Is the rumours true about Caligula and his siblings having incestuous relations with each other?

Question

Is the rumours true about Caligula and his siblings having incestuous relations with each other?

Answer 1

Very true - in fact during those times... incestuous relationships were quite common... I mean... look at the Egyptians!

Answer 2

Ooooh, yuck!

Caligula was very popular with the army, but with the Senate...not so much.  The Senators, of course, would be the ones writing the histories - so,if there was any hint of rumors like this, they would blow it up.

Whether C. got it on with his siblings is not important here - What IS important that respect for the office of the emperor had gotten so low, that people could say this kind of stuff about him...and, it would not only be believed, but be well-publicized.

(Contrast this with the lives of the early emperors....Julius had affairs with many of the most beautiful married women of Rome, so did Augustus.  Augustus even stole Livia, his longest-term wife, from another man.  But at their time, who knew or cared?)

How the public treated these stories about Caligula shows how low respect for the emperor had sunk.

Answer 3

Yes, it is true.

Answer 4

There have been rumours about Caligula having incestuous relations with his sisters, especially Drusilla, although there is no concrete evidence.

If this were to be true, then it would have began when Caligula was an adolescent. At the time he had been sent to live first with his great-grandmother Livia, then his grandmother Antonia. This was caused by the deteriorating relationship between his mother and his great-uncle, Tiberius.

Livia nor Antonia had time to look after Caligula, therefore he turned to his sisters (Agrippina the Younger, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) for comfort. This is when stories of incest between the four arose.

Though the activities between Caligula and his sisters might have been seen as incest by their contemporaries, it is not known whether the four actually had any sexual relations.

Answer 5

Caligula was not popular after his death, but it is certainly recorded (whether true or not) that he slept with his sister, and killed her when she was pregnant.

Answer 6

According to Suetonius, yes, he had s*x with one sister, and he sold the other two into prostitution.

Suetonius wrote De Vita Caesarum (the Lives of the Caesars) which has come down to us as "The Twelve Caesars". It's full of much gossip about all Julio-Claudians

Answer 7

Caligula (Gaius) was unbalanced, cruel and vile. There were always rumors of this, but there seems to be no concrete proof. I can certainly believe he was capable of it. Drusilla in particular seems to have been a favorite...he did try to get her declared a goddess, and had coins issued bearing her portrait.