Caligula's political payments for support, generosity and…

Caligula's political payments for support, generosity and extravagance have exhausted the state's treasury.

Ancient historians state that Caligula began falsely accusing, fining and even killing individuals for the purpose of seizing their estates.

Historians describe a number of other desperate measures by Caligula.

In order to gain funds, Caligula asks the public to lend the state money.

Caligula levies taxes on lawsuits, marriage and prostitution, and begins auctioning the lives of the gladiators at shows.

Wills that left items to Tiberius are reinterpreted to leave the items instead to Caligula.

Centurions who have acquired property during plundering are forced to turn over spoils to the state.

The current and past highway commissioners are accused of incompetence and embezzlement and forced to repay money.

Despite financial difficulties, Caligula embarks on a number of construction projects: some for the public good, others for himself.

Josephus describes Caligula's greatest contribution as the improvement of the harbors at Rhegium and Sicily, thereby allowing grain imports from Egypt to increase.

Caligula completes the temple of Augustus and the Theater of Pompey and begins an amphitheater beside the Saepta.

He has the imperial palace expanded.

He begins the aqueducts Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus, which Pliny the Elder considered engineering marvels.

He builds a large racetrack known as the circus of Gaius and Nero and had an Egyptian obelisk (now known as the Vatican Obelisk) transported by sea and erected in the middle of Rome.

At Syracuse, he repairs the city walls and the temples of the gods.

He has new roads built and pushes to keep roads in good condition.

He has plans to rebuild the palace of Polycrates at Samos, to finish the temple of Didymaean Apollo at Ephesus and to found a city high up in the Alps.

He plans to dig a canal through the Isthmus in Greece and sends a chief centurion to survey the work.

A brief famine of an unknown size occurs, perhaps caused by this financial crisis, but according to Suetonius a result of Caligula's seizure of public carriages, according to Seneca because grain imports were disturbed by Caligula using boats for the pontoon bridge.

Relations between Caligula and the Roman Senate deteriorate; although the subject of their disagreement is unknown, a number of factors have aggravated this feud.

The Senate had become accustomed to ruling without an emperor between the departure of Tiberius for Capri in CE 26 and Caligula's accession.

Additionally, Tiberius's treason trials had eliminated a number of pro-Julian senators such as Asinius Gallus.

Caligula reviews Tiberius's records of treason trials and decides that numerous senators, based on their actions during these trials, are not trustworthy.

He orders a new set of investigations and trials.

He replaces the consul and has several senators put to death.

Suetonius reports that other senators were degraded by being forced to wait on him and run beside his chariot.

Soon after his break with the Senate, Caligula is met with a number of additional conspiracies against him.

A conspiracy involving his brother-in-law Lepidus is foiled in late 39, after Caligula makes public letters by his sisters Agrippina the Younger and Julia Livilla that detail an adulterous affair with Lepidus and a plot against the emperor.

Lepidus is executed and Caligula's sisters are exiled.

Agrippina is given the bones of Lepidus in an urn, and she carries them to Rome.

Caligula sends three daggers to the Temple of Mars the Avenger to celebrate the death.

In the Senate, Vespasian makes a motion that the remains of Lepidus be thrown away instead of buried.

The motion is carried and Lepidus is not given a proper burial.

Soon afterwards, the governor of Germany, Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, is executed for connections to a conspiracy.