Caligula

“It’s just because no one dares to follow up his ideas to the end that nothing is achieved. All that’s needed, I should say, is to be logical right through, at all costs.”

Caligula responds to Helicon’s comment that a life of pursuing the impossible is impractical. Caligula believes in logic as a measure of truth, regardless of the consequences.

Helicon: “May I know what it is, this truth that you’ve discovered?”

Caligula: “Men die; and they are not happy.”

Helicon is trying to understand what drives Caligula’s new perspective. In his preface to the play, Camus identified Caligula’s response as the essential core of the emperor’s philosophy.

“I wish men to live by the light of truth. And I’ve the power to make them do so.”

Here Caligula, still speaking to Helicon, resolves to force the logical extremes of his position on his subjects. By wishing men to live “by the light of truth,” Caligula means that he wants them to live consistently with the principle of ultimate meaninglessness. Because of his power as emperor, he is able to compel the patricians to suffer the consequences of his philosophy.

“If the Treasury has paramount importance, human life has none. That should be obvious to you. People who think like you are bound to admit the logic of my edict, and since money is the only thing that counts, should set no value on their lives or anyone else’s. I have resolved to be logical, and I have the power to enforce my will.”

This statement exemplifies the principal Caligula expressed in the previous quote. The emperor is responding to his intendant, who is concerned about the state treasury as a first order of business. Caligula forces the intendant to be logically consistent with the idea he has stated, which in this case means prioritizing the treasury over the lives of citizens.

Caligula: “Ah, my dears, I’ve come to see the uses of supremacy. It gives impossibilities a run. From this day on, so long as life is mine, my freedom has no frontier.”

Caesonia: “I doubt if this discovery of yours will make us any happier.”

Caligula: “So do I. But, I suppose, we’ll have to live it through.”

Caligula is speaking to Scipio and Caesonia. He explains the reasons behind his decree to expand the treasury on the appropriated wealth of executed patricians. He expresses his continued desire to pursue the impossible, which his position as emperor permits him to do, and to exercise freedom from ordinary social and political constraints. Caesonia’s response foreshadows the tragic end of Caligula’s resolution.

“This world has no importance; once a man realizes that, he wins his freedom.”

In speaking to Cherea, Caligula identifies his philosophy of meaninglessness as the source of true freedom. If ordinary customs and constraints do not matter, that affords freedom from their restrictions. As Caligula will discover at the close of the play, he has mistaken license for liberty, leading to less freedom in the end.

“What you need, my dear, is a good, long sleep. […] And when you wake, you’ll find the world’s got back its savor. Then you must use your power to good effect—for loving better what you still find lovable. For the possible, too, deserves to be given a chance.”

Caesonia tries to comfort Caligula. She expresses love as something within the realm of the possible, not realizing that Caligula has come to associate love with the impossible.

“To lose one’s life is no great matter; when the time comes I’ll have the courage to lose mine. But what’s intolerable is to see one’s life being drained of meaning, to be told there’s no reason for existing. A man can’t live without some reason for living.”

Here, Cherea converses with other conspirators as they discuss the possibility of an assassination. At this point, Cherea still advises caution, but he expresses his willingness to die when the time comes. Cherea states his main objection against Caligula here: The emperor’s philosophy isn’t wrong, but it makes life not worth living and thus cannot be put into practice.

“Let’s put method into his madness. And then, at last, a day will come when he’s alone, a lonely man in an empire of the dead and kinsmen of the dead.”

Cherea puts forward his plan for an assassination plot. He advises that the patricians bide their time and wait until Caligula’s philosophy has earned him the hatred of a much greater portion of Rome’s subjects. His words foreshadow Caligula’s own reflections in Act IV, in which the emperor realizes just how alone he is and how much more at ease he feels in the company of the dead.

“I repeat; famine begins tomorrow. We all know what famine means—a national catastrophe. Well, tomorrow there will be a catastrophe, and I shall end it when I choose. After all, I haven’t so many ways of proving I am free. One is always free at someone else’s expense.”

Caligula explains why he is closing the national granaries, an act which exemplifies the cruelty which he believes will help him rival the gods. He also expresses the idea of freedom, and how it is tied to one’s social context. In Caligula’s case, however, he does not care about society; his exercise of freedom comes at a significant cost to others.

Scipio: “All men have a secret solace. It helps them to endure, and they turn to it when life has wearied them beyond enduring. […] Have you nothing of the kind in your life, no refuge, no mood that makes the tears well up, no consolation?”

Caligula: “Yes, I have something of the kind.”

Scipio: “What is it?”

Caligula: “Scorn.”

Scipio feels astonished and betrayed when realizing that Caligula’s expressions of artistic tenderness have all been a ruse to manipulate him. Scipio asks Caligula what consoles him. Caligula identifies scorn as his driving influence—an impulse to mock the illogical rules and customs by which others pretend their lives have meaning.

“Make known to us the truth about this world—which is that it has none […]. And grant us strength to live up to this verity of verities.”

Caesonia speaks these lines as she leads a responsive litany during Caligula’s performance as the goddess Venus. Caligula has turned his philosophy into a quasi-religious doctrine, compelling the patricians to proclaim the meaninglessness of the world. This quote is also an example of paradox: Caesonia proclaims that the world has no truth, but that this is in fact the highest truth.

“For someone who loves power the rivalry of the gods is rather irksome. […] I’ve merely realized that there’s only one way of getting even with the gods. All that’s needed is to be as cruel as they.”

Here, Caligula responds to Scipio’s charge of blasphemy. Caligula agrees with part of Scipio’s assessment—that Caligula is envious of the gods. Although he doesn’t believe in the gods’ existence, he still feels that he is due the same attention for his capricious exercise of cruelty and power.

“There’s no understanding fate; therefore I choose to play the part of fate. I wear the foolish, unintelligible face of a professional god.”

Caligula continues speaking with Scipio. He says that his behavior is guided by a principle of unintelligibility, which fits with his belief in life’s meaninglessness. There is some irony here—while Caligula says that his behavior resembles unpredictable, unguided fate, he also admits that he is actively choosing this way of living. While fate is random and unintentional, Caligula’s performance of randomness is entirely intentional.

“Logic, Caligula; follow where logic leads. Power to the uttermost; willfulness without end. Ah, I’m the only man on earth to know the secret—that power can never be complete without a total self-surrender to the dark impulse of one’s destiny.”

Caligula speaks to himself, interacting with his reflection in the mirror. He notices a greater and greater emptiness around him but reaffirms his resolution to follow logic. He also recognizes that he is being drawn to a destiny that he will not be able to escape. In other words, his logic will lead toward a negation of the freedom he seeks.

Cherea: “My plan of life may not be logical, but at least it’s sound. […] what I want is to live, and to be happy. Neither, to my mind, is possible if one pushes the absurd to its logical conclusions.”

Cherea admits the logic of Caligula’s perspective but objects that it is not livable. Cherea’s statement—“what I want is to live, and to be happy”—stands in direct contrast to Caligula’s statement in Act I: “Men die; and they are not happy” (8).

Cherea: “Do you know, I hate him even more for having made of you—what he has made.”

Scipio: “Yes, he has taught me to expect everything of life.”

Cherea: “No, he has taught you despair. And to have instilled despair into a young heart is fouler than the foulest of the crimes he has committed up to now.”

Cherea tries to convince Scipio to join the assassination plot. At this point, Scipio resists, and his response shows his continued attachment to the emperor. Cherea suggests that philosophical excesses are the worst offenses of all.

“Until now my reign has been too happy. There’s been no world-wide plague, no religious persecution, not even a rebellion—nothing in fact to make us memorable. And that, I’d have you know, is why I try to remedy the stinginess of fate. […] it’s I who replace epidemics that we’ve missed.”

Caligula continues to think up new and worse ways to persecute his people, all while claiming that his reign has been too happy. His words are not meant to correspond to truth; they are meant to show that truth does not matter.

“Other artists create to compensate for their lack of power. I don’t need to make a work of art; I live it.”

Caligula explains why he does not feel the need to participate in his compulsory poetry recitation. Caligula views his entire reign as a performance.

“How strange! When I don’t kill, I feel alone. The living don’t suffice to people my world and dispel my boredom. […] No, I’m at ease only in the company of my dead.”

In a rare moment of self-reflection, Caligula addresses himself in the mirror. He considers that the society with which he most fits includes the people he has murdered.

“Most people imagine that a man suffers because out of the blue death snatches away the woman he loves. But his real suffering is less futile; it comes from the discovery that grief, too, cannot last. Even grief is vanity. […] I know now that nothing, nothing lasts. Think what that knowledge means! There have been just two or three of us in history who really achieved this freedom, this crazy happiness.”

Caligula tells Caesonia this shortly before murdering her. He has realized that not even love—nor grief—can survive death. He interprets this epiphany as freedom, but he will soon see that he is left with no options but death.

“Caligula! You, too; you, too, are guilty. Then what of it—a little more, a little less? Yet who can condemn me in this world where there is no judge, where nobody is innocent?”

In his final soliloquy, Caligula’s expresses the meaninglessness of moral categories in the face of death. If there are no gods, no afterlife, and no judgment for how one has lived, then guilt and innocence have no value.

“Yet, really, it’s quite simple. If I’d had the moon, if love were enough, all might have been different. […] all I need is for the impossible to be. The impossible! I’ve searched for it in the confines of the world, in the secret places of my heart. […] but it’s always you I find, you only, confronting me, and I’ve come to hate you. I have chosen a wrong path, a path that leads to nothing. My freedom isn’t the right one….Nothing, nothing yet. Oh, how oppressive is this darkness!”

In Caligula’s final soliloquy, he expresses his failure to capture the impossible. He is left with himself alone—the “you” to whom he refers in the quote—and with the inescapable reality of death. His imagined freedom from moral categories and constructed meanings have left him in a place where he no longer has any freedom.