectionate childhood nickname given to him by the soldiers under the command of his father Germanicus, for he would toddle round the camp wearing a miniature army uniform.

His full official name was Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus. This small, corroded bronze head has been identified as a rare surviving image of Caligula, one of only a few that escaped destruction or re-cutting after the hated Emperor’s assassination in 41 BCE.