Scientists Illuminate The Discovery Of Caligula’s Giant Floating Pleasure Palaces
Although a look at the history of ancient Rome will reveal no shortage of corruption and brutality among its emperors, generals, and senators, one figure towers above them all in both respects. Although historians differ on who could be considered the worst Roman emperor, the general public is all but united in the belief that Caligula was not only the worst of them but on the shortlist for the worst ruler of all time.
But as infamous as his wanton, sadistic cruelty and other erratic behavior remain today, Caligula's extreme harm to Rome was also economic. And the story of the discovery and fate of two of his biggest excesses underscores not only the failures of his regime but one that gripped the same region almost 2,000 years later.
An infamous legacy
Caligula's brutality and demands to be worshipped as a god made him infamous both in his time and in the centuries since, but his extreme hedonism and kleptocracy managed to prove even more destructive to Rome than his cruelty.
According to Discover Magazine, this was despite the fact that he was only emperor for four years between 37 CE and 41 CE. Indeed, he reportedly managed to deplete the empire's entire treasury within a single year with the elaborate ways he thought of amusing himself. Even now, it's hard to keep track of where that money went, but Italy's Lake Nemi once held a fascinating and illuminating clue.
Before the discovery
According to the University Of Chicago, Lake Nemi is a small, placid body of water in Italy's Lazio province. Despite its calm conditions and 0.6 square-mile area, however, the region's fishermen knew something was there that should have been impossible centuries before anyone could confirm it.
What did they know? Well, considering the hundreds of years of snags their nets experienced in the area and the artifacts that would sometimes surface, it was clear to them that there were somehow either multiple shipwrecks below them or one giant one.
Some lucrative proof
As Discover Magazine outlined, such a prospect may well have sounded preposterous at the time. But anyone making such a claim would have to explain why those fishermen were able to dredge up ancient artifacts from the caldera with the regularity they were.
Using grappling hooks, these fishermen were able to not only pull up some valuable artifacts of the distant past, but sell them at local markets. By the 15th Century, these informal discoveries prompted a more official investigation by the local authorities.
The Colonna expedition
At the time, Lake Nemi was part of a fiefdom overseen by Cardinal Prospero Colonna, the nephew of the pope at the time. According to the University of Chicago, he also held the medieval towns of Nemi and Genzano.
He was also known as a humanist during the Renaissance, and since the area's fisherman also brought up some lumber that had clearly been shaped by human hands, the potential implications for discovery fascinated him. Discover Magazine credited him with sailing out into the lake and spotting a lattice of wooden beams.
The first of many failed excavation attempts
According to the University of Chicago, Colonna commissioned engineer Leon Battista Alberti to lead a coordinated effort to recover the mysterious shipwreck. Since Discover Magazine described the wreck as sitting about 60 feet underwater and the assembled workers only had more grappling hooks to work with, they couldn't bring it up.
What they could bring up, however, were planks of wood (pine and cypress, specifically) caulked with linen and pitch and fortified with lead sheets and brass nails. Colonna wrote about how remarkably well-preserved they were, but he also believed them to be about 13,000 years old.
A friend's correction
Although the University of Chicago explained that it was unclear whether this person was there for this attempt or not, a historian and friend of Colonna's named Biondo Flavio was deeply interested in the wreck. He described Albertti as hiring professional free divers from Genoa, who he described as "more like fish than men." He also set the record straight of some key aspects of the failed recovery.
His writings suggest that everyone involved had underestimated the size of the ship and only recovered a small part of the bow. He also believed the wood was larch rather than pine or cypress. This was important because it led him to correctly pinpoint that the ship was of Roman origin, as the ancient civilization prized larch as a building material.
A perilous but ingenious second attempt
As the University of Chicago outlined, almost a century passed before another attempt to salvage what people believed to be just one giant ship was undertaken. This time, Guglielmo de Lorena had invented a wooden diving bell that allowed him and his expedition partner Francesco de' Marchi to observe the wreck up close.
As before, the plan was also to salvage the wreck. However, hardships struck early for them as de' Marchi's first dive attempt saw him fail to equalize the pressure that built in his head once he was submerged 45 feet down, which ruptured his eardrum. Attacks from the small fish in Lake Nemi and its frigid temperatures also complicated matters.
Colonna and Flavio both seemed right
Despite this challenge, the act of getting close to an ancient Roman shipwreck of this extreme size exhilarated de' Marchi enough that he continued accompanying Guglielmo de Lorena on further dives and succeeded in attaching iron hooks to the downed ship. The University of Chicago noted that 16 men tried to pull the ship up but only succeeded in snapping their ropes in two.
Nonetheless, they decided that pine, cypress, and larch were present in the ship's building materials, which appeared to prove both Cardinal Colonna and Flavio right. However, it was also clear that the ship originated during the Roman Empire, though the prevailing assumption at the time credited either the emperors Tiberius or Trajan for commissioning it.
A host of uncovered treasures soon to be lost again
Although Guglielmo de Lorena's expedition was no more successful than Colonna's at salvaging the lost Roman ship, the inventor's diving bell was able to get him and de' Marchi closer to the seabed. As Discover Magazine explained, this meant they could recover ancient bronze and marble sculptures that surrounded the wreck.
But while de' Marchi's account on the expedition — as obtained by the University of Chicago — mentioned that he had helped recover enough of the ship's building materials and valuable artifacts to encumber two sturdy mules, the duo couldn't keep them for long. They had intended to study the artifacts in Rome, but thieves apparently stole everything in the hopes of unlocking the secret of Guglielmo de Lorena's diving bell.
At long last, the truth was discovered
Centuries passed before another failed attempt to salvage the ship occurred in 1827, but it went similarly to the previous diving bell expedition. Although some artifacts were sold to spectating nobles, others were lost and the equipment used to plumb the depths was stolen when work halted during the winter.
However, the University of Chicago explained that the next attempt launched in 1895 would turn out to be the most archaeologically significant expedition of its kind since the ship's official discovery. That's not only because the second ship was discovered but because they were soon to be confirmed as Caligula's ships.
New advancements in diving technology
By 1895, the world had seen the invention of the waterproof diving suit with its iconic closed helmet. Primitive as it may be by today's standards, this suit was sophisticated enough to allow for a thorough exploration of the first shipwreck in October and the discovery of the second one during the following month.
The University of Chicago described the October dives commissioned by antiquities dealer Eliseo Borghi as uncovering the lion head and wolf head sculptures that decorated the long-steering rudders, as well as a Roman mosaic and a bust of Medusa that stood under the ship's bronze roof tiles. However, the most significant discovery was in the second ship.
Proof of origin
Although the wood and nails that marked the early discoveries of these ships were the first items from the second ship to surface, a more intriguing find was a bronze panel with a sculpted hand and forearm sticking out of it.
But while that discovery was aesthetically fascinating, the most historically significant discovery there could be found on lengths of lead pipe throughout the ship. According to the University of Chicago, that's because they were stamped "G. Caesaris avg germanic." This stood for Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Caligula's real name.
Why did the ships sink in the first place?
Although this discovery clarified much about the ships, it only made the reason they could have found themselves at the bottom of Lake Nemi more mysterious. As the University of Chicago outlined, there were several plausible theories explaining their fates at the time. Since Caligula was such a terrible emperor, his memory was officially condemned (a concept called damnatio memoriae) during the reign of his successor, Claudius.
But if he didn't deliberately have the ships scuttled as obvious monuments to his predecessor's excess or abandon them in the lake for the same reason, their destruction could have been motivated by religion. Caligula had the ships built on sacred waters where no ship was allowed on the surface, so they could have been sunk to appease the goddess Diana.
Why were they built at all?
![Bust of [redacted] in Military Attire](https://www.exploredhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/bust-of-caligula-in-military-attire-75592.jpeg?width=480&height=720 "Bust of [redacted] in Military Attire")
In writings obtained by Discover Magazine, the Roman historian Seutonius described these giant ships as having ten sets of oars and decks festooned with an ostentatious array of jewels. He also described them as being fully stocked with baths, galleries of fine items, taverns, and even full fruit trees.
The largest ship (and the first one to be discovered) was called Prima Nave and was large enough to be steered with 36-foot oars. The other was a massive floating platform adorned with marble palaces, lush gardens, and a plumbing system for its baths. As it likely sounds, the ships were prohibitively expensive even by Caligula's standards and were almost certainly built to host his elaborate, decadent parties.
Borghi's Disappointment
Although Borghi's account of his expedition — obtained by the University of Chicago — makes it clear how proud he was of these new discoveries, he was disappointed to see that he wasn't celebrated by Italy's Ministry of Public Education for them. Those disappointments mounted when his salvage methods were considered too destructive to continue, and the Ministry suspended any further work.
He was also aggrieved to learn that he couldn't keep the recovered treasures, which had to be surrendered to the Italian government due to then-new laws about the handling of cultural artifacts. That said, this forced sale saw him gain the equivalent of $900,000 when adjusted for inflation, so his luck could have been much, much worse.
Another infamous figure emerges
Although the Nemi ships are obviously associated with one of the most reviled men who ever lived, they would become a matter of obsession for another infamous Italian leader. And while his ambitions would bring out more progress in their salvage than ever before, his interest wasn't scientific.
As Discover Magazine explained, the dictator Benito Mussolini was adamant in associating his fascist regime with the legacy of the Roman Empire. Although that part of Italy's history seemed to be a genuine obsession for him, presenting himself as the "new Augustus" to the Italian public was also a means of legitimizing his cult of personality.
Aggressive renovations
As Discover Magazine added, this motivation compelled him to get to work making his mark on some of Rome's most treasured landmarks. Throughout the 1920s, he would order construction projects around the Mausoleum of Emperor Augustus, the Colosseum, and the ancient Theatre of Marcellus.
This involved building a verdant square around the mausoleum, digging up the floor of the Colosseum to expose the structure underneath (called a hypogeum), and clearing the buildings around the theater to make it more prominent. But by 1928, he would order something that hadn't been done in Italy before.
A new salvage plan
Although the limited technology of centuries past made the Nemi ships impossible to salvage intact, their sheer size had also been a significant factor hampering recovery efforts. To get around these problems, Mussolini ordered the draining of Lake Nemi to make Caligula's ships easier to move.
Despite how unprecedented this move was, Discover Magazine noted that it was partially accomplished by reusing an ancient Roman cistern. However, it's unlikely that it would ever have been accomplished without the more modern electric pump system pictured here.
A hard road to success
According to the University of Chicago, draining a whole lake was about as difficult of an undertaking as it sounds. At first, two of the pumps were damaged when the water level started receding, which led to the creation of an auxiliary station that used flexible piping to support these pumps.
Although this proved effective for a while, the auxiliary station sank after a heavy thunderstorm in 1930 ravaged the lake. Later, the water appeared to rise around the hull of the second ship due to the sea bed shifting from this intense work. Nonetheless, the project ended up working as intended, and Discover Magazine stated that Lake Nemi's water level was ultimately reduced by 65 feet.
After centuries, the ships see the light of day
This dramatic draining was enough to expose both ships, at which point work began on moving them. Prima Nave was first and was fitted to a cradle large enough to support it in October 1930. According to the University of Chicago, it was brought onto shore via a rail system.
Although the second ship took longer to reach, it would finally be hauled out of Lake Nemi during the same month in 1932. It was brought out around the tenth anniversary of Mussolini's rise to power. Although the wood on the second ship was starting to crack and warp, both ships were preserved using similar techniques that Norwegian archaeologists used to treat Viking longboats.
They proved what the Romans were capable of
Although many different types of wood were believed to have been used in the Nemi ships' construction at various points, the University of Chicago explained that this recovery finally confirmed they were made from local oak, fir, pine, and spruce wood. Despite the Roman love for the larch, none was apparently used for the Nemi ships.
However, Discover Magazine noted the recovery also challenged a historical assumption that the Romans couldn't build ships of their sheer size. In the past, historians believed that ancient Roman accounts were exaggerated when they described grain-carrying ships measuring 164 feet. Yet since Prima Nave was 240 feet in length and 79 feet across, it's possible they were telling the truth all along.
Caligula's pointless expenses
Although the sheer size and the sophisticated amenities of Caligula's floating pleasure palaces indicated an extreme case of his overall trend of reckless spending, it became clear just how wasteful he was when their construction and use could be more thoroughly examined. According to Discover Magazine, the wooden beams that made up each ship's complex lattice were coated with lead.
This treatment was expensive, but it was meant to protect them from shipworms. However, they only ever floated in Lake Nemi. And since shipworms aren't found in freshwater, there was no reason to go to the trouble. To add insult to injury, Caligula was only able to use these ships for about a year before his assassination.
Mussolini couldn't have asked for a bigger triumph
Considering that the only successful attempt to salvage the Nemi ships occurred during Mussolini's regime, they were perhaps among the most useful assets to bolster his cult of personality. Moreover, they were a massive and seemingly airtight example of why his government's vision of modern Italy through the lens of ancient Rome would prevail.
As such, it wasn't exactly a surprise that he would have a grand museum constructed to house them in 1935 and — as the University of Chicago noted — why he invited visitors to tour the drained lake while Prima Nave was still embedded in its mud. These monuments to Caligula's ego could serve Mussolini's self-image just as effectively.
A dictator's overconfidence
According to the University of Chicago, the meticulously restored Nemi ships were proudly displayed in the newly built Museo Delle Navi Romane on April 21, 1939. This date was the widely understood anniversary of Rome's founding, but it preceded what would ultimately be the decision that led to Mussolini's downfall.
As the National World War II Museum outlined, Mussolini would sign the Pact of Steel that marked Italy's alliance with Germany just a month later. The following year, this pact would lead Italy to officially enter World War II.
Italy's campaign quickly goes wrong
Despite Mussolini's projected strength and bluster, it would soon become clear that the Italian high command could not effectively wage war on such a grand scale. According to the National World War II Museum, Italian forces struggled in the south of France, Greece, and northern and eastern Africa between 1940 and 1942.
However, one of the most brutal blows to Mussolini's approval on the home front was Italy's disastrous involvement in the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. So much so that the catastrophic losses Italian forces saw during the Battle of Stalingrad forced their withdrawal from the region entirely.
The beginning of the end
This bloodbath ignited widespread resentment against the war and Mussolini by Italy's youth, who were being dragged into disastrous campaign after disastrous campaign. As the National World War II Museum noted, even some conservative elements that had staunchly supported the dictator in the past were coming around to the idea of removing him.
This resentment boiled over into a worker's strike at Turin's Fiat Mirafiori plant in 1943. While that was going on, Italy's prospects in the war were getting even bleaker. In May of that year, Italy would lose its last foothold in the military's African campaign with the surrender of Tunisia. And when the summer loomed, the fighting would reach the nation's southern shores.
Operation Husky
According to The History Channel, Allied forces launched an invasion of Sicily on July 10, 1943. Code-named operation Husky, this invasion began with paratroopers landing on Italy's southernmost island in concert with an amphibious assault similar to the later invasion of Normandy.
As National World War II Museum outlined, the fight would draw even closer to home for Mussolini nine days later, as bombs fell on Rome for the first time in history. It seemed Italy's entry into the war could not have gone worse.
The fall of Mussolini
Although Mussolini's wartime blunders had seen resentment in Italy grow to more flagrant opposition, this invasion convinced even his Fascist Grand Council that he could not continue as the nation's dictator. According to the National World War II Museum, they returned a no-confidence vote in his leadership by the morning of July 25.
Shortly thereafter, King Victor Emmanuel had him deposed and arrested. As The History Channel explained, his replacement — Marshal Pietro Badoglio — opposed Italy's alliance with Germany and secretly spoke with Allied representatives in the hopes of reaching an armistice. However, neither the invasion nor Mussolini's influence was over yet.
The feeble return of Mussolini
Despite Mussolini's ouster and imprisonment, the National World War II Museum explained that he wouldn't be out of the fight for long. That's because a German detachment led by Otto Skorzeny was able to raid his detention area and free him on September 12.
Although his leadership had been reduced to a puppet government called the Italian Social Republic in northern Italy, both his remaining fanatically loyal followers and his support from the German military ensured the Liberation of Italy would drag out until May 1945.
A bitter standstill
Although The History Channel noted that Allied forces landed at the coastal city of Salerno, they were hampered and almost driven back by German forces entrenched in Cassino, where the famous Monte Cassino Abbey is. The most pernicious of their defensive position was called the Gustav Line.
Over the course of four battles and several months, Allied forces struggled to break through the line until they finally made significant headway in May 1994. Although six would be diverted to support the larger and more strategically crucial invasion of Normandy on D Day, General Mark Clark's fifth army nonetheless marched into Rome on June 4.
What does this have to do with the Nemi ships?
Although the recovery of Caligula's gargantuan ships was a symbol of the purported strength of Mussolini's regime and the validity of its claimed connection to the Roman Empire, that meaning was long gone by 1944. And Mussolini himself wouldn't last much longer.
After all, the Italy they stood in was now fractured by warfare and politically divided. Despite Mussolini's nominal position as head of the Italian Social Republic, the nation was ravaged by two competing invasions. Rather than a restored empire, Italy was a battleground between German and Allied forces. And the Nemi ships were caught in the middle of it.
Destruction of the irreplaceable
Before the Allied march on Rome, a historical catastrophe occurred within it. On the night of May 31, 1944, Caligula's monumental pleasure palaces spent their final moments intact. That's because a roaring fire had started in the Museo Delle Navi Romane.
Despite their size and the might that had allowed them to remain intact after being submerged and periodically picked at for almost 2,000 years, the Nemi ships would not survive the fire. In fact, very little from the museum would.
The only surviving relics
By the time of the fire, relics from the Nemi ships, like these bronze wolf and lion heads, had long been stored and preserved in Italy's museums. After all, these items were among those recovered in the 1895 expedition before anyone knew Mussolini's name.
However, the destruction of the Museo Delle Navi Romane destroyed almost everything that had been salvaged after he ordered the draining of Lake Nemi. According to Discover Magazine, only some bronze relics and a handful of photographs depicting the ships survived the fire.
How did the fire start?
According to Discover Magazine, it remains a mystery as to how the fire that destroyed the Nemi ships started in the first place. One distinct possibility is that one of the artillery and airborne strikes on Rome caused the fire, and that wouldn't be unprecedented for Allied forces during the invasion of Italy.
As the National World War II Museum explained, an air offensive that saw B-17s, B-25s, and B-26s drop a devastating payload of explosives on Monte Cassino Abbey completely destroyed the sacred monastery. Although Allied commanders justified this destruction as being preferable to losing even more soldiers than they already had during the invasion, it remains one of the most hotly debated moments of the Italian campaign.
Another explanation that's just as plausible
Although it's possible that Allied forces showed a similar lack of consideration for important cultural sites in Rome as they did in Monte Cassino, they're not the only potential culprit. As Discover Magazine explained, German forces in World War II were even less respectful of the cultural institutions of the nations they occupied than the Allies.
With that in mind, the fire that destroyed the Nemi ships could have been a deliberate act of arson by occupying German soldiers. Although blowing up bridges they used tended to be their most common means of slowing their advancing enemies down, it also wasn't unusual for them to set fire to positions they were about to abandon.
An ignoble end to a disastrous dictator
According to The History Channel, Mussolini's last hope of holding out in his Milan stronghold was dashed on April 25, 1945, when he learned the German high command was in the midst of negotiating their unconditional surrender. This led him to try and flee Italy with his 33-year-old mistress, Clara Petacci in the 1939 Alfa Romeo car he bought for her.
He donned a Luftwaffe disguise and tried to join a convoy of Germans and his remaining fascist allies as they headed for the Swiss border. However, partisans from the opposing side of the civil war his failures had started quickly recognized the distinct face they had been constantly shown for 20 years and seized both of them.
The death of Il Duce
Considering that Mussolini had been freed from captivity once before, The History Channel noted that his captors decided to hide him and Petacci in an out-of-the-way farmhouse for the night. They then took the pair to the village of Giulino di Mezzegra and ordered them to stand in front of a stone wall.
The partisans then executed both of them with a machine gun. They then mirrored similar actions taken by the regime against their fallen friends and put their remains on public display in Milan's Piazzale Loreto alongside 14 of his die-hard supporters. The ensuing frenzy was halted by American troops, who ordered their bodies transferred to the city morgue.
Doomed to repeat history
As Discover Magazine pointed out, Mussolini's demise shared some parallels with the man whose ships he salvaged. Although the means of execution was different, Caligula also met his end at the hands of an uneasy alliance between his internal enemies.
While he passed through a tunnel under Rome's Capitoline Hill, Caligula was stabbed by members of his Praetorian Guard, who had conspired with senators to finally bring his reign of terror to an end. But while Italy became a democratic republic after Mussolini's death, the Roman military continued the empire against the wishes of the senators.
Learning the wrong lesson
As obsessed as Mussolini was with the might of the Roman Empire, he didn't appear to learn much from it. Rather than consider why Rome fell in the first place, he apparently regarded its repressive excesses as indicators of strength.
Nowhere was this clearer in how he treated the Nemi ships. He presented them as a wonder of the Roman Empire to inform the values of modern Italy rather than a monument to one man's decadence that did more to hasten his downfall than accomplish anything else.
Mourning the desecration of history
That having been said, any catharsis that may come from seeing Mussolini's proudest achievement burn during his lifetime is outweighed by seeing such grand ancient vessels that survived for so many centuries burned so unceremoniously.
After all, one needs to respect neither the man who built the ships nor the man who co-opted them to be saddened by the destruction of such well-preserved and unique historical artifacts. That's especially true when considering how it all could have been avoided if one man's hubris hadn't led Italy into a war it wasn't prepared for.