Quotes about Caligula

8 Sourced Quotes

People think of him [Caligula] as a revolutionary or a figure of fun or a madman. There are so many aspects to him that we know really little about him, just the information that was given to us through a historian, a Roman historian called Suetonius, and he was from the other side of the family, so Suetonius paints Caligula as a very wicked madman, and that's the only reason that Suetonius considers why he did so many, on the face of it, crazy things. My interpretation of the character is not quite like that.

Malcolm McDowell

Of Margaret Thatcher:

She has the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe.

François Mitterrand

I'm proud of the work I did in Caligula, there's no question about that. But there's all the raunchy stuff, the blatant modern-day porn that Bob introduced into the film after we'd finished shooting. That, to me, was an absolutely outrageous betrayal and quite unprecedented. Frankly, it showed that Bob had no class whatsoever.

Malcolm McDowell

Never were abilities so much below mediocrity so well rewarded; no, not when Caligula's horse was made Consul.

John Randolph of Roanoke

The Roman Empire, like any other empire, was made up purely of bureaucrats, the army, the priests and everything else, and he systematically goes from one institution to the other, trying to provoke them and trying to get an action out of them, and this is why in our view the misconception is that Caligula was completely mad... Anyway, he tries to destroy the institutions. Of course, naturally, he never fails. I mean, he does fail, simply because it's impossible to destroy a burocracy, and I think that is a very relevant point for modern-day audiences.

Malcolm McDowell

Ronald Reagan - "Grandpa Caligula"; "Ronald McReagan" - No More Coccoons

Caligula is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash. If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful: People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this travesty. Disgusted and unspeakably depressed, I walked out of the film after two hours of its 170-minute length. That was on Saturday night, as a line of hundreds of people stretched down Lincoln Ave., waiting to pay $7.50 apiece to become eyewitnesses to shame..."This movie," said the lady in front of me at the drinking fountain, "is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen."

No chord in populism reverberates more strongly than the notion that the robust common sense of an unstained outsider is the best medicine for an ailing polity. Caligula doubtless got big cheers from the plebs when he installed his horse as proconsul.

Alexander Cockburn