Politics and Society in Imperial Rome offers fresh new interpretations of the politics, society, and culture Rome's imperial era.

• Argues that the early principate was fundamentally incompatible with the persisting structures of the Roman Republic
• Demonstrates how these contradictory systems affected the development of Roman society
• Includes case studies on the imperial court and the emperor Caligula, as well as chapters on the scholarship of Theodor Mommsen and Christian Meier

The infamous emperor Caligula ruled Rome from A.D. 37 to 41 as a tyrant who ultimately became a monster. An exceptionally smart and cruelly witty man, Caligula made his contemporaries worship him as a god. He drank pearls dissolved in vinegar and ate food covered in gold leaf. He forced men and women of high rank to have sex with him, turned part of his palace into a brothel, and committed incest with his sisters. He wanted to make his horse a consul. Torture and executions were the order of the day. Both modern and ancient interpretations have concluded from this alleged evidence that...