Caligula

Act II begins three years after the events of Act I. The setting is now a room in Cherea’s house. A group of patricians are discussing Caligula’s recent actions, which include the confiscation of property, the execution of some of their family members, and the forceful enrollment of their wives into the public brothels. They are about to rush out to assassinate Caligula when Cherea walks in. He talks them down from carrying out their plan immediately, arguing that they’re doing it as vengeance.

Cherea says that Caligula’s philosophy is logical, but intolerable because it drains life of all meaning. He counsels them to wait for the appropriate time, expecting that Caligula’s actions will greatly affect his mental health, when he will be vulnerable. The patricians eventually agree, conceding that if they attack Caligula now, the masses will rise up against them.

While this discussion is going on, Caligula and his entourage arrive at Cherea’s house and enter. Caligula does not address the patricians but looks each one of them over carefully. Then he walks out again. Returning a few moments later, Caligula has them gather around a table to eat. He makes a show of terrible table manners, then proceeds to torment the patricians with cruel conversation. He begins with Lepidus, whose son he had recently executed. When he asks Lepidus whether his son’s death is the reason for his grumpiness, Lepidus replies with politeness motivated by fear: “Quite the contrary” (25). Caligula latches onto this answer and exercises his cruel logic by forcing Lepidus to demonstrate how cheerful he is at hearing the story of his son’s murder. Next, Caligula torments a patrician named Mucius by taking Mucius’s wife into the adjoining room to rape her, while the aggrieved husband and others are forced to listen. Upon his return to the room, Caligula puts out two new decrees: first, that he has scheduled a national famine to begin on the following day, brought on by his order to close the public granaries; and second, that he is instituting a new system to increase revenues at the public brothels by exiling or killing any citizen who doesn’t make use of them often enough. His final act of torment is to force another patrician, Mereia, to drink poison in front of everyone simply because Caligula is suspicious of his motives.

Act II closes with a set of scenes centered on Scipio, whose father was among those executed by Caligula. At first, Scipio is full of hatred and determined to seek revenge, although Caesonia tries to dissuade him. Caligula soothes Scipio by pretending to admire his poetry. Scipio’s anger crumbles, and his tenderness toward Caligula returns: “All I know is that everything I feel or think turns to love!” (36). Caligula cannot keep up the charade; he reveals that his affection was nothing more than a ruse, that he lives for scorn alone.