For Caligula | [s4e1] Working

Lucius knelt in the wet sand, dutifully filling chests with seashells. He labeled them: Spoils of the Ocean, conquered by the Living God.

Lucius didn't blink. He dipped his reed into the ink and began to write. Article I: The Consulship of the Equine.

He had been assigned to the personal staff of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus—better known to the shivering masses as . [S4E1] Working for Caligula

One evening, Caligula leaned in close to Lucius. The smell of expensive wine and madness was overwhelming. "Do you know why I keep you around, little scribe?"

"Gather the spoils!" Caligula screamed over the roar of the surf. Lucius knelt in the wet sand, dutifully filling

Working for Caligula was a masterclass in the absurd. By noon, Lucius was documenting the emperor’s "victory" over the sea. He stood on the shores of the Mediterranean as legionnaires—the fiercest warriors in the known world—viciously stabbed the waves with their gladii.

Lucius survived by becoming a shadow. He learned to anticipate the shifts in the Emperor's "divine" weather. When Caligula declared himself a god and demanded to be addressed as Jupiter, Lucius didn't flinch. When Caligula ordered a bridge of ships to be built across the Bay of Baiae just so he could ride across it in the armor of Alexander the Great, Lucius simply calculated the tonnage of grain ships required. He dipped his reed into the ink and began to write

The nights were the hardest. Caligula suffered from chronic insomnia and expected his staff to share it. They would wander the labyrinthine corridors of the Palatine Hill, the Emperor talking to the moon as if she were a fickle lover. One moment, he was a philosopher, quoting Homer with tears in his eyes; the next, he was a tyrant, ordering a senator’s execution because the man’s sandals creaked too loudly.