The third Roman Emperor Gaius Germanicus Caligula was described by Suetonius and Cassius Dio as a monster and tyrant renowned for his cruelty. In the source texts, Caligula’s actions are described as nonsensical, surreal and absurd. The principal aim of this B.A. thesis is to reconstruct Caligula’s reign from a revisionist perspective and to present the key findings of the leading present-day historians. Based on the sitter’s respective hairstyles, Caligula’s surviving portraits are
classified into two types – the main type (Haupttypus) and secondary type (Nebentypus). Even though both Seneca and Suetonius expressly described him as ugly, they are consistently idealized in keeping with the Julio-Claudian portrait type, which was established by Augustus. Nevertheless, the Emperor Gaius’s likenesses can be identified by a number of sufficiently individualized facial features, such as a wide forehead, sharp eyebrows, prominent nose, small mouth with receding lower lip, and noticeably pointed chin.
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