Editing Caligula (section)

===Public profile===
Caligula shared many of the popular passions and enthusiasms of the lower classes and young aristocrats: public spectacles, particularly gladiator contests, chariot and horse racing, the theatre and gambling, but all on a scale which the nobility could not match. He trained with professional gladiators and staged exceptionally lavish gladiator games, being granted exemption by the senate from the [[sumptuary laws]] that limited the number of gladiators to be kept in Rome. He was openly and vocally partisan in his uninhibited support or disapproval of particular charioteers, racing teams, gladiators and actors, shouting encouragement or scorn, sometimes singing along with paid performers or declaiming the actors' lines, and generally behaving as "one of the crowd". In gladiator contests, he supported the ''[[Parmularius (gladiator)|parmularius]]'' type, who fought using small, round shields. In chariot races, he supported the [[Chariot Racing#Factions|Greens]], and personally drove his favourite racehorse, [[Incitatus]] ("Speedy") as a member of the Green faction. Most of Rome's aristocracy would have found this an unprecedented, unacceptable indignity for any of their number, let alone their emperor.{{sfn|Barrett|2015|pp=65–67}}{{sfn|Winterling|2011|pp=79–81}}{{sfn|Cassius Dio|loc=LIX.5.4}}

Caligula showed little respect for distinctions of rank, status or privilege among the senate, whose members Tiberius had once described as "men ready to be slaves". Among those whom Caligula recalled from exile were actors and other public performers who had somehow caused Tiberius offence.{{sfn|Wiedemann|1996|p=222}}{{sfn|Suet. ''Calig.''|loc=15}} Caligula seems to have built a loyal following among his own loyal [[Ancient Roman freedmen|freedmen]], citizen-commoners, disreputable public performers on whom he lavished money and other gifts; and the lower nobility (equestrians) rather than the senators and nobles whom he clearly and openly mistrusted, despised and humiliated for their insincere simulations of loyalty.{{sfn|Barrett|2015|pp=116–118, 130–132, 297–298}} Dio notes, with approval, that Caligula allowed some equestrians senatorial honours, anticipating their later promotion to senator based on their personal merits.{{sfn|Cassius Dio|loc=LIX.9–10}} To reverse declining membership of the equestrian order, Caligula recruited new, wealthy members empire-wide, and scrupulously vetted the order's membership lists for signs of dishonesty or scandal. He seems to have ignored trivial misdemeanours, and would have anticipated the creation of "new men" (''[[novus homo|novi homines]]''), first of their families to serve as senators. They would owe him a debt of gratitude and loyalty for their advancement.{{sfn|Barrett|2015|pp=304–305}}

Barrett describes some of the supposed equestrian offences punished by Caligula as "decidedly trivial", and their punishments as sensationalist. Dio claims that Caligula had more than 26 equestrians executed in a circus "fracas"; in Suetonius' biography "more than 20" lives were lost in what is almost certainly the same event, described as a violent but accidental crush.{{sfn|Barrett|2015|pp=304–305}} Some sources claim that Caligula forced equestrians and senators to fight in the arena as gladiators.{{sfn|Suet. ''Calig.''|loc=56}}{{sfn|Tacitus|loc=16.17}}{{sfn|Josephus|loc=[[s:The Antiquities of the Jews/Book XIX#Chapter 1|XIX.1.2]]}} Condemnation to the gladiator arena as a combatant was a standard punishment, doubling as public entertainment, for non-citizens found guilty of certain offences. Laws of AD 19 by Augustus and Tiberius banned voluntary participation of the elite in any public spectacles, but the ban was never particularly effective, and was broadly ignored in Caligula's reign. During Caligula's illness two citizens, one of whom was an equestrian, offered to fight as gladiators if only the gods would spare the emperor's life. The offers were insincere, intended to flatter and invite reward. When Caligula recovered, he insisted that they be taken at face value, to avoid accusations of perjury: "cynical, but not without wit of a kind".{{sfn|Winterling|2011|pp=70–72}}