h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Caligula's Lighthouse: A Border Crisis, 40 CE - A87927637
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - U1590784

For some reason, I was drawn to the story of Caligula's war with the sea. Why this should happen at this particular time, I have no idea.

This is a neat summary of a curious event

Caligula may have won his battle, but the ocean won the war indeed...

A couple of minor points:

"Gaius Caesar Caligula" makes it look like "Caligula" is the third part of his name rather than the nickname so I wonder if there is a way of making that clearer...

Footnote 1: "Caligula" means "*little* army boots"?

That's interesting that 'Pharos' has come to mean 'lighthouse' and not just the place where the wondrous lighthouse was... I didn't know that!

Thanks for reading, Sasha!

I put in a footnote about praenomen, nomen, cognomen. I decided not to go on about it, but he was named for Julius Caesar, who of course was Gaius Julius Caesar. So 'Caesar' was Gaius Julius' cognomen, which is funny because I think he was bald...ils sont fou, le romaines... It's just different from English. We usually put the cognomen in the middle, like Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.

You're right, of course. The caligae are 'ula', as Vlad's 'drac' was '-ula'. Changed.

Yeah, I double-checked about 'pharos' being generic for 'lighthouse', after the island. And it is the Greek word for lighthouse.

Was it his cognomen, or an actual nickname? I thought his cognomen was Germanicus and it was other people who disparagingly called him Caligula...

This entry does suggest comparisons with another leader of doubtful credentials.

One question to ask, I suppose, is how reliable was Suetonius? Was he contemporary? Was he unbiased? The story reminds me a bit of King Canute, where the popular version says that the king tried to hold back the tide and failed. The longer version said that he did this as a rebuke to his flattering courtiers.

You're right, Sasha. It was a nickname. I completely forgot his cognomen, which was Germanicus. Thanks for setting me right! Corrected footnote has ensued. Let me know if I've sorted it out, or am still tied in knots.

'Caligula' wasn't originally an insult. He was a cute little monster, and the soldiers thought he was the regimental pet with his little boots. Of course, he grew to dislike it.

MVP, Suetonius was born about 30 years later. The short answer about all Roman historians is, 'It depends on who you talk to.' Their supply of sources wasn't what we're used to. They hadn't been trained in objectivity, and might not have known what that was. And, of course, what they might think was likely to happen certainly wouldn't completely overlap with what the average 21st-century newspaper reader would consider plausible, so....

I'm guessing, though, that a triumph would be kind of hard to make up. Also, Suetonius comes across as less biased than, say, Josephus, or even Tacitus when he's talking about his father-in-law...

That said, Suetonius was a librarian, well-read, and a friend of Pliny the Younger's, so if anybody could write a good history, he was probably the one.

http://www.livius.org/articles/person/suetonius/

I wish we had his version of the 'Urban Dictionary'. More Latin swear words would always be fun to read.

Excellent footnote, thank you

Yes, good point that the nickname was originally affectionate and it was only later that the name was used to disparage him and it stuck!

Great Entry!

Great entry, and coincidentally I'm currently sitting just along the road from where King Cnut failed to hold back the tide.

For me the definitive translation of Suetonius' 'Twelve Cæsars' was by Robert Graves, the author of 'I, Claudius'. In fact, 'I, Claudius' (though it has roughly 24 other sources, including Tacitus) pretty much follows Suetonius' interpretation of events in the days of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. (Not that I'm suggesting that anyone studying Roman history merely has to watch the award-winning 1976 BBC television series 'I, Claudius' and then, in their exams, all they have to do is remember events that happened in the series and write 'According to Suetonius…' No – a true Roman historian has to watch 'Asterix' cartoons too.)

In fact the television series 'I, Claudius' apparently when broadcast in the US was marketed as being a true reconstruction of exactly what happened in the Roman Empire. I wouldn't go that far – while every event in 'I, Claudius' has a historical source (most of which written after the events depicted) the interpretation of the event was very much Graves' own. He presents the events in ways that suggest that key figures were behind those events, manipulating what happened to their own ends, ascribing motivations and causal relationships that are probably unlikely.

It's still a cracking read.

<BB<

You left out that fact that the 'I, Claudius' television series was definitive historically because of the obvious fact that all Romans speak with British accents. I would never have wanted to miss Patrick Stewart's portrayal of Sejanus, or John Hurt's creepy Caligula. And yeah, Graves wasn't too shabby, either.

May I also recommend Colleen McCullough's 'Masters of Rome' series? She does good research, and you'd love her appendices. She knows all the cuss words, too.

I used to suggest that my Latin students - okay, the college baseball team, in particular - go read one of the 'Heroes in Hell' novels. Lots of Latin cuss words. Their grades improved. One has to properly motivate....

In terms of interpreting Caligula, we realise we need to avoid imposing attitudes from another era. Camus' version of the emperor as an existentialist hero, for example, isn't history. And it's hard to tell these things from historiography of the past, which is likely to be even more biased than the kind we read today, which is far from neutral, most of the time. We do the best we can.

Just reading this again, I had one more question:

Lugdunum hasn't been seen since the 17th Century low tide, but has anybody looked for it by eg diving since then?

I haven't found any references to diving research. It might be too hazardous.

This is what I found:

'Modern archaeologists have been unable to trace the ruins of the 'Brittenburg', which have become one of the most famous and romantic mysteries of Dutch archaeology. The violence of the sea has probably destroyed the remains of the castle beyond recovery.'

http://www.livius.org/articles/place/lugdunum-katwijk/

It is an interesting entry well done
This is a good read especially the location theory, more, please

Ah, thanks DG So Lugdunum is still there, but now further in the sea rather than at the beach, I see

So the in sentence "It's assumed that the waves have..." - 'have' should be 'had'?

Sasha, I would say 'have'. The waves have devoured it, and now it's underwater. I don't understand a need for pluperfect?

I read the last two sentences in that paragraph as saying: they didn't see a lighthouse in the 17th Century - why? - because the waves had washed it away...

I see it now, that the paragraph is saying: Historians don't know if 'Callo's Tower' was Caligula's lighthouse - why? - because in the 17th Century no lighthouse was seen. It is assumed that the waves have washed away [Caligula's lighthouse].

Sorry for the confusion about where my mental 'because' should go!

Ah! That explains it. Glad we cleared that up.

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