I watched a documentary called 'Most Evil Men In History'
and what do you know, i featured Caligula.
now, we all know from studying Caligula's life he was f#ked up.
but one of the most evil men in history?
As others have said, he's no where near as "evil" as Hitler and Stalin.
sharePeople always forget Chairman Mao Zedong, but he was even worse than those two. Hitler killed 6 million of his own people, Stalin killed 12 million. Mao killed more than both of them combined. His actions caused the deaths of 30 million people, not to mention the destruction of priceless, irreplaceable artifacts from Ancient China in an attempt to eliminate the "Four Olds" from Chinese society.
If ever there was an evil man in history I'd say it was Mao Zedong.
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The surviving writing about him was written by by what we would consider hacks and defamers. It may all be true or 90% fabrication
shareI think the most evil men in history share the #1 lot. Caligula among the others - common to all them was that they would approve everything each other did and they would do the same if given a chance. Sum of evils is a constant.
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Insanity is a reason for evil amongst others..being insane does not disqualify Caligula from being evil. it was perhaps a reason for it. the movie IS not far from the truth. Ancient Rome was as debauched and degraded and Caligula was the epitome of it. But the most evil man in history?? that is a ridiculous label in itself. For starters that assumes we know everything about every person that ever lived. Bollocks. Amongst known people, Hitler & Stalin were evil to a degree yes but nothing next to Caligula. Heck he killed people loyal to him without rhyme or reason. Then there are others, Henry 8th, Mary 1 his daughter, the Saxon king who overran Britain in the 4th century AD, I always forget his name. Pol Pot of Khmer Rouge, Idi Amin,Genghiz Khan, Nero, etc there r so many worthy contenders
shareHe is certainly one of the Most Evil but like you said, their are several people who are worse then him. Probably people running around today who are a lot worse then him.
shareYes maybe worse in scope but I doubt worse in scale
sharePol Pot was pretty much bad news too...
shareI am not so much into the actual views of Caligula, who say that Caligula was just treated unfair by roman scholars and a lot of the bad things about him were just made up. He was clearly not capable to be an emperor, lost all the renown of his family, which his predecessors built up (yes, also Tiberius), and he clearly wrecked the state finances by his life style. It is no coincidence, that he was killed after four years.
But to be an emperor in this times was a brutal and deadly job - along with him, about 55 % of all emperors were murdered. And so, he may not be the most depraved and evil. I think, its more like that he could not fulfil his duties at all and behaved absurd, that made him a bad name in the empire. For example, Constantine the Great, who was a powerful man and had a lot of impact on the empire, gaining fame by accepting christianity in Rome, was personally one of the coldest and most ruthless caesars, leaving behind a trail of blood, not only murdering rivals, but also many family members and one of his sons.
he probably wasn't much worse than scores of unknown European kings, certainly not as evil as Adolf Hitler et al....
shareMost evil men are mohamod and jebus. not even Atilla caused so much death and suffering, and they are still piling up the bodies.
Pure demonic entities those two.
The devils greatest achievement is you not knowing hes there. And what better place to hide then in "good"?
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The senate and the people before and around him made him that way. So him being the most evil man? He was actually forced into that position. Just like the caesar before him once said, as in a line, he doesn't want to be the emperor, he just wants to live his tiny life. But he has to be the emperor, because if he doesn't, he'll be killed.
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I shall say King Leopold II is certainly more evil than Caligula. That *beep* killed half the population of Congo, allowed slavery to thrive in another section of Congo and cut the the limbs off of all the other people who were enslaved by him who didn't "work hard enough" as well as forced them to rape their mothers and sisters. All under the guise of humanitarian purposes. All the limb cutting practices that we associate with Africans today were started by him in order to not "waste" bullets. That's a special kind of evil.
shareNo, the most evil man in history is a toss-up between Jesus, Muhammad, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, or maybe Trotsky.
Caligula doesn't even break the top ten. At best, he's in the top twenty or twenty-five. He's not even the most evil Roman emperor. That would be Theodosius, with Constantine I in a close second.
With guys like Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Constantine I, Augustine of Hippo, Saladin, Hitler, Himmler, Michael Collins, Penny Rimbaud, John Calvin, Marx, Engels, Christopher Hitchens, Huey P. Newton, Herbert W. Armstrong, Cotton Mather, Tecumseh, Whitey Bulger, Eric Harris, and so many others in the historical record, Gaius Caligula has stiff competition for "Most Evil"
Curious, why do you consider John Calvin one of the most evil people in history?
shareThe man was a literal puritan and a tyrant who ruled Geneva with an iron fist
shareCan you give any specific examples of what made him one of the most "evil" men in history?
I mean calling someone a tyrant is relatively meaningless, especially in this day and age.
His entire theology, which informed the core ethos of Oliver Cromwell and Puritans on both sides of the Atlantic, the Second Era KKK, and the worst excesses of the Satanic Panic.
Put it this way, traditionalist Calvinism preaches moral totalitarianism and believes that the majority of people are totally depraved and incapable of redemption and that they must be brutally repressed and oppressed so that a select few elect can achieve salvation while the majority burns in eternal torment.
"believes that the majority of people are totally depraved and incapable of redemption and that they must be brutally repressed and oppressed so that a select few elect can achieve salvation"
Not quite. Total depravity means that man cannot redeem himself because he is too depraved because of original sin to "earn" or "choose" his salvation. He is capable of redemption (only through God) so he needs to be regenerated by God before he is redeemed by God.
I am pretty sure that Calvinism does not advocate the oppression of the reprobate (unelect). The salvation of the elect has nothing to do with what happens to the reprobate, so I am not sure where this idea came from. Calvinists believe in salvation by Grace through faith.