Latest news with #Caligula
Times
2 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Times
I rinse out and reuse my bin bags. I can't be the only one
T wenty years ago I spent £180 on a kitchen bin. Then, quite soon after but unrelated, we had three children. The kitchen bin is still with us and you would hope so too because — I'm not sure if I've mentioned this — it cost £180. I wasn't to know it at the time but the bin was to become the high watermark of our extravagant double-income-no-kids lives. Imelda Marcos had a last pair of Louboutins. Caligula had a last roast crocodile. We have that bin. Every time I use it I have a flash of nostalgia for that life before nappies, buggies, uniforms and driving lessons. Those, after all, were the days — the late nights and late mornings, the relaxed conversations, the avocado on toast, the enormous bin budget. The problem is that the £180 bin requires very particular bin bags and those very particular bin bags are expensive, which is probably where I should have begun this cautionary tale. On bin day last week I had an argument with Harriet. She began it by saying, 'I've put a chicken carcass in the bin, so make sure you chuck it out.' I said, 'But I just washed the bin bag.' She said, 'It's hot, though, so it will smell.' I offered to wash it again with washing-up liquid and everything but she crossed her elbows and said no. Very quickly the argument became heated and then it spiralled across wider budgetary red lines — the cost of my beers, the cost of her massage treatments, the lottery ticket I once bought, that time she parked in the multistorey rather than on the street a mile away but free. Then, for a moment, the guns fell silent. She made an angry cup of (expensive) coffee. I made a defensive cup of (cheap) tea. Then, caffeinated, she took a deep breath and said, 'Why are you washing bin bags anyway?' and started laughing. • Matt Rudd: Apply more suntan lotion and other top tips to survive global warming Irritatingly, I started laughing too because it was a good question. Why was I washing bin bags anyway? I think this curious behaviour took root in the winter, probably at about the same time we got a telephone-number electricity bill. For a long time before that I'd been tipping kitchen waste from the fancy 45p kitchen bag into a less fancy 15p black bag. I'd been relatively covert about it and each successful decanting felt like a heist — if I could get three goes out of one bag I'd have saved… 90p. One bag a week instead of three is, over time, millions. Then, after no one finished their spaghetti bolognese, Harriet noticed what I was up to. She said she didn't think it was very nice using a kitchen bin bag twice let alone three times. I suggested any unpleasant detritus could go straight outside in the black bag. If we only used the kitchen bin for pleasant detritus then it was fine. She suggested, quite forcefully, that this wouldn't be happening. I started washing bin bags. At first I did it in the dead of night. Then I became more brazen — I'd slip out to water the garden and take the bin bag with me. There were some mutterings from my beloved. She knew what I was up to but decided, I suspect, to let me get on with it. Then came chicken-carcass-gate, the crossed elbows and the laughter. • Matt Rudd: Now, in which idiot-proof place did I put my passport? Where do we go from here, you'll be wondering. For the sake of holy matrimony we could replace the £180 bin and its expensive taste in bags for a humbler cousin, but that would require upfront capital investment. We could invite a financial adviser to review our incomings and outgoings to identify better ways to make ends meet, but they'll only make us shop at Aldi. We could even move to a cheaper home in a cheaper neck of the woods and use as many fancy bin bags as we liked. We won't do any of those things. The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The definition of household finance is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the kids to move out at some point. 'We need to have an abundance mentality,' Harriet says after listening to a podcast. Miserliness leads to misery. Generosity leads to a sense of wealth. A sense of wealth leads to… wealth? Something like that. • Matt Rudd: Does the world really need coconut-scented toilet paper? Fine then. I did a bit of stretching, I jogged on the spot and I channelled my inner Imelda. Then I grabbed the perfectly reusable bin bag with its only slightly turning chicken carcass and I threw it straight out. And, only for a brief moment, I felt like a millionaire.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
Caligula was a ‘madman' – but he also knew his plants, researchers say
A new study suggests the notoriously cruel Roman emperor Caligula possessed knowledge of medicinal plants, particularly hellebore. The research, from Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program, re-examines an anecdote from Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars concerning Caligula's understanding of ancient pharmacology. The study highlights Antikyra, a Greek spa town, as the " Mayo Clinic of the Roman world", renowned for its hellebore treatments for conditions like epilepsy and mental illnesses. Researchers propose that Caligula's interest in hellebore may have stemmed from his own suspected struggles with epilepsy and insomnia. Study author Trevor Luke said Caligula is often 'dismissed as a madman' for his erratic and tyrannical behaviour, but 'he very likely knew something about hellebore and pharmacology in general'.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
Notoriously cruel Roman emperor may have been a plant nerd, archaeologists find
The notoriously cruel Roman emperor Caligula may have been quite knowledgeable about medicinal plants, a new study suggests. Emperor Gaius, nicknamed Caligula, was the third ruler of the Roman Empire from 37AD until his assassination in 41AD. Surviving records of the tyrant's short reign hint that he indulged in an extravagant lifestyle of megalomania, sadism and sexual perversion. A new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, suggests that the dictator may have been familiar with the pharmacology of ancient times. 'He's dismissed as a madman, perhaps rightly so, but we show he very likely knew something about hellebore and pharmacology in general,' Trevor Luke, an author of the study from the Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program, said. Researchers assessed a brief anecdote about Caligula originally reported by historian Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars. The second century collection of biographies of Roman rulers provides evidence that 'Caligula, while a tyrant, was more knowledgeable about medicine than has been previously understood'. The text tells the story of an unnamed Roman senator suffering from an unspecified ailment who takes a leave of absence to the Greek spa town of Antikyra, hoping his health would improve with treatment using the flowering plant hellebore. But when the senator asks Caligula to extend his leave, the emperor has him executed, quipping that 'a bloodletting was necessary for one whom hellebore had not benefited in all that time'. The study by Yale researchers sheds new light on the passage, providing context about Antikyra's place in the Roman Empire and Caligula's familiarity with plant medicines. "Our work suggests that Antikyra functioned as a kind of Mayo Clinic of the Roman world – a place where affluent and influential Romans visited for medical treatments not widely available elsewhere," Andrew Koh, another study author, explained. "It was known for hellebore treatments and little else. It's an example of ancient medical tourism. Roman bigwigs travelled there for treatments the same way that the rich and powerful visit Rochester, Minnesota, to avail themselves of the latest medical techniques and therapies available at the Mayo Clinic,' Dr Luke said. Antikyra, on the Gulf of Corinth in the Phocis region of central Greece, was famed for its association with unique hellebore treatments for epilepsy and mental illnesses. Texts point to two varieties of the plant – white hellebore for treating afflictions of the head and black hellebore for clearing the bowels. The port town was renowned for the perceived efficacy of special hellebore potions used to treat melancholy, insanity, epilepsy, and gout. Since the term "hellebore" was used to reference various plants, examining the plant's historical uses has been difficult. Researchers suspect the spa town held personal appeal to Caligula as historical records hint that he likely suffered from epilepsy and insomnia that Antikyran potions were believed to cure. 'It's possible that Suetonius is wrong and Caligula wasn't ordering the man's execution but simply prescribing an alternative treatment that he had read about or knew from his own experience," Dr Luke said.
Scroll.in
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Ancient Rome: How Caligula went from being a beloved ruler to one of the most cruel emperors
Caligula proved a popular choice as emperor, both in Rome and in the provinces. He was not only the son of Germanicus but also the grandson, on his mother's side, of Marcus Agrippa, and the great-grandson of both Augustus and Mark Antony. Although without meaningful military experience, he was popular with the Roman troops: many fondly remembered the pint-sized, uniformed child who, from the age of two, had served as a mascot on his father's campaigns against the Germans. Caligula was adored by the people of Rome, too, in part because of their love for Germanicus but also out of sympathy for the terrible persecutions suffered by his family: Tiberius had murdered Caligula's mother, his father, his two brothers and his aunt, Livilla. As he made his way north from Capreae to Rome, escorting the corpse of the dead emperor, he was accompanied by a 'dense and joyful throng' who hailed him affectionately as their 'star' (sidus) and their 'chick' (pullum). In March 37, he was quickly proclaimed the new princeps (the title that Tiberius, following Augustus, had also used). Such was the joy at his accession that in the space of a few weeks 160,000 birds and animals were sacrificed in thanks to the gods for granting them such a fine leader. Caligula quickly began repaying the love of the people and the faith of the Senate. He showed great deference to the senators, pledging to share power with them. He allowed them to sit on cushions rather than, as before, on bare benches, and to wear broad-brimmed straw hats in the hot weather. He lowered taxes on sales at auction, allowed the circulation of books banned by Tiberius, recalled those whom Tiberius had exiled, and banished the sexual contortionists whose antics had catered to the old emperor's depraved fancies. (He was narrowly dissuaded from throwing them into the sea.) Whereas Tiberius gave no public shows at all, Caligula staged plays and gladiatorial combats as well as chariot races in the intermissions – for which he introduced such exciting new attractions as panther-baiting. He added an extra day to the Saturnalia, the popular festival during which gifts were exchanged and days on end were spent eating and drinking. He renamed the month of September as Germanicus, in honour of his beloved father. He completed large public works, such as rebuilding the port at Rhegium, refurbishing the Theatre of Pompey (badly damaged in a recent fire) and bringing a 25-metre-high obelisk (the one now pointing heavenward in St Peter's Square) from Egypt. Construction also started on a new aqueduct and another amphitheatre. Some of Caligula's antics, however, caused some concern. Dressing in women's clothes, donning the armour and weapons of a gladiator, carrying around a thunderbolt or trident as a prop, or insisting that he held conversations with the moon: such caprices may have seemed harmless or amusing eccentricities. So too, perhaps, his habit of urgently convening the Senate in the middle of the night only to – once the great men had assembled, expecting to discuss weighty matters – treat them to a performance of his latest dance moves. But other behaviour was more disquieting, such as removing from office two consuls who forgot to send him birthday wishes, or forcing his grandmother (the daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia) to commit suicide 'because she had rebuked him for something'. These were the first indications that the new princeps was – if we accept the lurid testimony of the sources – severely and hopelessly deranged. Most of what we know of Caligula's life and reign comes from six ancient writers: Seneca the Younger and Philo of Alexandria, both of whom knew him personally; Tacitus and Josephus, who knew people who had known Caligula; and finally, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, whose works were not written until, respectively, some eighty and 190 years following Caligula's reign. Almost all the material on Caligula from the best historian on the Julio-Claudian period, Tacitus, has been lost, and it's unclear if the sources available to Suetonius and Cassius were entirely reliable. At the start of his Annals, which appeared in 116 CE, Tacitus observed (quite accurately) that the histories of emperors like Tiberius and Caligula were 'falsified through cowardice while they flourished, and composed, when they fell, under the influence of still rankling hatreds'. We do not have, in other words, unbiased accounts of their lives and reigns. We must therefore be wary of accepting much of the evidence – especially the more shocking and sensationalised stories – at face value. This same problem, we shall see, likewise complicates our understanding of many later emperors. Caligula certainly seemed to give plenty of cause for hatred to rankle. It's unclear what exactly might have led to his monstrous exploits. Medical sleuths have diagnosed him with everything from alcoholism and a thyroid disorder to encephalitis, temporal lobe epilepsy, lead poisoning, schizophrenia and neurosyphilis. Suetonius reported that he was driven mad by an aphrodisiac administered by his wife (though his libido, if we trust the sources, was scarcely in need of encouragement). Yet it's difficult to imagine how any of these agents or ailments could have been responsible for his gratuitous and sadistic violence – for what Cassius Dio called his 'insatiable desire for the sight of blood'. He seems to have earnestly believed what he once told his grandmother: 'Remember that I have the right to do anything to anybody.' And so he did: no one, it appears, was safe from his psychopathic whims. 'Off comes this beautiful head whenever I give the word,' he would tenderly whisper to his wives and mistresses. When the two consuls sitting beside him at a sumptuous feast asked why he was chuckling, he explained the cause of his mirth was that at a single nod he could have their throats slit. At least his wives and the consuls were spared. Hundreds or even thousands of others were not. Cassius Dio recorded the disturbing story that when there was a shortage of condemned criminals to be fed to the lions, Caligula ordered a random group of spectators – 'some of the mob standing near the benches' – to be seized and thrown to them. 'To prevent the possibility of their making an outcry or any reproaches,' Cassius claimed, 'he first caused their tongues to be cut out.' Other of his bloody acts were aimed at eliminating rivals, such as his 18-year-old cousin Tiberius Gemellus, the son of Drusus and Livilla: he was forced to commit suicide. Another victim was a distinguished visiting guest, important ally and distant relative, King Ptolemy of Mauretania. Legend had it that King Ptolemy was murdered because Caligula grew jealous of the ardent admiration sparked by his magnificent purple robe. More probably, Caligula disposed of him because Ptolemy, as the grandson of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, represented a threat to his power. Caligula's murders had an economic as well as a political motive. In the first two years of his reign, his wild extravagances virtually exhausted the treasury. Desperately in need of funds, he took to confiscating the assets of his victims, who were denounced on trumped-up charges and then executed merely so he could get his hands on their money. 'No one who possessed anything', reported Cassius Dio, 'got off unscathed.' Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar had raised vast sums through their wars of conquest, and so Caligula, hoping to emulate their example, embarked on several military expeditions. He first went to Gaul, but his invasion force of actors, gladiators and women, all equipped with the 'trappings of luxury', failed to inflict any damage. He soon returned to Rome. A campaign in Britain fared no better: he reached the English Channel but instead of crossing the waves, like Julius Caesar, and engaging the inhabitants, he perched on a lofty platform on a French beach and, after much tooting of trumpets and other warlike preparations, simply ordered the soldiers to gather seashells. The bizarre episode no doubt puzzled his soldiers as much as it does modern historians.
The Herald Scotland
21-04-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Pope Francis: The 'humble' Pope who was widely loved
Not only that, two of the detainees were not Catholics but Muslims and – even more shockingly for some traditionalists – two (including one of the Muslims) were young women: females were previously excluded as the disciples had all been men. It was a deliberate act which was to set the tone for a papacy in which he urged the church to look outwards rather than engage in endless soul-searching. He spoke out passionately on the plight of migrants fleeing war and poverty, the pressing need to protect the environment and tackle climate change, and what he saw as the iniquities of unfettered capitalism. There were apologies to the survivors of clerical child abuse while he was unafraid to address the vexed issues of sex and sexuality which had dogged the church for decades. With his obvious humility and compassion for the poor and disadvantaged, he captured the imagination of millions around the globe – both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. But his calls for greater acceptance for divorcees and gay people brought him into sharp conflict with some on the more conservative wing of the church. In one of his first public pronouncements as pontiff, he declared: 'Who am I to judge?' in response to a question about homosexuality. But after he suggested divorced and remarried Catholics could, under certain circumstances, receive holy communion the backlash was such that he was described in the Guardian as 'one of the most hated men in the world today'. One unnamed English priest was even reported to have likened him to the Roman emperor Caligula, fulminating: 'If he had a horse, he'd make him cardinal.' But for all the sound and fury, critics on the liberal wing of the church complained that in practice little changed when it came to issues such as the ordination women and married men, or same-sex marriage. Through it all Pope Francis carried on seemingly undeterred, despite the growing health issues in his final years, such controversies simply underlining the difficulties of holding together a church with 1.3 billion adherents. As the first pope from the Americas, and the first non-European for more than 1,200 years, his election in 2013 was a hugely symbolic moment. Already 76 years old when he ascended the throne of St Peter, he had been preparing for retirement having missed out following the death of Pope John Paul II eight years earlier. Following his election, friends said he was a man rejuvenated as he sought to breathe new life into the church he had served for more than half a century. It was a remarkable rise for a man who had once worked as a nightclub bouncer and a janitor before feeling a calling to the priesthood. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on December 17 1936 in the Flores district of Buenos Aires, the eldest of five children in a middle class family of Italian immigrants. After leaving school, he qualified as a chemical technician going on to take a job in the food processing industry. At the age of 21 he underwent surgery to have part of one of his lungs removed thanks to a severe bout of pleurisy which was to leave him vulnerable to the winter weather. It was around that time that he felt his vocation, which hit him when he stopped off at church on his way to join friends to celebrate a holiday. 'It surprised me, caught me with my guard down,' he later recalled. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1958 and, after studying humanities, philosophy and theology in Chile and Argentina, was ordained a priest in 1969. In 1973, he was made Superior of the Jesuit province of Argentina, a post he held for six years. It was a period which included one of the most controversial episodes of his entire career. Read More Following a military coup in 1976, two Jesuit priests who had been preaching left-wing liberation theology in the slums, were abducted and tortured by regime loyalists. They were found five months later semi-naked and drugged. One of the priests, Orlando Yorio, accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by refusing to endorse their work, although his colleague, Francisco Jalics, later accepted that he had had no part in their kidnapping. It was only decades later when he was pope, that he finally told his biographer that his behind-the-scenes intervention with the dictatorship had secured their release, probably saving their lives. He said that he had regularly helped those fleeing the authorities during the years of the so-called 'dirty war' when thousands were 'disappeared', never to be seen again. For a time his career in the church seemed to have stalled, but in 1992 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of his native Buenos Aires, rising to become archbishop six years later. In 2001 he was consecrated a cardinal. He endeared himself to the city's inhabitants with his humility and his advocacy for the poor, regularly visiting the most rundown, crime-ridden barrios earning him a reputation as the 'slum bishop'. Rather than moving into the archbishop's official residence, he chose to remain in his modest flat where he cooked his own meals, travelling around by public transport. He clashed with the government of president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner who – ironically given his later reputation as a liberal – branded him a right-wing extremist after he criticised her social reforms, including the introduction of same-sex marriage. His down-to-earth style also made him a popular figure among his fellow Latin American bishops and when John Paul II died he reportedly secured the second highest tally of votes in a conclave of cardinals to elect a successor before bowing out in favour of the arch-conservative Joseph Ratzinger. With that his moment appeared to have past, but when Ratzinger – who took the papal name Benedict XVI – unexpectedly resigned in 2013, it was Bergoglio who came out top in the conclave securing election in the fifth round of voting. In a clear statement of intent, he took the papal name Francis – the first pope to do so – after St Francis of Assisi who devoted his life to the poor. On the night of his election, he took a bus back to his hotel with the cardinals rather than being driven in the papal car. Next morning, he insisted on paying the hotel bill himself. As in Buenos Aires, he again chose to forgo the sumptuous state apartments in the Apostolic Palace used by previous incumbents, instead moving in to a guest house in the Vatican grounds. For his first visit outside Rome, he travelled to the tiny island of Lampedusa to pray for the thousands of migrants who had washed up there after crossing the Mediterranean from Africa. In one early interview, he vividly set out his vision of the church as 'a field hospital after battle' ministering to the poor, the spiritually broken and the lonely. 'I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security,' he declared. (Image: AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Not for the last time, he caused anger among some church conservatives when he made his first papal address in a simple white cassock rather than the customary papal robes. In response, Esquire magazine named him their 'best-dressed man' of the year. The new pope also moved swiftly to clean up the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank – which had become a byword for corruption and money laundering – and overhaul the curia, the Vatican bureaucracy. In one early intervention, he surprised both traditionalists and liberals by criticising the church for having become 'obsessed' with issues such as homosexuality, abortion and birth control. But in what to some was to become a recurring pattern, the following year he spoke out against same-sex marriage, defended the 'traditional' family and reaffirmed the church's opposition to abortion. In 2015 he issued an encyclical warning that environmental degradation was a 'moral issue', driven by unchecked capitalism, linking sinful actions against the natural world with economic exploitation of the poor. But it was his exhortation, Amoris laetitia (the joy of love), a wide-ranging pronouncement on family issues the following year, which was to set off a firestorm within the church. In a call for more welcoming and less judgmental attitudes, it said divorcees who had remarried but not obtained an annulment, might be permitted to receive holy communion through the guidance of a priest. To supporters it amounted to no more than bureaucratic recognition to a system that already existed, but to some conservatives it was overturning centuries of church teaching. An open letter signed by 62 disaffected Catholics, including one retired bishop, accused the pope of heretical teaching, while, in what was seen as a direct challenge to his authority, four cardinals formally asked for a series of clarifications. Meanwhile, the pope was also having to deal with the legacy of decades of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests covering countries round the world. During a visit to Ireland in 2018, he acknowledged the 'grave scandal' of the church's failure to confront the issue but disappointed many by failing to address demands by survivors for action. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic posed further challenges. In March 2020 he performed an extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing – normally reserved for festivals such as Christmas and Easter – in a dark and deserted St Peter's Square as he prayed for the outbreak to end. He sought to tackle scepticism about the vaccines, urging people to get inoculated saying that healthcare was a 'moral obligation'. In the period that followed there were growing health issues as he was forced to cancel or postpone engagements as a bout of sciatica was followed by colon surgery, while he began using a wheelchair because of knee problems. The man who once said 'Who am I to judge?' when it came to homosexuality, found himself having to apologise after complaining there was too much 'frociaggine' – which roughly translates as 'faggotry' – among young seminarians. There was a sense that his time was drawing to a close when he consecrated 21 new cardinals, seen by some as an attempt to secure his legacy, increasing the likelihood that the next conclave would elect a successor who would continue his reforms. He also disclosed plans to be buried at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore – a sign of his devotion to the Virgin Mary – rather than the Vatican, in yet another break with papal tradition. Even has his health failed he continued to engage on those issues that defined his papacy, denouncing US President Donald Trump's plans for the mass deportation of migrants from the US, with a warning it was bound to 'end badly'.
