The killing of Gaius, Caligula, was the first assassination of an Emperor. I have done my best to explain who might have organized this, Narcissus and Caenis on behalf of the Familia Alexander, but how was it done?
Like all Emperors after him, Caligula was very concerned about assassination and, knowing the power of the Praetorian Guard, surrounded himself with a German bodyguard loyal only to him. How could a killer get close? The answer was that it had to be someone that he trusted and that person had to find a place where the Germans could not intervene.
There was only one place where it may be possible to isolate the Emperor from his guard. This was in the tunnel that led back to the palace under the Palatine. Archeologists think they have found this now. In the tunnel, an insider could isolate the Emperor from his body guard.
The insider was Cassius Chaerea, a Tribune of the Guard. He was one of a tiny number of Romans allowed in the Emperor's personal space in public. Why he kill Caligula? Who was he and why did he have the trust of the Emperor?
The story goes that Cassius Chaerea had been offended by Caligula's constant teasing about his high voice and by giving him lewd passwords. Hardly I think grounds for the risks of killing the Emperor. I like Robert Graves's idea better.
The sources say that Chaerea had been a veteran under Augustus. Graves suggests more. For whom do Emperors trust the most? People that they had known as children. What had been the most exciting part of Caligula's childhood? Being dressed up as a legionary and pretending to be a soldier in his father's camp. Who would have looked after him? The answer has to be a soldier. Certainly not either of his parents or his nanny. Then who was Chaerea? Graves thinks that he was this soldier guardian. This makes sense.
I think that Graves's novelist's eye sees the truth of the matter. He also picks up the prophecy. Caligula was told that he would be killed by a horse. Now what games might a boy play with a soldier? Might Chaerea be "Horsey"?
Graves goes further and suggests that Chaerea was a survivor of the Varus disaster at Teutoburg. I favour this too. For how might Germanicus choose a guardian for his boy? That man had to be special. What could be more special than a survivor of that disaster?
How Chaerea dies offers us a clue for motive. At his execution, Chaerea, asks his executioner if he can use his sword, the one that Chaerea used to kill Caligula. His executioner agrees. This suggests to me that honour is involved.
Our best source here is Josephus - who is on the inside of the Familia Flavia - and so had the best insight.
"Now it is reported that Chaerea bore this calamity courageously..... And as a great many men went along with them to see the sight, when Chaerea came to the place, he asked the soldier, who was to be their executioner, whether this office was what he was used to or whether this was the first time of his using his sword in that manner? and desired him to bring him that very sword, with which he himself slew Gaius. So he was happily killed at one stroke."
Chaerea's motive for killing his "boy" must have been a deep one. Deeper than being insulted. There must have been a betrayal by Caligula. Why would he go to his grave so calmly? I think that he was going home to be with his comrades who had died 32 years before.
Today we know a lot more about PTSD. My own grandfather, who spent 3 1/2 years at the front in France in the Great War, killed himself 38 years after the war ended. Many soldiers who have served in our modern wars, kill themselves today, many years after their service. Their survival guilt grows over time and so do their nightmares. Death for them is often a release. Using Chaerea's own sword would not have been a decision of only his executioner. Claudius or Narcissus would have to have agreed.
Why then did Claudius kill Chaerea if Chaerea was part of the plot? Claudius has to kill Chaerea because an Emperor cannot condone the murder of an Emperor. Chaerea knows this and accepts that this is the price. Why? The answer can only be that for Chaerea, his life was over. All that he had left was his honour.
