How bad was Caligula?

[Nathan Ross]

It essentially came down to "what if he was just having a laugh"

That's actually not a bad suggestion!

As for Caligula's experience or otherwise, I suppose (depending on how much we believe the sources) that living on Capri with jolly old great-uncle Tiberius would have given him a keen appreciation for the effects of power, but perhaps not so clear a notion of its mechanisms.

For the senate, this possibly wasn't such a bad thing - the empire seemed to roll along with only the lightest of hands on the tiller at this point, and they may have assumed that a young inexperienced ruler would have been content to enjoy the trappings of power without interfering too much with their own control of government. In which case, the problem was Caligula's rather perverse sense of humour - his unwillingness to treat the senate with respect, and his apparent contempt for everyone around him, including certain rather touchy officers of the Guard...