Orange Ceasar Rises

[Anomalocaris]

But Trump’s appointing Ivanka, Jarod, Carson, Devos and Pompeo to the administration is matched only by Caligula appointing his horse Incitatus to consulship of Rome.

It isn’t matched at all, because it’s almost a certainty that Caligula never did that. It’s important to remember that our two chief sources about Caligula’s reign are Suetonius and Dio who wrote long after the fact and were likely to have relied on material written by people who hated Caligula.

Read less Robert Graves and more Mary Beard.

Boru

Actually, AFAIK, neither Suetonius nor Dio actually said Caligula actually made Incitatus a consul.  Only he planned to, or he he lavished upon the horse as if the horse held the social status commensurate with high office.

But whether he actually did or if he seriously planned to is not the point of comparison.    In Christian culture, especially Protestant evangelical culture, early roman emperors such as Nero and Caligula have become crude symbolic caricatures of cruel and risible excess of incompetent tyranny.   So when it is said that someone is like Nero, it is not to say someone did what Nero most surely also had done,      Instead it sis to say someone is quite as bad as Nero is said to have been as manifested by what Nero is said to have done, such as fiddling while Rome burned.  

So if I say trump rallied while covid-19 spread like Nero fiddled while Rome burned, it does not mean I think Nero really played the fiddle during the great fire.  In fact I know Nero open his palace to the refugees during the fire, institute an efficient relief program after the fire,  and inserted far sighted preventive measure in Rome’s building code by way of leaning the lesson in a manner the likes of which no members of trump administration can pull off.