Socio-political inversion in Caligula´s imperial court

Abstract

Since AD 40, and as a consequence of highly confilctive background, Caligula made a reestructuration of the center of the imperial court (aula Caesaris). This movement had the aim of guarantee the personal security of the emperor after the crisis motivated by the discovery of a complot in summet-autum 39. This restructuration provoked the rise of low social-juridical status individuals beside the roman ecuestrian or senatorial aristocracy. Since then, imperial slaves and freedmen, and oriental client kings achieved a great influence at court. This situation, meantime, had several socio-political consequences that we must take in consideration for understand the course of the narrative of those testimonies, mostly aristocratic, that has transmited us the negative image that we commonly know about the young emperor.