Caligula opened with popular reforms—amnesties, tax relief, transparency—but after a severe illness turned to theatrical provocations, fiscal exactions, and ritual self‑cult, alienating elites and Praetorians and prompting his assassination: coercive strategy over madness.
Julius Caesar: military genius, politician, and reformer whose Rubicon, affair with Cleopatra, and assassination on the Ides of March reshaped Rome and Western history.