Caligula: An Interview with Simon Turney

The bestselling author discusses his revisionist novel based on the infamous emperor of Rome.

Simon Turney, Caligula is the first of two novels based on Emperors of Rome that have rather, shall we say negative reputations (the second is Commodus)? Caligula was the third emperor after Augustus and Tiberius, but why did you want to write about him in particular?

Originally it was the suggestion of my phenomenal agent that I tackle a big Roman character like Caligula. I was dubious about that particular emperor initially. After all, the public image of the man is clearly based on the 1970s portrayal by Malcolm MacDowell, and I was not sure how I could possibly write a readable novel about the man. And I almost decided against it altogether when I then went and watched that same movie. Then I picked up a book by Aloys Winterling, which is the first revisionist approach I’ve seen to the emperor, which pulled apart the historical image and dug deeper to try and divine the truth. As soon as I saw what he’d done, I wanted to do the same, but on a grander scale, and as a novel. That led me to pulling apart the historical sources myself and expanding on what Winterling had done, with a view to making it the first portrayal of a realistic Caligula.