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Caligula

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

In the ancient times the presence of phantoms was believed to have been caused by the fact that, beside having been murdered, they did not receive a proper burial. Ghosts then haunted the house where, as the emperor Caligula, they had been killed and moreover, as him, were improperly buried. Suetonius tells us (Caligula 59).
“His dead body was secretly brought to the “Horti Lamiani”, and after having been half burned on an hasty prepared pyre, it was covered by a light layer of grassy soil. Later on, when his sisters came back from their exile, he was disinterred, cremated and buried. It is well known that before this the garden’s guardians were disturbed by ghosts, and also that in the house, in which Caligula had been killed, no night passed without being disturbed by some terrifying phenomena, and that went on until the house was destroyed by a fire.”