Caligula

The patricians gather to watch a performance from Caligula. Helicon and Caesonia introduce him and declare that the gods have come to earth, but when Caligula appears, the stage directions note that he is “grotesquely attired as Venus” (40). Caesonia leads the crowd of patricians in a litany of prayers, many of them absurd and blasphemous, and the audience obediently repeats them. Some of the prayers invoke Venus’s character, but others appear to echo Caligula’s nihilism: “Make known to us the truth about this world—which is that it has none […]. And grant us strength to live up to this verity of verities” (40-41).

After the play, Scipio, deeply offended, accuses Caligula of blasphemy. While neither of them believes in the gods, Scipio feels that one shouldn’t disrespect what many hold to be sacred. Caligula says that he is offended by the very notion of the gods and how they behave; to make his mark against them, his goal is to outdo them in capriciousness. When Scipio accuses him of playing the tyrant, Caligula objects and says that he has avoided starting wars out of respect for human life; the devastation wreaked in his reign is far less than that of a tyrant.