Word: caligula
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Presumably it is for the memory of Caligula the soldier, rather than Caligula the desperate debauchee, that Premier Mussolini's engineers and archaeologists are laboring at Lake Nemi...
Where past salvagers failed to raise Caligula's barge, Premier Mussolini's scientific henchmen were last week succeeding by an inverse procedure. Four great electric pumps, which they had set up at Lake Nemi's edge, were lowering the water level. By April 21, the 2,280th anniversary of Rome's legendary founding, they must, according to their instructions, uncover the vessel. Last week only a few feet of water remained above it. It is probable that the pumpers will make their schedule and the curious may gloat at the water-logged site of Caligula's orgies...
Exactly 1,888 years ago last week Caligula was assassinated for insult to a Praetorian tribune. He was only 29, but into the few years of his manhood he packed a rare amount of extravagance, cruelty, debauchery...
...Caligula's time, 12-41 A.D., the popular rendezvous of Rome's patrician bounders was Lake Nemi (Nemorensis Lacus). There among symbolic oak trees was the Temple of Diana, richest in Latium. Diana was the moon goddess, Caligula's unreachable hope. Every time she was full he would stretch out his arms to her, implore her to his embraces...
Despite all his obsessions and oppressions, Rome's citizens, soldiers and provincials admired Caligula. That was not his real name. His real name was Gaius Caesar. But, because he was charming as a little boy when he plopped in soldiers' boots along the Rhine with his father Germanicus, everyone called him, and con tinued to call him through his short life, Caligula. Caligula means "Little Boots...