In ancient Rome, Romans believed \u201cmadness\u201d could stem from four main causes: anger, love, the divine and sickness. Anger and love were considered dangerous to one\u2019s mind due to how deeply a person can feel these emotions. To go mad from the divine was to believe one was \u201ctouched by god\u201d in which they would speak in tongues, go through oracular frenzies or become epileptic. The last cause Romans believed would cause madness was the mind deteriorating due to the toll sickness would take on one\u2019s mental health. Some of the most popular Roman emperors accused of madness were Caligula, Domition, Commodus and Elagabalus. The talk focused on Caligula who became emperor at the age of 24 and was the 3rd emperor of Rome. Caligula was accused of mad acts such as incest, odd military campaigns, and threatening the senators. Dr. Houghtalin argued the position that Caligula was in fact not mad and he was portrayed as mad due to the lack of creditability during ancient times. He chose to reveal the real power of his position which scared the senators. Because Caligula was not afraid to demonstrate or speak of his powers as the Roman emperor, he made enemies with the senators. Caligula was assassinated in a plot by three of his guards who stabbed him in an underground palace. The senators used his assassination to restore the Republic in Rome and take back the power from the title of emperor. Because history is written by people in positions of power, like the Roman senators, accounts of history are often bias and not credible. Caligula was no longer popular among his people; consequently, who is to say they did not exaggerate? Most of ancient history is speculation because there is no real proof or evidence of stories like these, it is just someone\u2019s word against another. Dr. Houghtalin concludes that there are simply not enough facts to claim that Caligula was mad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In ancient Rome, Romans believed \u201cmadness\u201d could stem from four main causes: anger, love, the divine and sickness. Anger and love were considered dangerous to one\u2019s mind due to how deeply a person can feel these emotions. To go mad from the divine was to believe one was \u201ctouched by god\u201d in which they would … Continue reading “Series on Madness: Madness and the Emperors of Rome”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/papJgd-gh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1010,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}