ABSTRACT
BEFORE 37 CALIGULA HAD lived out of the public view and little would have been known about him. To give some flesh and blood to the political picture that will emerge in the following chapters, it will be useful at this point to consider him as a private man, with emphasis on his personal idiosyncrasies and private interests (with the caution that much of the information is in fact based on incidents from fairly late in his reign and on anecdotal material of dubious reliability).
