[s4e1] Working For Caligula Direct

"Gather the spoils!" Caligula screamed over the roar of the surf.

Lucius didn't blink. He dipped his reed into the ink and began to write. Article I: The Consulship of the Equine. [S4E1] Working for Caligula

Lucius’s first day began in the throne room. Caligula wasn't sitting; he was pacing, draped in a silk robe that cost more than Lucius’s entire village. Beside the throne stood a horse——decked out in a collar of sparkling emeralds. "Gather the spoils

The nights were the hardest. Caligula suffered from chronic insomnia and expected his staff to share it. They would wander the labyrinthine corridors of the Palatine Hill, the Emperor talking to the moon as if she were a fickle lover. One moment, he was a philosopher, quoting Homer with tears in his eyes; the next, he was a tyrant, ordering a senator’s execution because the man’s sandals creaked too loudly. Article I: The Consulship of the Equine

He had been assigned to the personal staff of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus—better known to the shivering masses as .

Working for Caligula was a masterclass in the absurd. By noon, Lucius was documenting the emperor’s "victory" over the sea. He stood on the shores of the Mediterranean as legionnaires—the fiercest warriors in the known world—viciously stabbed the waves with their gladii.

The air in the imperial palace was thick with the scent of roasted peacock and the metallic tang of fear. For Lucius, a junior scribe who had spent years mastering the delicate art of bureaucratic indifference, his new assignment felt less like a promotion and more like a death sentence.