A 7 page paper discussing Lord Acton's famous quote, "Power corrupts & absolute power corrupts absolutely," in relation to Caius Julius Caesar Germanicus. The writer analyzes his reign and puts forth the theory that he exemplified Acton's quote, as well as Rome's failure to prevent this. Bibliography lists 10 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_Caligula.doc
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Lord Acton said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Nowhere is this more apparent than in the reign of Caius Julius Caesar Germanicus, or
Caius. He was a ruthless, debauched ruler whose reign over Rome lasted but four years, yet they were four nightmare years filled with corruption, greed, cruelty, and incest.
Throughout the centuries, Caiuss name has been synonomous with insanity, murder, and lust. He was famous for his executions and more famous still, for
the orgies he staged as "intermission entertainment" in between those executions. He was debauched to the point that he committed incest with his sister and insane to the point of
declaring himself a living god. And yet, with all that, he was also known to be a loving and devoted father as well as a devoted son (Men, 1997).
Caius was the son of Germanicus, who had been murdered. He was also the nephew of Tiberius. After the death of Germanicus,
there was such opposition to Tiberius that Caius was the peoples choice for emperor of Rome. He was quite well-liked by the Roman army since he had been a regular
with them since his days as a little boy when he went with his father. In fact, it was because he used to march around the camps in his fathers
boots that he got the nickname Caius, which means "little boots." As a child and very young man he was known to be easy going, quite smart, and spirited (Colliers,
1996). When he first became emperor, he started out well enough and did several good things for the Roman people such as