Caligula’s 7 Hidden Palace Rituals Rome Tried to Erase

Rome, 39 CE, an imperial banquet. Imagine sitting at a table next to your wife, hundreds of senators around you, soft music, wine pouring into silver cups. Suddenly, the emperor stands up. He points at your wife with a smile. He orders, “She comes with me.” Guards drag her away. She screams your name. You can do nothing because if you move, if you protest, if you even frown, they execute you right there. She disappears behind a curtain. You spend the next 30 minutes listening to moans, screams, mocking laughter on the other side of the wall. When she returns, the emperor sits down across from you, adjusts his tunic, and starts describing in detail what he just did to your wife in front of everyone, in front of you. The other senators lower their eyes. No one says anything because they know next time it could be their wife. This is not fiction. This happened dozens of times under the reign of Caligula, and the public rape of senators’ wives was just one of his rituals.

This man wasn’t just a cruel emperor; he was a monster who turned power into a ceremony of humiliation, who transformed his palace into a theater of perversion and blood. He declared himself a living god and forced all of Rome to worship him, and he invented tortures so grotesque that even Roman historians refused to describe the full details. Today I’m going to tell you about the seven most perverted rituals of Caligula, the practices Rome tried to forget, the secrets so dark that history books barely mention them. And by the end of this video, you’ll understand why his name became synonymous with absolute evil, because what he did wasn’t madness, it was calculated perversion. I’m Crown and Dagger, and this is what really happened.

Why do history books tell you about Caligula’s battles but never his perversions? Because the truth makes people uncomfortable, because power has always been more grotesque than they teach us. Every week Crown and Dagger unearths the most disturbing stories the world prefers to forget. If you want the unfiltered truth, hit that like button and subscribe, because what’s coming next is much more brutal. To understand Caligula’s depravity, you first need to understand his power. Rome, 37 CE, the largest empire in the world, 60 million people under its control, and Caligula was its living god at 24 years old—no checks, no limits, absolute power over the life and death of millions. He had watched his predecessor Tiberius rule through fear from his island palace. He had seen his uncle Claudius mocked for his stammering limp, and he had learned something critical: in Rome, humiliation was worse than death. Roman society was built on a foundation of honor. Your dignitas, your reputation, your family name was worth more than your life. Lose your honor, and you were socially dead. Caligula understood this better than any emperor before him, so he created a system where your silence in the face of humiliation was your only option for survival. Protest equals death; silence equals shame. There was no way out.

His most powerful weapon wasn’t the army; it was something far more twisted: the Roman honor system itself. According to Suetonius, the Roman historian who had access to imperial archives, Caligula organized these humiliation banquets at least 40 times in four years—that’s one humiliation banquet every month—and it’s estimated that more than 200 senatorial families were destroyed by his system of sexual blackmail. These weren’t random acts of cruelty; they were systematic, calculated, designed not just to punish individual senators, but to break the entire ruling class of Rome. Think about the genius of it: every senator who witnessed another man’s humiliation became an accomplice, because if they didn’t report it, they were complicit; if they did report it, they admitted they had watched and done nothing. Either way, they were trapped. Caligula had turned Rome’s most powerful men into prisoners of their own shame, and this was just the beginning. Pause for a second and think about this: how many stories like this were completely erased because they succeeded in burying them? What you’re hearing now barely exists in the history books. Imagine what they did manage to hide, because what’s coming next is worse.

The system was simple but brutal. Caligula would invite 50 to 70 senators to his banquets; attendance was mandatory. To decline meant treason, and treason meant death. During dinner, he would choose a wife, have her dragged to a private chamber. The guests would hear everything through the thin curtain. 30 minutes later, he would return and describe in detail what he had just done in front of her husband, in front of everyone. But here’s what made it even more twisted: sometimes he would rate them loudly, comparing wives to each other, announcing which senator’s wife was better. The psychological warfare was perfect because now it wasn’t just about humiliation; it was about competition, about ranking, about turning these men’s wives into trophies to be scored.

According to records preserved in the Vatican archives, one of these victims had a name: Ennia Thrasilla. She was the wife of Senator Marcus Salanus, 26 years old, two children, noble family going back four generations. One night in August of 39 CE, Caligula pointed at her. What happened next was recorded in the memoirs of Seneca, who was present that night. He wrote, “The emperor took her as one takes spoils of war. When he returned, he described her body in terms that would make a prostitute blush. Her husband Marcus sat frozen. His face betrayed nothing, but I saw his hands beneath the table. His knuckles were white. He was gripping his knife so hard I thought he would drive it through his own palm.” Marcus Salanus never spoke in the Senate again. Three months later, he committed suicide. His death was recorded as natural causes in the official records, but Seneca wrote the truth: he took his own life because the emperor had already taken his honor. This wasn’t about sex; this was about power, about proving that no institution, no marriage, no bond was stronger than the emperor’s will.

But violating married women wasn’t enough for Caligula. He wanted something even more perverse: the destruction of innocence as entertainment. According to Dio Cassius, a Greek historian writing in the 3rd century CE with access to Senate records, Caligula organized at least 12 public auctions of virgin daughters from noble families. Here’s how it worked: Caligula would identify families that had offended him. Sometimes the offense was real—a senator voting against him, a family refusing to donate to his building projects. Other times, the offense was imagined. It didn’t matter. He would have their daughters, typically aged 14 to 17, brought to the palace under the pretense of imperial service. The families had no choice; to refuse was treason. These girls would then be presented at evening gatherings attended by Rome’s elite: wealthy merchants, foreign diplomats, and most sickeningly, other senators, sometimes including the girl’s own relatives. Caligula would auction them off. Starting bid: 1,000 denarii, roughly equivalent to a soldier’s annual salary. But here’s the twisted part: the highest bidder wasn’t buying her freedom; they were buying the right to publicly take her virginity in front of the crowd while Caligula watched and laughed.

One documented case involves a girl named Drusilla Minor, not to be confused with Caligula’s favorite sister of the same name. She was 15, daughter of Senator Aulus Salanus. According to administrative tablets discovered in the ruins of Pompeii and now housed in the Naples National Archaeological Museum, her auction was held on March 18th, 40 CE. She was purchased by a Syrian merchant for 3,400 denarii. What happened next isn’t fully recorded, but the tablet notes that she was “returned” to her family three days later. The word used is returned, but the context makes clear what that meant: her father never spoke her name again. She was sent to a remote family villa and vanished from all records. The shame was too great. Some families tried to save their daughters by marrying them off quickly to loyal clients, making them unavailable for auction. Caligula’s response? He annulled the marriages by imperial decree and took the girls anyway. This wasn’t just perversion; this was systematic destruction of Rome’s ruling class through sexual humiliation. Stop for a second. Do you think Caligula was insane, or was he an evil genius who knew exactly what he was doing? Let me know in the comments, because what’s coming next is going to completely change your answer.

Caligula’s love of spectacle extended into the arena, but not in the way you’d expect. According to Suetonius, Caligula would sometimes force senators to fight as gladiators—not against professional fighters, against each other or, worse, against animals. But that’s not the perverted part. The perversion came in who he forced to watch. He would make the senators’ wives and daughters sit in the front row, mandatory attendants. They had to watch their husbands, fathers, brothers fight for survival, sometimes to the death. And if the woman looked away, if she closed her eyes, if she showed any sign of distress, Caligula would have her dragged into the arena too. One account describes a senator named Quintus Pomponius who was forced to fight a starved leopard armed only with a wooden club. His wife Julia was seated directly opposite. She was eight months pregnant. Quintus lasted 11 minutes before the leopard tore out his throat. The record states that Julia went into premature labor that same night. Both she and the child died. Caligula attended neither funeral, but he did seize their property the next day.

When Caligula declared himself a god, not metaphorically but literally, he didn’t just want worship; he wanted to corrupt the very concept of worship itself. He built a temple to himself on Palatine Hill. In it, he placed a golden statue of himself as Jupiter, and he ordered that senators’ wives serve as temple priestesses. What did that mean? According to fragmentary accounts from Philo of Alexandria, who visited Rome in 40 CE, these priestesses were required to perform sacred rituals with male worshippers: sex rituals in a temple to worship Caligula. Wealthy Romans who wanted to curry favor with the emperor would make donations to the temple. In exchange, they would receive time with these priestesses, women who just months before had been among Rome’s most respected matrons. The genius of this system was that it gave Caligula deniability. He wasn’t forcing these women into prostitution; they were serving the divine emperor in his sacred temple. It was religious duty. Anyone who refused could be charged with sacrilege, and sacrilege carried a death sentence.

Caligula loved games, but his games weren’t about competition; they were about degradation. One of his favorites, documented by multiple sources, was the “crawling game.” He would host lavish dinners: hundreds of guests, the finest food and wine in the empire. Halfway through the evening, he would clap his hands, the doors would lock, and he would announce the game: all the senators had to get on their hands and knees and crawl to him like dogs. The last one to arrive would be executed on the spot. Imagine it: men in their 60s and 70s, war heroes, former consuls, grandfathers, scrambling across marble floors, climbing over each other, desperate not to be last, while Caligula sat on his throne laughing, eating grapes. One documented account from 38 CE described Senator Lucius Vitellius, a man who had commanded legions in Germania, who tore his expensive toga trying to push past younger senators. His knees bled on the marble. His dignity shattered in front of men who once saluted him. When he finally reached the emperor’s throne, gasping for breath, Caligula made him wait, made him kneel there, trembling, while the emperor finished his wine. Then, with a smile, pointed to his sandals. The winner? He got to lick the emperor’s feet. That was the prize. Lucius Vitellius, war hero of Rome, bent down and did it, because the alternative was death, and he had grandchildren he wanted to see grow up. Some sources suggest that Caligula sometimes played a more perverse version: he would have senators’ wives compete instead. The prize? Their husband’s life. The choice was simple: crawl like an animal or watch your husband die.

Perhaps the most psychologically devastating of all Caligula’s rituals was the simplest: the “midnight summons.” Caligula would send guards to a senator’s home in the middle of the night—no explanation, just, “The emperor summons you.” The senator would have minutes to dress and follow. Sometimes Caligula would be waiting with a banquet. The senator would be forced to eat and drink and laugh as if nothing was wrong, to toast to the emperor’s health, to smile while his heart pounded in his chest, wondering if this meal would be his last. Other times Caligula would be in his bedroom with the senator’s wife. The senator would be made to watch, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours, with guards standing behind him to make sure he didn’t look away. And sometimes, most terrifyingly, Caligula would just be sitting there in silence, staring for hours. Then he’d dismiss the senator with a smile, “You can go now.” No explanation, no charges, no accusations—just a message: “I can summon you whenever I want. Your life belongs to me.”

According to the historian Philo, one senator was summoned seven times in a single month, each time for a different reason, or no reason at all. By the end, the man had stopped sleeping entirely. He would sit by his door at night, fully dressed, waiting for the knock. When it didn’t come, he couldn’t rest. When it did come, he wished he’d never been born. The psychological toll was devastating. Senators lived in constant terror. They couldn’t sleep, couldn’t relax. Every knock on the door might be the guards. Many developed what we’d now recognize as PTSD: paranoia, insomnia. Some went mad. That was the point: Caligula didn’t need to kill them; he just needed them broken. But Caligula’s most perverted ritual wasn’t a single act; it was a system. He made everyone complicit. If you witnessed a senator’s wife being violated and said nothing, you were guilty. If you attended the auctions and didn’t bid, you insulted the emperor. If you refused the temple prostitutes, you committed sacrilege. Every ritual was designed to implicate you, to make you part of the corruption, to ensure that even if Caligula died, you couldn’t speak out without exposing yourself. He turned Rome’s entire elite into accomplices in their own degradation, and that, more than any single act of cruelty, was his masterpiece of perversion.

For decades, historians thought these accounts were exaggerated, Roman propaganda designed to demonize a hated emperor. Until 1987, when archaeologists excavating beneath the Palatine Hill in Rome found something chilling: a hidden chamber, marble walls, and carved into the stone 23 names of women. Next to each name, a date and a phrase in Latin: Sentencia Morse (“Silence is death”). They were the wives of senators that Caligula had publicly violated, and their own hands had carved their names in secret, as if they wanted someone, someday, to remember what happened to them. The lead archaeologist, Dr. Marco Bellini, stated, “This discovery confirms that ancient sources were not exaggerating. If anything, they were too gentle.” 2,000 years later, we found their names, not because Rome wanted to remember them, but because they refused to be forgotten. And now you know their stories. So why does this story matter? Because Caligula teaches us something terrifying: that absolute power doesn’t just corrupt—it perverts. It turns suffering into entertainment, humiliation into policy, silence into survival, and most dangerously, it normalizes all of this until people forget it was ever different. The philosopher Seneca, who lived under Caligula, wrote, “The tyrant doesn’t need to kill everyone. He only needs everyone to fear being next.” And he was right. Here’s what’s most chilling: this system of silence through shame didn’t die with Rome. It’s still alive in every institution where people stay quiet because exposure would mean social destruction, in every organization where shame protects the powerful. Caligula died 2,000 years ago, but his strategy? That’s still working.

Caligula ruled for only four years, but in that time he destroyed more than 200 families. He humiliated the most powerful men in Rome. He turned the imperial palace into a theater of blood and perversion. And when they finally assassinated him in January of 41 CE, all of Rome breathed relief. But the damage was done, because he had proven something terrifying: that unlimited power can turn even the noblest men into silent accomplices of their own humiliation. This is the story history books rarely tell: the real perversion behind absolute power. If you believe the truth of history should be told without censorship, subscribe to Crown and Dagger. I’m Crown and Dagger, and this is what really happened. But Caligula wasn’t the only Roman emperor who used sex as a political weapon. There was another who did something even more twisted with his own mother. Want me to tell that story? Let me know in the comments. And if you made it this far, drop a like so I know stories like this interest you. See you in the next historical nightmare.