What happened when mad emperor Caligula made his favourite horse a Roman consul?
Only a handful of Roman emperors have inspired such a lasting bad reputation as Gaius Caligula, who ruled for just under four years and left behind a reputation for violent acts and odd public behaviour.
Among the most infamous episodes attributed to him is the story of his horse, Incitatus, which ancient sources claim he intended to elevate to the consulship, the highest elected magistracy of Rome.
While the tale often appears in retellings as a sign of madness, it shows far more about the political order that had decayed, where theatrical cruelty exposed senatorial impotence and defined his reign.
Early Life and Rise to Power of Caligula
Born on 31 August AD 12 in Antium, southeast of Rome, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus was destined for power from the moment of his birth.
He entered public life and carried heavy family expectations as the son of Germanicus, who was a beloved general with deep Julio-Claudian lineage, and of Agrippina the Elder, who was a granddaughter of Augustus.
During his father’s campaigns along the Rhine, young Gaius accompanied the legions dressed in miniature military uniform, which earned him the affectionate nickname “Caligula,” meaning “little boots.”
Following the suspicious death of Germanicus in AD 19, Caligula’s childhood had become increasingly uncertain.
His mother and brothers eventually fell victim to Tiberius’s purges, but he had survived after he had adopted a careful, silent obedience.
Eventually, he joined the ageing emperor on Capri, where he remained under constant watch.
However, when Tiberius died in AD 37, reportedly from illness, though some sources suggest he may have been smothered by the Praetorian Prefect Macro,
Caligula secured the throne with initially widespread support from both the military and the plebeians, who remembered his father with affection and saw his son as a welcome heir.
At first, Caligula’s rule brought widespread public approval because he recalled exiles, abolished unpopular taxes, restored public games, and paid generous bonuses to the Guard.
Within months, though, his popularity began to unravel. After he had fallen seriously ill later that same year, he returned to public life with a renewed arrogance that led to escalating cruelty and open disrespect for Rome’s traditions and ruling class.
The Legend of Incitatus, Caligula's Horse
Among Caligula’s many outrages, the bizarre attention he gave to his horse Incitatus drew the greatest criticism from ancient commentators.
According to Suetonius (Caligula 55), the animal lived in a marble stable, ate oats mixed with gold, wore amethyst-studded harnesses, and slept under fine purple cloths.
While these details likely indicate exaggeration that was common in Roman biographies, they served to emphasise Caligula’s contempt for senatorial values.
Likewise, Cassius Dio (Roman History 59.14.7–8) added that Incitatus had an ivory manger, a household of slaves, and a personal villa where guests could be hosted in the horse’s name.
Before race days, Caligula ordered silence in the surrounding streets to help the horse rest.
Caligula frequently addressed the animal in formal tones and treated it as if it possessed the intellect of a senator.
According to both Suetonius and Dio, he openly stated that Incitatus would soon be made consul, though neither claimed that Caligula took any formal steps to enact the appointment.
The announcement, which was never made official, spread widely enough to appear in multiple surviving sources.
At first glance, the idea appears laughable because the consulship was in decline under the emperors and still carried immense symbolic importance.
During the Republic, consuls held supreme authority as military commanders and presiding magistrates of the Senate.
Caligula’s threat to bestow it on a horse undermined those expectations and revealed the depth of contempt he held for the institutions that had once defined the Republic.
Why did Caligula do it?
Several factors may explain why Caligula declared his intention to appoint a horse as consul.
First, many ancient writers believed that his mental health had deteriorated after his illness in AD 38, and they attributed his erratic behaviour to madness.
He began to insist on divine honours, constructed temples to himself, and demanded to be addressed as a living god instead of princeps.
Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews (19.1.11), described Caligula's effort to place a statue of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem, an act that highlighted his claims to divinity and his use of public display to show control.
Such behaviour indicated not only delusion but also a refusal to be restrained.
More significantly, the threat to elevate Incitatus can be read as a intentional insult directed at the Senate.
Caligula regularly forced senators to act as his servants, humiliated them in court, and publicly mocked their inability to resist his authority.
The declaration that his horse would perform their duties more effectively was used as both a theatrical provocation and as a demonstration of unchecked power.
In doing so, he reinforced the message that their titles and offices no longer held meaning outside his will.
Also, Caligula delighted in spectacle, as his reign included outlandish performances such as constructing a floating bridge across the Bay of Baiae so that he could ride back and forth and be dressed in Alexander the Great’s armour.
He also reportedly removed the heads from some divine statues and replaced them with his own likeness, a claim found in Cassius Dio that suggests either literal desecration.
His decision regarding Incitatus fit within this pattern of detailed, symbolic displays that blurred the lines between public mockery and acts of terror presented as performance.
It was never meant as a private joke and instead for a public performance designed to humiliate.
The Political Climate of Rome at the Time
By the late 30s AD, the Roman Empire had already moved far from its republican past.
Although Augustus preserved an appearance of shared authority, his successors increasingly ruled by decree, with the Senate reduced to a ceremonial role.
Under Caligula, that illusion of balance collapsed. He issued orders without consultation, forced senators to watch him perform in public theatres, and reduced official deliberations to meaningless rituals.
Tacitus’s Annals, which might have recorded the Senate’s private reactions to these events, are missing for this period and left us dependent on sources with a stronger tone.
At the same time, the economy got worse, as Caligula spent freely on palaces, temples, and games and the treasury ran low.
To fund his extravagance, he revived unpopular taxes, sold the possessions of dead nobles, and seized property from wealthy citizens under false charges, which caused the strain to fall heavily on the senatorial class, whose fortunes became targets for imperial confiscation.
Consequently, the Senate grew unable to act because of fear. Public opposition to the emperor became unthinkable, and private criticism carried the risk of death.
Therefore, the threat to appoint Incitatus consul revealed the loss of freedom that accompanied the collapse of meaningful political life and the intentional cruelty of an emperor who used humiliation as a political weapon.
How did the senators react?
Ancient sources do not record a single senator who spoke against the idea, but their silence can be interpreted in several ways.
Some may have assumed it was a cruel joke. Others, fearing for their lives, chose to laugh or applaud.
Caligula had already made it clear that defiance would be punished, and his past executions of nobles provided ample warning.
Quietly, many senators must have felt outraged. Even the most cynical among them would have recognised the episode as an insult to their office and to Roman history, but few would have risked confronting an emperor who executed men for trivial slights.
Perhaps some even welcomed the absurdity as a defence. In a court where logic no longer applied, flattery became the only safe currency.
The act of pretending to be pleased at a horse’s political ambitions might have seemed more prudent than silence.
Did this event really happen?
Importantly, there is no evidence that Incitatus ever formally assumed the consulship.
Neither Suetonius nor Dio claimed the act occurred, they stated only that Caligula announced the intention.
No known official record, inscription, or senatorial decree that confirms the appointment exists, and that distinction matters because it moves the story from fact to spectacle, and from reality to rumour.
Even so, the Roman writers treated it as plausible reflected how thoroughly Caligula had undermined expectations.
Whether or not he ever followed through, the mere possibility was believable because of the emperor’s prior conduct.
In that sense, the story of Incitatus tells us more about Caligula’s tyranny than a formal act ever could.
Most modern historians generally treat the incident as political theatre, not a literal proposal.
Yet the fact that it was widely believed indicates how far imperial Rome had drifted from its republican foundations.
The Senate had become so powerless that it could not protest the threat of a horse joining its ranks.
After Caligula’s assassination in AD 41, some senators reportedly discussed briefly restoring the Republic, it is unclear how serious those discussions were and the idea ended once Claudius assumed power.
The tale was either fully true or partially embellished and continues to be a reminder of how public display and fear combined with official mockery to replace public life under a ruler who governed by whim rather than law.