Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was born on the 31st of August in AD 12 at Antium. He was only four or five years old when he accompanied his father, Germanicus, and mother, Agrippina the Elder, on military campaigns across Germania. The soldiers gave him a miniature soldier's outfit including army boots called caligae. They nicknamed him Caligula, which means little boot. This childhood nickname would follow him for life despite his later attempts to distance himself from it. His father died in Antioch in Syria during AD 19 under suspicious circumstances that many believed involved poisoning by the provincial governor Gnaius Calpurnius Piso. Tiberius, the current emperor and Germanicus' uncle, became increasingly hostile toward the family. Agrippina returned to Rome with her six children where she entered into a bitter political feud with the aging emperor. The conflict eventually led to the destruction of her entire family. Caligula emerged as the sole male survivor of this systematic political purge. In AD 26, Tiberius withdrew from public life to the island of Capri. By AD 31, Caligula joined him there under close supervision. The adolescent Caligula lived under constant threat while learning to dissimulate his true feelings behind an obsequious manner. Tacitus described this period as evidence that his monstrous character was masked by hypocritical modesty. Winterling argues that any forthright protest would have certainly cost him his life.
Accession And Golden Age
Tiberius died on the 16th of March in AD 37 at age 77. On that same day, Caligula was hailed as emperor by members of the Praetorian guard at Misenum. He entered Rome on the 28th or the 29th of March with the consensus of three orders: senate, equestrians, and common citizens. The Senate conferred upon him all powers at once rather than over the course of years like Augustus had done. Philo described the first seven months of Caligula's reign as a Golden Age of happiness and prosperity. Josephus claimed that in the first two years, Caligula's high-minded even-handed rule earned goodwill throughout the Empire. Suetonius wrote that Caligula was loved by many for being the beloved son of the popular Germanicus. Three months of public rejoicing ushered in the new reign. Caligula doubled the 500 sesterces payment to praetorian guardsmen that Tiberius had given. Every citizen in Rome received 150 sesterces while heads of households got twice that amount. Building projects on the Palatine hill were announced as part of these expenditures. Caligula took up his first consulship on the 1st of July, two months after succession. He accepted all titles except pater patriae which he refused until September 21st AD 37. He commemorated his father Germanicus with portraits on coinage and renamed September after him.