The Van Alen Legacy

“Glad you decided to join us,” her teacher said with a stern smile.

Bliss didn’t need to be told twice. Ancient Civilizations had quickly become her favorite class, and she didn’t want to miss any of it. It was like a particularly good program on the History Channel, except without the cheesy reenactments. In the past few weeks they had covered such diverse and fascinating topics as Etruscan feminism (those Etruscan chicks ruled—literally), Egyptian funeral rites and the four types of love according to the ancient Greeks (from platonic to passionate), and how the ideas related to the birth of Western culture.

Today the topic was the reign of the third emperor of Rome. Caligula. When Miss Murray had handed the assignment to Allison Ellison last week, there had been much tittering. Most of the class was familiar with a certain movie that played on cable. Or if not, like Bliss, they knew the basics of the emperor’s reputation: sexual perversity, insanity, cruelty.

“My thesis today—please excuse me, Miss Murray— since the class is called Ancient Civilizations and the Dawn of the West, is that the West—or the idea of it—truly died with the assassination of Caligula,” Allison began. The tall girl stood in front of the blackboard and read confidently from her note cards.

“Interesting theory. Please explain,” Miss Murray said, leaning forward from her desk at the front of the room.

“As you all know, Caligula was assassinated by a conspiracy headed by leading members of the Senate. They stabbed him multiple times. By the time his loyal guards came, he was dead. The Senate then attempted to restore the Roman Republic, but the military did not support them—they remained loyal to the empire. With the help of the Praetorian Guard, they installed Claudius as emperor.”

“So you are saying Caligula’s death did exactly the opposite of what the Senate intended?” questioned Miss Murray.

Allison nodded enthusiastically. “With the death of Caligula came the death of the idea of the Republic. The empire was infallible. The people grieved for their murdered emperor, no matter how cruel or insane his enemies said he was. And with Caligula’s death, the death of the Republic was all but confirmed. The Romans never tried to bring it back again.

“The Senate’s greatest achievement, then, in murdering the emperor was solidifying the people’s loyalty to the empire,” Allison said. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? Especially since it wasn’t the first attempt on Caligula’s life. His sisters Agrippina and Julia Livilla had tried to kill him before, but failed. They were unsuccessful and banished. But the Senate succeeded where they did not.”

There was a hand up. “I thought Caligula was . . . um, you know, close to his sisters,” Bryce Cutting insinuated with a smirk.

Miss Murray interjected this time. “He was certainly ‘close,’ as you say, to his sister Drusilla. She was treated as the head of his household, and when she died, he mourned the loss like a widower. He even had the Senate name her a goddess. But as to whether they were close in a Biblical sense, history is ambiguous on the subject. Understand, class, that just like today, they tried to discredit their rulers with sex scandals and all sorts of salacious lies. If you believe half the things you read, everyone is a sexual pervert in antiquity. Perhaps Caligula and Drusilla were lovers. Or perhaps they simply wanted to solidify their power, to rule as brother and sister, as did the Egyptian despots.”

Bliss looked up from her notes. For some reason she had the sense that she was not hearing about distant historical figures safely entombed in the past and in the pages of history books. Instead, when she heard the names Drusilla, Agrippina, and Julia Livilla, she felt her skin tingle. These were people she knew.

Dylan, I think I’m getting close. I think this is what I am meant to—

“Thanks, Miss M.,” Allison said. “Anyway, for the trivia portion of my presentation, I wanted to add that even though we all call him Caligula, it was just a nickname, which he probably didn’t like too much since it meant “Little Boot.” His real name was the same as Julius Caesar’s. They called him Gaius.”

Gaius. Yes. That was what they used to call the Visitor.