Caligula Now?

Posted on February 17, 2004 in Atrocity Biography Culture Reading

I’m deep in the reading of Catharine Edwards’s translation of Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars and reflecting on how Roman life and exercises of power resemble our own. It’s a fight to press through without wondering if the American Republic is soon to be subdued as it was by the election of the Caesars as “Imperators”. Mis-speakings that led to death fill the pages of Suetonius’s classic of biography and gossip. Is the Department of Homeland Security so far from that when it invades internet shopping sites searching for expressions of protest against the Bush Regime? The fright that clutches my shoulders and hikes itself up my back whispers in my ear that these intrusions might someday be seen as merciful, compared to the horrors to be committed in the future.

I already see signs of Roman Imperial style entertainment and soul control, not dissimilar to those described in this paragraph from Suetonius:

When [Caligula] was disturbed in the middle of the night by people trying to secure the free seats in the Circus he had them all driven away with cudgels. In the confusion more than twenty Roman knights and the same number of ladies, along with a vast number of others, were trampled to death. At the theatrical shows, trying to stir up fights between the common people and the Roman knights, he distributed the free tickets early so that the places were taken by the commonest people. At a gladitorial show, he had the awnings drawn back when the sun was at its fiercest and would allow no one to leave. He would have the usual equipment taken away and then set the most useless and ancient gladiators against mangy wild animals and have mock fights between respectable family men who were known to be of good reputation but conspicuous for some physical disability. And sometimes he would condemn the people to hunger by closing the granaries.

Do you see what I see? Free speech zones; the setting off of war opponents against soldiers; the heat of Crawford, Texas, where Bush goes to torture the news media; the ill-treatment of disabled veterans; “reality TV” shows such as Survivor and The Fear Factor; and the mocking of the working poor with low wages and no health benefits? I do. I see Caligula, if not in body then in Spirit, governing our country and laughing because he’s fooled us into believing that he is a Christian now.

“Ah,” he soughs. “I may not shed as much blood, but I can still make you play my fool and be at odds with one another.”