[s4e1] Working For Caligula May 2026

He had been assigned to the personal staff of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus—better known to the shivering masses as .

Lucius survived by becoming a shadow. He learned to anticipate the shifts in the Emperor's "divine" weather. When Caligula declared himself a god and demanded to be addressed as Jupiter, Lucius didn't flinch. When Caligula ordered a bridge of ships to be built across the Bay of Baiae just so he could ride across it in the armor of Alexander the Great, Lucius simply calculated the tonnage of grain ships required. [S4E1] Working for Caligula

One evening, Caligula leaned in close to Lucius. The smell of expensive wine and madness was overwhelming. "Do you know why I keep you around, little scribe?" He had been assigned to the personal staff

The nights were the hardest. Caligula suffered from chronic insomnia and expected his staff to share it. They would wander the labyrinthine corridors of the Palatine Hill, the Emperor talking to the moon as if she were a fickle lover. One moment, he was a philosopher, quoting Homer with tears in his eyes; the next, he was a tyrant, ordering a senator’s execution because the man’s sandals creaked too loudly. When Caligula declared himself a god and demanded

Lucius’s first day began in the throne room. Caligula wasn't sitting; he was pacing, draped in a silk robe that cost more than Lucius’s entire village. Beside the throne stood a horse——decked out in a collar of sparkling emeralds.

The air in the imperial palace was thick with the scent of roasted peacock and the metallic tang of fear. For Lucius, a junior scribe who had spent years mastering the delicate art of bureaucratic indifference, his new assignment felt less like a promotion and more like a death sentence.

"Remember," his predecessor had whispered while packing his bags with trembling hands, "never look him in the eye, but never look away. Never laugh unless he laughs, and for the love of the gods, if he asks you to dinner, bring your own taster."