How to Be a Truly Terrible Leader

What Caligula, Julius Caesar, and the bad Roman emperors can teach us

Image: Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images

The Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus believed power doesn’t corrupt so much as it allows one’s worst, preexisting instincts to go unchecked. His epic biography, Lives of the Caesars, showed how power made the emperors of Rome feel free to indulge their own passions and pursuits, no matter how weird or reckless — often, to their own demise.

“The moment Nero became emperor,” Suetonius writes, “he summoned the lyre player Terpnus, considered the best at the time, and for days on end sat by him after dinner as he sang late into the night.” Little by little, Nero began to sing himself — to the horror of his domineering mother, Agrippina, and his tutor, the philosopher Seneca. Similarly, as a schoolboy, Nero had an enthusiasm for racehorses; “in the early days of his rule,” he started sneaking off to the Circus as much as possible. Soon enough, he wished to drive chariots himself.

In Suetonius’s biography of Tiberius, we see the emperor retreat to the beautiful and isolated isle of Capri, where it was easier to ignore public affairs and “give free rein to all of the vices that he had badly concealed for so long.” Suetonius catalogued these faults — including hard drinking and cruelty — in horrifying detail, before revealing that they were a part of Tiberius’ nature all along.

Long before Tiberius became emperor, his army buddies had spotted his love of drink and joked about it. His rhetoric teacher, too, had put his finger on Tiberius’ cold, harsh nature. Even Tiberius himself, Suetonius suggests, peered into his own soul and glimpsed the monster he would later become — or, in truth, already was.

Suetonius’ biography of Julius Caesar tells of the emperor’s famously brutal murder on the Ides of March. But he also tells us about Caesar’s dining habits and sex life, his physical health and appearance. Small observations matter: Caesar was always irritated by his baldness, because he could be mocked for it, and he was thrilled when he won the right to wear a laurel crown on all occasions. Before then, he had been forced to rely on a combover.

Readers have fun with juicy details like these. They make Caesar seem like a real…