The popular saying says that "musician, poet and crazy, we all have a little", but without a doubt, some people take it very seriously. One of them was the Roman emperor Caligula, known for his strange and hilarious government, which among jokes, laughter, sex and debauchery led to the ruin of dozens of people, insulting their integrity, their lives and disturbing peace.
Caligula developed a series of political rules that were controversial, absurd and humiliating in the year 40 in Ancient Rome. The Emperor told his closest friends that he felt he was a God, because every night he had dreams that told him. His court applauded this assertion, but the rest simply ignored it, even the population came to make jokes about the fact. When the Emperor realized that they were taking him like a madman, he insisted on increasing the rumor. He then began to make public apparitions dressed as a semi-God. It appeared characterized as Hercules, Mercury, Venus and Apollo. He walked through the streets or the corridors of his palace completely immersed in his role. In important meetings he appeared to refer to himself as a God under the name of Jupiter. At first his court took the fact as a warning and treated him as a deity as a joke, but little by little Caligula seemed to be more convinced that he was indeed a divine being.
He had three temples dedicated to his figure as a supreme being, two in Rome and one in Miletus. He went out into the streets presenting himself as an envoy of the gods, like a being who had descended to Earth so that humans would enjoy and rejoice with his presence. The inhabitants did not know how to react to this assertion, so they simply deigned to look and smile, others confirmed this fallacy and others preferred to ignore it. However, the Emperor was not satisfied with this: he forced them to praise him and give him a kind of cult or, otherwise, were killed in cold blood by him or his guards.
Although other emperors were worshiped as Gods by their actions, Caligula went very far forcing the whole population and the senate to worship him compulsively. His actions came so far that they brought him a wave of retractors whom he wanted to eradicate with more meaningless actions. The crudest, perhaps, was when he decided to declare war on Poseidon.
According to the historian Suetonius, Caligula, in order to demonstrate his power and make his subjects tremble, decided to declare war on a being out of this world, for no one would wait for a mortal to come and win a simple battle. The emperor turned on Poseidon, the God of the sea. He gathered his army in haste and formed them in a position of war. The soldiers, surprised at what was happening, came to the call of the leader who told them the purpose. As soon as they were formed, the "God", extremely angry, gave them spears and permission to use the boats and go after the enemy. That was Poseidon.
Bewildered, they took ships, guns and ventured into the most wasted, strange and unusual battle ever seen before. Once at sea, Caligula ordered them to throw all the stones, arrows and other weapons they used to kill him, wherever he was in their territory. The people of the place, knowing that he would fight against the God of the sea, came forward expectantly. Some hoped that Caligula was actually a God, others would only see him fall into ridicule and others were there to see what kind of ruler they had.
They fought as if the world was finished against the waves, but the sea never reacted. Caligula, then, assumed that Poseidon had fallen surrendered before the greatness of the mortal. He returned happily to the land, not without first asking his army to bring him hundreds of shells, which he later sent in coffers to Rome to adorn his triumph. In this way, man - God or fool - demonstrated once again that power can be a weapon that used wrongly can lead to death and decay, as would happen to him a few years later, when his army conspired against him And killed him, causing the relief of all the people.
