Caligula had pledged cooperation with the Senate,…

38 CE

Caligula had pledged cooperation with the Senate, but had soon begun to rule in an autocratic manner.

After an illness in October 37, Caligula’s mental health had quickly deteriorated, at least according to Senatorial propaganda.

Caligula now focuses his attention on political and public reform.

He publishes the accounts of public funds, which had not been made public during the reign of Tiberius.

He aids those who lost property in fires, abolishes certain taxes, and awards prizes to the public at gymnastic events.

He allows new members into the equestrian and senatorial orders.

Perhaps most significantly, he restores the practice of democratic elections.

Cassius Dio said that this act "though delighting the rabble, grieved the sensible, who stopped to reflect, that if the offices should fall once more into the hands of the many ... many disasters would result".

(Cassius Dio, Roman History LIX.9.7.)

During the same year, Caligula is criticized for executing people without full trials and for forcing his treatment of his pricipal supporter, Macro, who has meanwhile been confident of rapid promotion for past services.

However, Caligula, mindful of the potential threat Macro poses, soon has him arrested and stripped of his office in the year 38.

Macro and his wife Eunia both commit suicide soon after.

Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and his sister Aemilia Lepida, the children of consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus, are both married to siblings of the emperor (Aemilia was married Caligula's elder brother Drusus Caesar; Lepidus is married to Caligula's younger and favorite sister Julia Drusilla).

He is also great-grandson of Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus (consul of 50 BCE and brother of the triumvir Marcus Aemilius Lepidus).

Some areas of his lineage are unclear.

However, through his mother Julia the Younger, Lepidus is the great grandson of Emperor Augustus Caesar.

Drusilla had been married to Lucius Cassius Longinus since 33 but Caligula had forced his brother-in-law to divorce Drusilla so that she could marry Lepidus in 37.

The marriage lasts until Drusilla's death from fever in June 38; they have no children.

Because of this marriage, Lepidus had become a close friend to Caligula and his family.

After the death of Gemellus in 37, Lepidus was publicly marked by Caligula as his heir.

In late 38, when the governor of Egypt Aulus Avilius Flaccus is arrested, Lepidus successfully persuades Caligula to exile Flaccus to Andros rather than Gyarus.

Caligula hates the fact that he is the grandson of Agrippa, and slanders Augustus by repeating a falsehood that his mother was actually the result of an incestuous relationship between Augustus and his daughter Julia the Elder.

Around this time, the erudite Claudius, who suffers from a paralytic condition that had perhaps disqualified him as a target of Tiberius’ purges, makes his second cousin Valeria Messalina his third wife.

Messalina, whose family is eminent and connected by ties of marriage and blood ties to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, was probably born and raised in Rome.

Little is known about her life prior to her marriage to Claudius.

Messalina was very wealthy, an influential figure and a regular at Caligula's court.

Claudius, who is becoming influential and popular,probably marries Messalina to strengthen ties within the imperial family.

Upon marrying Claudius, Messalina becomes a stepmother to Claudia Antonia, Claudius's daughter through his second marriage to Aelia Paetina.

According to Cassius Dio, a financial crisis emerged in CE 39; Suetonius places the beginning of this crisis in 38.

According to Suetonius, in the first year of Caligula's reign he had squandered the twenty seven hundred million sesterces that Tiberius had amassed.

His nephew Nero Caesar, the future emperor, will express both envy and admiration for the fact that Gaius had run through the vast wealth Tiberius had left him in so short a time.