for the fee – at substantial interest. Winterling puts this story together with a passage (selectively excerpted, it must be said) from the History of Dio Cassius, describing the enforced lodging of some leading Roman families in the palace, almost as hostages. After a few pages of rather one-sided argument, the brothel disappears altogether from Winterling’s version, and the story becomes another example of Caligula exposing the insincerity of the aristocracy. In this case, he pretends to take their protestations of friendship seriously and so installs their wives and children close to him in the palace. ‘What actually happened’ turns out to be far away from anything recorded in Suetonius, or even in the (non-excerpted) account of Dio. Rather too far for comfort, in my view.

But we aremilitia acting on behalf of a series of unscrupulous political leaders). But he conspicuously failed to set up a reliable system of monarchical succession. That was partly because there was no recognised Roman principle of inheritance (such as primogeniture). And it was partly due to bad luck: Augustus and his long-term wife, Livia, each had children with earlier partners, but none together. The result was that the Roman Empire came into being with a question mark over who was likely to succeed, and over the centuries the succession was repeatedly fought out by murder, or by allegations of murder (witness the suspicious death of Caligula’s father). As Walter Scheidel has recently shown, the Roman Empire has a bloodier record in the transfer of power than any other monarchy