Caligula: Madness, cynic or an inevitable flaw of the system?
I do believe Caligula was self aware but vindictive person who was spiteful of his position. Historian Aloys Winterling has argued that many of his actions traditionally treated as evidence of insanity make considerably more sense if Caligula was deliberately attacking the political fiction on which the early Principate operated.
As princeps senators would have competed to flatter him, vote him honors and obtain his favor and we know Caligula hated them. Augustus was extraordinarily skilled at maintaining that fiction but I do believe it is likely that Caligula didn't care enough or was too disgusted to maintain the facade/contradiction. He didn't respect ritual and his sense of humor was spiteful, (the Jewish embassy example, a horse as consul).
Caligula's background may attest to this. As a child, he watched his immensely popular father Germanicus die, then saw his mother and brothers destroyed through a political system supposedly built on law, honor, and senatorial dignity. Later, while living under Tiberius, he survived by hiding his feelings, flattering the emperor, and carefully performing loyalty. He was a cunning with self-control and he wasn't raised to be disillusioned from the reality of the world. He learned firsthand that people often say or do whatever power requires them to say or do and was intimate with that revelation. When he became princeps and earned a title of unchecked authority at only twenty-four, the situation reversed: senators and courtiers now performed the same submission toward him that he had once performed toward Tiberius. That experience may have made him deeply cynical towards the system he ruled and especially toward an aristocracy whose claims to dignity and independence he knew were largely theatrical and instead of Caligula becoming more sympathetic, he may have become contemptuous.
I bet he wanted to push boundaries and see how far he could go. His humiliations of senators, insistence that extravagant vows be literally fulfilled was likely in my opinion a form of revenge. I bet you he was cunning enough to understand the game he was playing but spiteful enough to see how far he could stretch his authority. He didn't care for theater since he could wield himself as a dangerous force
Mostly conjecture of course and projection but I think it's fun to put myself in the little boots of other and that it's very plausible given how Caligula had demonstrated cleverness/capability early on and the insanity claims to be a sudden development. There is a saying that wealth doesn't corrupt but instead reveals the true nature of a person. Trauma/abuse is a cycle.
I find Caligula to be one of the more unusually relatable rulers. I'm prone to think he was definitely a "we live in a society" type of guy. Resentment towards hypocrisy combined with resentment toward one’s own former powerlessness.
What are your thoughts and criticisms? What are your perceptions interpretations and opinions of such an enigmatic figure?