Big empires need big emperors; and sadly they can’t all be Marcus Aurelius. There’s an old story about Caligula, the Roman emperor between 37 and 41 AD, and its one of the crazier stories about him. It’s sometimes described as a “war against Neptune,” the Roman god of the sea.
But how to you attack the sea god? If you asked Caligula, you attack the sea head on.
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The story goes that Caligula had his men line up and do just that one day, an attack complete with infantry stabbing the ocean. Some older accounts even say that he made the catapults and siege engines line up for the attack as well.
Caligula had a short and contentious reign. Many of the stories about his life were written after his death by writers who either had issues with him or had patrons who did. So it’s hard to know if the craziest stories about him, like that he tried to make his horse a consul of Rome, are true. It could just be that his haters wrote his obituaries uncontested after his assassination in 41 AD.
The Emperor Attacks a God
The alleged battle took place in Europe in 40 AD. The young Caligula had originally headed north to fight Germanic tribes. But his lieutenants successfully dealt with the border issues before his arrival. So he basically led some exercises, maybe led a tiny expedition across a river, and then found himself with little to do.
But then a British prince gave him a real chance at glory. Adminius, son of the leader of a tribe on what is today the British Isles, fought with his father and brothers and slipped to the continent to seek Roman assistance. In Gaul, he entreated Caligula for help.
Caligula then sent his troops to the coast, as if they were about to invade Britain.
What happens next differs by account. Maybe Caligula sailed out on a trireme for a little while, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he climbed to the top of a large platform to watch the operations and give orders, maybe he didn’t.
But regardless, the accounts agree that Caligula ordered his men to line up on the coast. He prepared them for the attack, even though they were still an entire English Channel away from Britain, and then ordered them to… collect seashells.
As a monument of his “victory,” he erected a lofty tower, from which lights were to shine at night to guide the course of ships, as if from the Pharos. Then promising the soldiers a gratuity of a hundred denarii each, as if he had shown unprecedented generosity, he said, “Go your way happy; go your way rich.”
Yup, seashells, as a trophy of conquest. And then he paid his men a 100 denarii bonus for their work (called a donativa), established a lighthouse, and screwed off.
Or maybe he ordered his men to attack the sea with swords.
Again, maybe his haters made up the whole story. And, even if true, the accounts differ on many of the details.
Side note: wouldn’t it be great if, at the end of any military campaign, you got a bonus if it went well? In Rome, the donativa became common and eventually could triple or quadruple a soldier’s income.
Though, honestly, if I were a devout Roman, it would’ve taken more than that to get me to literally attack Neptune. They probably found out that day whether their version of a chaplain really did or didn’t believe.
But to be fair to Caligula, he wasn’t the only ancient leader accused of attacking the ocean. Persian Emperor Xerxes also had a problem with the sea.
The legend of the Persian leaders says he ordered men to whip the ocean 300 times (he also might have done the whipping himself).
Apparently, he’d ordered some nice bridges for an attack on Greece with 300,000 men, only to find the bridges destroyed by sea swells when the time to attack finally came.
So he ordered the whipping, executed the engineers, and got himself some new bridges. Once he was on the continent, he got his teeth kicked in and had to retreat, only to find that the bridges were, once again, broken.
Waves must’ve been pretty pissed off about all the whipping.
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