Incitatus

Incitatus (or Incitato, according to some translations) was Caligula's favorite horse. It was a chariot racing horse.

Classic fonts

The traditional narrative of Roman authors is that Caligula's devotion to his horse Incitatus reached ridiculous extremes. At first he had a marble stable built for him with ivory mangers for his exclusive use, but soon he gave him an entire villa with gardens and eighteen servants for his personal care. He slept in purple blankets (the most expensive dye in Ancient Rome, reserved for the imperial family) and wore necklaces of precious stones. According to Suetonius, Caligula wanted to appoint Incitatus consul. This fact has traditionally been interpreted as the result of the emperor's insanity, but the truth is that the servile and pusillanimous attitude of the senators during Caligula's reign could well have influenced said appointment, turning it into an ironic fact that would denote Caligula's sarcastic contempt. towards the public institutions of the Empire.

According to Cassius, he ate flakes of oats mixed with soft and very thin flakes of gold, drank the best wine in gold cups, devoured mice, squid, mussels and chicken; He dressed in purples of the best quality and wore necklaces with precious stones; Her mate would have been a mare named Penelope, and she had been chosen by Caligula as the wife of her beloved horse.

Incitatus even became part of the table where its owner, Caligula, ate.

As a hitch racing horse, Incitatus participated in the competitions held at the Rome hippodrome. The night before a race the emperor slept next to the animal and a general silence was decreed that no one could violate in the entire city under penalty of death, in order for the horse to rest properly. Incitatus apparently only lost one race, after which Caligula ordered the executioner to slowly kill the charioteer to ensure that he suffered.

Contemporary historiography

The verisimilitude of the story presented by classical biographers is generally questioned by current historians. Historians such as Anthony A. Barrett suggest that Roman chroniclers such as Suetonius and Cassius Dion were influenced by the political situation of their own times, when it may have been useful for the emperors of the day to discredit the early emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Additionally, the whimsical nature of the story served to make their work more interesting, which gained them additional readers.

One hypothesis is that Caligula's treatment of Incitatus was not a sign of madness, but simply an elaborate joke, intended to ridicule and provoke the Senate; or perhaps a form of satire, in which the emperor mocked by saying that a horse could perform the tasks of a senator.

Barrett states that "many stories were spread about Incitatus, which probably originated from Caligula's jokes." "Possibly out of a perverted sense of humor, Caligula toasted Incitatus's health, and claimed that he had the intention of naming him his priest.

Ancient sources are clear that the horse never became a consul.