[s4e1] Working For Caligula May 2026
Lucius’s first day began in the throne room. Caligula wasn't sitting; he was pacing, draped in a silk robe that cost more than Lucius’s entire village. Beside the throne stood a horse——decked out in a collar of sparkling emeralds.
The air in the imperial palace was thick with the scent of roasted peacock and the metallic tang of fear. For Lucius, a junior scribe who had spent years mastering the delicate art of bureaucratic indifference, his new assignment felt less like a promotion and more like a death sentence.
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?" [S4E1] Working for Caligula
"Gather the spoils!" Caligula screamed over the roar of the surf.
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. Lucius’s first day began in the throne room
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 went back to his scrolls, his heart hammering against his ribs. He knew the truth: in the court of Caligula, you didn't work for a man, you worked for a storm. And the only way to survive a storm was to be as flexible as the reeds he used for pens. The air in the imperial palace was thick
Lucius knelt in the wet sand, dutifully filling chests with seashells. He labeled them: Spoils of the Ocean, conquered by the Living God.