Thanks to the efforts of Koni, the jury released the terrorist who wounded the mayor Trepov, right from the courthouse. Unfathomable! In our time, it is difficult to imagine that a person who made an attempt on the life of a major political figure will not suffer any punishment.

Judicial stage

Fate predicted him a theatrical stage or a writer's fate. Anatoly Koni's father was a famous vaudevillian and theater critic, and his mother played on stage. Anatoly's godfather was the famous novelist Ivan Lazhechnikov.
However, the young man chose a different path. The scene for him was the place of judgment. He had to participate in the dramas, tragedies and comedies of life. He performed all the old roles: he was a villain - a prosecutor in the eyes of the accused; a noble father, leading the jury and protecting them from mistakes; reasoner, since as chief prosecutor he had to explain the law to the senators.

Koni went on the legal path by accident. He entered St. Petersburg University ahead of schedule at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, after the sixth grade of the gymnasium. Moreover, he adequately answered questions outside the program. As a result, the famous Professor Somov was so delighted that he lifted Koni into the air, exclaiming: "I'll blow you down!" But, seeing the offended face of the future student, he left him alone.

In December 1861, St. Petersburg University was closed for an indefinite period due to student unrest. A chance meeting with educated lawyers Viktor Fuks and Piotr Kapnist sealed Koni's fate. And he graduated from the law faculty of Moscow University. Career was going well. Having worked for several years in the judicial chambers, and later as the prosecutor of the district court in St. Petersburg, Koni gained fame as a good orator and a talented judicial figure.

On January 24, 1878, Koni assumed the post of chairman of the St. Petersburg District Court. On the same day, Vera Zasulich wounded Mayor Trepov with a pistol shot. Just two months later, the trial of the terrorist took place. For the first time, such a high-profile case was entrusted to the jury that appeared in 1864. The tsar was waiting for an accusatory decision in the Winter Palace, while the liberal intelligentsia craved justification. A crowd of sympathizers huddled outside the courthouse, waiting for the jury's verdict. Koni had to preside over the trial in this case. In his summary, he did not push the jurors in one direction or another, but only illuminated before them the logical path that they must go through. His resume was so brilliant that in the case of Vera Zasulich, the jurors delivered a verdict of not guilty. However, it cost him a forced break in his beloved work in the criminal court, he was transferred to the civil department of the judicial chamber.

However, the authorities appreciated Anatoly Fedorovich. In 1885, he was appointed Chief Prosecutor of the Criminal Cassation Department of the Senate. There is even an epigram about this:

To the Senate of the horse
Caligula brought,
It stands, removed
both in velvet and gold.
But I'll say
we have the same arbitrariness:
I read in the newspapers
that Koni is in the Senate.
To which Kony replied with his epigram:
I don't like such ironies
How unreasonably evil people are!
After all, progress
what is Koni now,
Where before there were only donkeys.

Five years later, Koni left judicial activity and, by decree of the emperor, was transferred to the general meeting of the First Department of the Senate as a senator present.

In July 1906, the head of the Cabinet of Ministers, Pyotr Stolypin, invited Koni to join the government as Minister of Justice. For three days Anatoly Fedorovich was persuaded to take this post, but he, citing ill health, categorically refused. In 1907, he became a member of the State Council, out of habit combining work for the benefit of the state with teaching and writing. He suggested to Leo Tolstoy the plots for "Resurrection" and "The Living Corpse", borrowed from judicial practice.

Inexhaustible altruist

After the October Revolution, which deprived him of all privileges, Koni did not leave his homeland. Walking the streets, he took crutches with him (he suffered a leg injury in a train crash on the Sestroretsk road in 1890) and often sat down to rest, then compassionate women tried to give him alms.

The brilliant orator had one weakness: he stubbornly defended those norms of Russian speech that existed during his youth. For example, the word "mandatory" had, in his opinion, one and only meaning - "amiable". Towards the end of his life, "definitely" began to mean "definitely", which infuriated Koni.

Imagine, - he said, excitedly, - today I am walking along Spasskaya and I hear: "He will definitely fill your face!" How do you like it? One person informs another that someone will kindly beat him!

Removed from the judicial field, Koni took up teaching: he began lecturing at Petrograd University. He gave several thousand public lectures at various educational institutions. And this despite his age and state of health.

The students zealously followed where and when Anatoly Fedorovich's lecture was supposed to take place, trying not to miss a single one of them. The little old man with difficulty got to his place on crutches, sank into a chair, wiped his sweaty, tired face, sat down more comfortably and gradually changed. The face took on a calm expression, the eyes became mischievously young, the senile voice, which was very weak at first, gradually became confident, and the students forgot that the old man was in front of them. “The auditorium was always overcrowded,” Andreeva, a student of the Leningrad University of the 20s, recalled. “Sometimes there was not enough space on the benches or on chairs, and the listeners were located right on the floor, trying to take a seat closer to Anatoly Fedorovich. Looking at him and listening to his figurative speech, often interspersed with jokes, a sharp word, an image of what is told in faces (he was an excellent actor), we were ready to listen to the speaker indefinitely.

Anatoly Fedorovich in the classroom recreated the jury, as it should have existed according to the plan of the judicial reform of 1864. In order for the listeners to understand everything properly, in order to have the clearest idea of ​​the role of the participants in the process, real "trials" were arranged. At Koni's lectures, one could see deep, gray-haired elders, such as Vasily Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko, and other representatives of literary circles, for whom it was a great pleasure to listen to Anatoly Fedorovich. Koni recalled some case from his practice and offered to conduct its trial.

The inexhaustible altruist hoped to the last that a legal society would be reborn in the new state. 82-year-old Koni claimed: “I lived my life in such a way that I have nothing to blush for. I loved my people, my country, served them as best I could and could. I am not afraid of death. I fought a lot for my people, for what he believed in." In the spring of 1927, while lecturing in a cold, unheated auditorium, a well-known judicial figure, a former senator and member of the State Council, a brilliant speaker and writer, an honorary academician Kony caught a cold and fell ill with pneumonia. They couldn't cure him. September 17, 1927 Anatoly Fedorovich died. Hundreds of wreaths lay at the foot of the grave at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In the mid-30s of the last century, the remains were transferred to the Literary bridges of the Volkov cemetery.

The Case of the Imperial Train Wreck

Anatoly Koni was assigned to investigate the case of the collapse of the imperial train on October 17, 1888. Then the imperial family miraculously managed to avoid death, they said that the strongman Alexander III supported the collapsed roof of the car until his relatives got out, for which he paid with his health. What versions did not come up, for example, a terrorist boy, under the guise of an ice cream dealer, brought a bomb onto a train. However, Koni denied all speculation. Principal criminologist came to the conclusion about the "criminal non-fulfillment by all of their duty." Koni swung at high officials: he considered it necessary to prosecute members of the board of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway for theft, as well as for bringing the road to a dangerous state.

The whole point was that the imperial retinue was numerous, all important persons wanted to travel in comfort and demanded a separate compartment, or even a carriage. As a result, the royal train became longer and longer. It weighed up to 30,000 pounds, stretched 302 meters and more than doubled the length and weight of an ordinary passenger train, approaching the weight of a freight train of 28 loaded wagons. According to experts, the crash occurred precisely because the swaying engine tore the tracks and derailed.

It must be said that the imperial train traveled in this form for ten years. The railway workers who were related to him, and the Minister of Railways himself, knew that this was technically unacceptable and dangerous, but did not consider it possible to interfere in the important layouts of the court department. The confusion, in essence, was due to the fault of the Minister of Railways, Admiral Konstantin Posyet. In addition, his car was with faulty brakes!

Posyet, a month after the crash, was removed from his ministerial post, but appointed to the State Council with a decent pension. They pitied him. Everyone agreed that it would be inhumane to publicly declare him guilty. Alexander III, by his own will, completely stopped the case of the crash.

The Case of Abbess Mitrofania
From the memoirs of Anatoly Koni

At the end of January or at the very beginning of February 1873, the St. Petersburg merchant Lebedev personally brought me, as the prosecutor of the St. Petersburg district court, a complaint against the abbess of the Holy Intercession Monastery in Serpukhov, Mitrofaniya, who was very famous in St. Petersburg and Moscow, accusing her of forging bills on his behalf in the amount of 22 000 rubles.

When the hot summer of 1873 set in, Mitrofania began to feel very ill in a stuffy hotel in one of the busiest and noisiest places in St. Petersburg. A repetition of her interrogation was not foreseen very soon, and I, in agreement with the investigator, decided to grant her request and let her go on a pilgrimage to Tikhvin, and then, if time and the course of the investigation allowed, then to Valaam. The trip to Tikhvin greatly strengthened her and evoked in her letter to me an expression of genuine gratitude for "consolation in a bitter situation" ... In her posthumous notes, published in Russkaya Starina in 1902, she warmly recalls our attitude to and naively notes that she prayed in Tikhvin, among other things, for the servant of God Anatoly ... At the end of January or at the very beginning of February 1873, the St. Petersburg merchant Lebedev personally brought me, as the prosecutor of the St. Moscow, Abbess of the Vladychne-Pokrovsky Monastery in Serpukhov, Mitrofaniya, accusing her of forging bills on his behalf in the amount of 22,000 rubles.

It would seem that the daughter of the governor of the Caucasus, the maid of honor of the highest court, Baroness Praskovya Grigoryevna Rosen, in the monasticism Mitrofania, standing at the head of various spiritual and charitable institutions, having connections at the very heights of Russian society, living during her private visits to St. Petersburg in the Nikolaevsky Palace and appearing on the streets in a carriage with a red court footman, apparently, she could stand beyond suspicion of committing forgery of bills. But the arguments of the merchant Lebedev were so convincing that I immediately made a proposal to the forensic investigator Rusinov to start an investigation. The examination carried out by him clearly proved the criminal origin of the bills, and, by agreement with me, he decided to bring Abbess Mitrofania as an accused and write her out for interrogations in Petersburg ...

Summoned from Moscow, Mitrofania stayed at the Moskva Hotel on the corner of Nevsky and Vladimirskaya... Mitrofania's appearance was, so to speak, completely ordinary. Neither her tall and heavy figure, nor the large features of her plump cheeks, framed by a monastic attire, represented anything that attracted attention; but in her bulging gray-blue eyes, under her knitted brows, a great intelligence and determination shone...

The forgery of Lebedev's bills was, in fact, a rather ordinary crime in terms of the situation and according to the testimonies of various obscure personalities put forward by Mitrofania in his defense, and a triple examination established with certainty not only that the text of the bills was written by her, but also that Lebedev's signature on bills and bills of exchange forged, and rather clumsily, by Mitrofania herself, who, at the same time, was unable to hide some characteristics your handwriting. But the personality of Abbess Mitrofania was quite extraordinary. She was a woman of vast mind, purely masculine and businesslike, in many respects contrary to the traditional and routine views that prevailed in the environment in the narrow framework of which she had to rotate ...

Her very crimes - the fraudulent appropriation of Medyntseva's money and belongings, the forgery of the will of the wealthy eunuch Solodovnikov and Lebedev's bills, despite all the reprehensibleness of her course of action, did not, however, contain elements of personal self-interest, but were the result of a passionate and unscrupulous desire to support her. , to strengthen and expand the working religious community created by her and prevent her from turning into an idle and parasitic monastery. Workshops - handicraft and art, breeding of silkworms, an orphanage, a school and a hospital for visitors, arranged by the abbess of the Serpukhov Vladychno-Pokrovskaya community, were at that time a welcome innovation in the field of callous and aimless asceticism of "Christ's brides". But all this was carried out on a too grand scale and required huge funds.

Not embarrassed in the ways of acquiring these funds, Abbess Mitrofania saw their sources in a wide variety of enterprises: in the construction of "hydraulic lime" and soap factories on the lands of the monastery, in soliciting for a railway concession for a branch from the Kursk road to the monastery, in the efforts to open a the monastery of the relics of the new saint Varlaam, etc. When nothing came of all this, Mitrofania turned to personal charity. Her connections in St. Petersburg, her closeness to the higher spheres, and the opportunity to generously distribute awards to philanthropists helped her to cause an abundant influx of donations from wealthy ambitious people ... When the sources that fed such charity were exhausted, the influx of donations began to weaken rapidly. With the impoverishment of funds, institutions dear to Mitrofania, those of her offspring, thanks to which the Serpukhov monastery was an active and vital cell in the cycle of spiritual and economic life of the surrounding population, had to collapse. With the decline of the monastery, of course, the role of the unusual and highly influential abbess also faded. The proud and creative soul of Mitrofania could not reconcile with all this, and the latter went to crime...

Subject to detention by order of the Moscow investigator, Mitrofania was transported to Moscow, where, according to her probably exaggerated statement at the trial, neither her rank, nor sex, nor age was shown respect and legal indulgence ... While still in Petersburg, abandoned by everyone who was not personally interested in justifying her as a rescue from her own responsibility, she vaguely foresaw both the new accusations that threatened her in a many-day trial, and the refusal the best forces from her defense, and the cruel curiosity of the public, and harassment from the petty press, and insidious questions at the trial, aimed at making her let it out and give weapons against herself ...

All this, taken together, in connection with the debilitating swelling of the legs, was reflected in the moral state of Mitrofania during her stay in St. Petersburg and prompted the investigator Rusinov - a man who knew how to combine kindness of heart with energetic activity - to avoid, if possible, summoning the accused to the chambers of the judicial investigators of St. Petersburg , where her appearance, of course, would have aroused the intensified and greedy attention of the crowd crowding in the vast reception room ...

When the hot summer of 1873 set in, Mitrofania began to feel very ill in a stuffy hotel in one of the busiest and noisiest places in St. Petersburg. A repetition of her interrogation was not foreseen very soon, and I, in agreement with the investigator, decided to grant her request and let her go on a pilgrimage to Tikhvin, and then, if time and the course of the investigation allowed, then to Valaam. The trip to Tikhvin greatly strengthened her and evoked in her letter to me an expression of genuine gratitude for "consolation in a bitter situation" ... In her posthumous notes, published in Russkaya Starina in 1902, she warmly recalls our attitude to her and naively notes that she prayed in Tikhvin, by the way, for the servant of God Anatoly ...

http://www.rgz.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8038&Itemid=72

INCITAT - one of the horses, which, thanks to its owner, has become world famous; Spanish horse of the Roman emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula. It was a light gray Spanish horse named Porcellius, which means "pig". The stallion easily won races for the "greens", of which the emperor was a fan. Handsome, stately, fast, very soon he was renamed by Caligula into Incitatus (lat. Incitatus fleet-footed).

Incitatus was able to win the love of one of the bloodiest rulers of Rome. A greedy, vicious, cruel man, enjoying bloody reprisals and considering himself a god, showered him with honors and gifts. Confirmation of this can be found in the books of his contemporaries and historians, for example, "The Life of 12 Caesars" by Suetonius.


Imperial benefits for a pet:

1. The stable for him was made of marble, the manger was made of ivory, and the drinker was made of gold. The horse was dressed in purple bedspreads trimmed with pearls.
2. Later, Incitat had his own palace with servants.
3. The horse was officially married to the mare Penelope.
4. For disturbing the rest of the horse, an execution was supposed.
5. At the festivities, the emperor's slaves and even his wife had to dance before the Incetate, and the subjects raised goblets to his health.
6. The horse was allowed to be present in the emperor's refectory, where he was served the most delicious dishes and served intoxicating drinks.

These whims of Caligula surprised people, but the emperor did not stop there:

1. He first made the horse a citizen of Rome, then introduced it to the Senate. According to the consul and historian Dion Cassius, if Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus had not been killed, then after a while the horse could become a consul. Suetonius also mentions this.
2. After proclaiming himself a god, the emperor appointed Incetates, all the former consuls and several honorary citizens as his priests. For this position, people had to pay a very large sum (8 million sesterces). In order for the horse to hand over money to the treasury on an equal basis with others, all horses were taxed with tribute, which was to be collected annually. In case of non-payment by the owner of the money, the animal was sent to the knacker.
3. In the end, the emperor's favorite horse was declared the embodiment of all gods. Now people were obliged to worship him, tirelessly glorify and praise him. For this, even the words were entered into the oath: "for the sake of the well-being and good luck of Incitat."

Life after the death of the owner

Having lost all privileges and gifts after the death of Caligula, Inciatus lived in an ordinary stable, but continued to be called a senator, since according to Roman laws, members of the Senate could not be excluded until the end of the term for which they were elected or appointed. In addition, he was not separated from Penelope, considering it cruel and unfair to the animal.

Emperor Claudius, in order to exclude Incitatus from the senators, will cut his payments to the daily ration of a cavalry horse, dismiss the grooms. Consequently, he will not be able to pass the financial qualification for re-election. Having dealt with this difficult situation, the new emperor will ironically say that he was the only senator who did not give stupid advice, did not kill anyone, and did not unleash a single war.

The attitude of historians towards the emperor in different eras

Caligula was considered crazy for inhuman cruelty, a vicious relationship with his sister, excessive permissiveness, but such an attitude towards the horse only strengthened the opinion of contemporaries and later historians who described the period of his reign, in the correctness of such an opinion. At present, most scholars support the opinion of this emperor as a mentally abnormal person, but there is another attitude to this issue.

Anthony Barret, an English historian, believes that Caligula ridiculed senators and consuls with the help of a horse, demonstrated his power, but was not crazy.

The modern meaning of the word "incitat"

The very word "incitat" from its own name has become a household word. Now it is used in the sense of “an example of tyranny, arbitrariness, which is carried out, despite the complete absurdity of orders; appointing a completely unsuitable person to the position.

Usage in literature

The image of Caligula's beloved horse was used in Russian poetry. One of the first to address him was G. R. Derzhavin in the ode “Nobleman”, the poem of Vladimir Vysotsky “We are ancient, tested horses ...”, which was conceived as a poem about horses, is also very famous.

On March 18, 37 AD, the citizens of the Roman Empire met with the most sincere rejoicing and praise of the gods: contemporaries of the events wrote that more than 160 thousand animals were sacrificed in gratitude. This is how 1980 years ago they met the news that the emperor of Rome was Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. We know him better by his nickname: Caligula.

In the movie of the same name Tinto Brassa lovingly and competently collected all the gossip about Caligula that ever circulated. Endemic sodomy, wild debauchery and mass rape, incest, monstrous executions and torture, psychopathy, sadism, dismemberment - this is an approximate, but far from complete, series of associations that arise, one has only to pronounce this name. School knowledge looms on the periphery: something about a horse that Caligula made a senator. In a word, a madman blinded by power.

The most interesting thing is that he was not insane. Oddly enough, Caligula ruled the empire quite reasonably. But he accompanied almost all his steps in this field with a hurricane buffoonery with injuries and corpses. If the statement that trolling is “a form of social provocation and bullying, inciting quarrels and hatred” is true, then Caligula deserves the title of a reference troll.

Prostitution small text

As soon as he became emperor, Caligula abolished the famous law "on lese majesty." This law, which has been in force for half a century, has cost the lives of very, very many. If our hero had become emperor just four years earlier, all world history could have gone differently. Religious history, yes. Because among the others convicted of "insulting the majesty of the Roman Caesar" was a preacher from the distant Roman province of Judea. His name was Jesus, and he is known to have been crucified at the very end of March 33 AD. Under Caligula, this execution simply could not have taken place.

Marble bust of Caligula. I century. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

This is about great things. In small matters, Caligula showed no less ingenuity. One case, described by the Roman historian Suetonius, should elevate Caligula to the rank of an honorary historical patron of a number of crooks. For example, bankers, housing and communal services officials, manufacturers of low-quality products and organizers of "win-win" lotteries.

Knowing about the passion of the Romans for legality and law, Caligula introduces a curious practice: he announces laws on the introduction of new taxes, for example, on prostitution, through heralds. People remember badly, get confused, do not pay on time, incur fines. What happens next? And this is what: “Finally, at the request of the people, Caligula publicly exposed the text of the law. However, it was written in the smallest type and hung out in a hard-to-reach place: specifically so that it could not be copied. It is very similar to the situation with the current deceived investors.

Benefits of Democracy

Describing the antics of Caligula, many are confused. For example, they see trolling in the most ordinary things like the lifetime deification of the emperor's personality. Referring to the evidence of the same Suetonius: “He wished to be the expression of all the gods and began to appear to the people only in the attire of deities and with their attributes: many times he appeared with a gilded beard, holding in his hand either the lightning of Jupiter, or the trident of Neptune, or a wand , or - even in the vestments of Venus. He wore a triumphal robe all the time, and sometimes put on a shell Alexander the Great taken from his tomb."

This is not trolling, this is show-off. The real trolling was hidden in what seemed to contemporaries a boon.

So, he, “the all-powerful emperor, the embodiment of the living god,” suddenly returns democracy to the people of Rome. Not all, partially. Elections to magistrates. What for?

Everything is very simple. The supreme power - according to the ideas of the Romans - had to regularly provide mass holidays with the distribution of money and bread. In principle, Caligula was not opposed, but he was stingy with money. In addition, it was necessary to equip the empire, prepare an invasion of Britain, pay the troops ...

And Caligula returns the election. Now candidates fighting for high office must win the people over to their side. But what? Yes, all the same: festivities with the distribution of money and bread. But already at their own expense, and not at the expense of the treasury. A brilliant solution, not at all like "madness".

Eustache Lesueur. "Caligula places the ashes of his mother and brother in the tomb of his ancestors." 1647. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

horse in coat

The story of the introduction of the horse to the Senate is from the same series. The fact is that Roman citizenship, once sacred, by the time of Caligula had already become a subject of bargaining. Many - including the emperor - did not like this. But the Senate paid almost no attention to this.

The move was great. By law, only a Roman citizen could become a member of the Senate. And Caligula scrupulously fulfills all the requirements. He gives the horse the rights of citizenship. Puts him on payroll. Pretty quickly, the horse becomes a wealthy citizen and passes the property qualification required for a senator. Actually, that's it: accept a new member of the Senate named Incitat, that is, "fleet-footed".

Aerobatics mockery of the formal execution of the law. If the goal was to show the helplessness and imperfection of the bureaucratic machine, then this was achieved with brilliance. Because even after the death of the emperor, the horse could not be removed from the Senate. There was no formal evidence for this: the horse did not do anything bad, he did not give stupid or harmful advice, he was not an enemy of the people.

Oh, the magical power of art! It was worth writing about the politically savvy and how the topic went to the people - Galkovsky wrote how the British saved the Romanov dog, someone from the nationalist party also began to write about animals (sorry I lost the link!). V general theme animals in politics has taken its rightful place in pop culture - one can hope for long-term consequences.

On the other hand, a historic event took place here - the user's foot first stepped into the bosom of the Senate of the Russian Federation.

In connection with such a remarkable event, it is impossible not to recall the little animal with which, in conscience, it was worth starting the topic of political animals - the favorite horse of the Roman emperor Caligula, named Incitat, who once became a Roman senator.

Usually Incitata is served as a symbol of the sovereignty of the ruler; crazy orders, which, nevertheless, are carried out; appointing a person who is not at all suitable for her in all respects. And Caligula is accordingly presented as an idiot who introduced a horse into the Senate simply because of his own madness.

Perhaps I will surprise you, but any politician is an imbecile psycho. It is enough to look at the first newspaper that comes across, at a caricature, or just go through LiveJournal. There are also certain sites like compromising.ru or lookmor, where there is not a single positive character at all. The situation is worse only when a politician is overthrown and his opponents take his place, they immediately begin a real literary process of black PR. The overthrown ruler quickly turns into a tyrant, a stinker and, in general, a fiend from which he smelled of sulfur. The new authorities are writing dozens and hundreds of books and monographs, which describe in detail all the atrocities and indecencies of the "old regime". After all, there is no loser, he cannot answer anything, so you can lie without looking back - "the absent is always wrong." Therefore, in any political issue, look not at what they write, but who said it and when - then you can already look at the facts.

The degree of grotesque is usually directly proportional to the sanity and intelligence of the object being served. Look at Louis the Sun King, Hitler or Nicholas II - in popular culture, this is the personification of evil, madness and baseness. Although if you look at their biography, they are almost holy people.

And vice versa, insignificance and traitors, tantamount to their meanness and insignificance, appear on paper as knights without reproach and flaw. It is difficult to find anything bad about Stalin, Putin or Pol Pot, because how can a weak-willed puppet be bad? This is impossible by definition.

Therefore, such calls about Nicholas the bloody, "after us even a flood" and "no bread - eat cakes" usually collapse under the weight of their own evidence. It seems that they write about some psycho Caligula, films are made about a psychopath, but at the same time they say that he ruled the entire Roman Empire and successfully fought conspiracies, waged victorious wars, carried out large-scale reforms and, in general, led a subtle political game in intriguing Rome. What kind of psychopath is he, if he is capable of sophisticated strategic planning?

Accordingly, his "insane" mockery of the Senate was exemplary. A person inexperienced in politics may think that compromising evidence or mockery should be carried out as strong and quick blow- to tell the truth so that it would not be excused. But in practice, the "non-publication" of compromising evidence, or slow, gradual, millimeter by millimeter mockery, when compromising evidence is published word by word, line by paragraph, and the pleasure is stretched as long as possible, is much more effective. Such a slow guillotine is much more sensitive to the enemy. As the threat alone is more terrible than the action.

"Caligula's Horse", painting by Salvador Dali.

Served Caligula wretched senators in the first category. To begin with, I’ll say that the horse’s name was “Porcellius” (Piglet), but Caligula decided that it wasn’t beautiful enough and therefore the horse was visited by unprecedented luck - he began to constantly win at the races, for which he was favored by the name Incitat (swift-footed, greyhound). He competed in races for the "green" party (for which the emperor was rooting). The luck was so great that on the eve of the races it was forbidden to make noise near the stall of Incitatus on pain of death, and executions took place on this occasion.

By the way, usually the historians of Rome pay very little attention to the Roman circuses, more precisely they pay but indirectly. They say there were circuses, but only as entertainment for the mob, allowing you to forget about politics within the framework of the national project "Bread and Circuses". But as you can easily see, this does not happen even in modern giant states with the religion of football, and even in the city-polises of antiquity, where everyone knew each other, saw everything through and it was regulated who should wear what length of tunic ... Circus in Rome , unlike the Senate played a paramount role. There was no bicameral parliament with a fictitious lower chamber, and could not be in the policy, its functions were performed by His Majesty the Circus. Therefore, all passions were seething in the stadiums - the whole society was divided into several " football teams"and it was around them that the whole cultural and political life. The main sport was not football as it is now, but rather chariot races, more similar in format to the popular vote.

The supply of horses and drivers originally came from the state and was farmed out by the magistrates. The further, the larger the surcharges of the magistrates became, while the supply business was organized into two large enterprises, perhaps subsidized by the government. These enterprises maintained stables, horses, driver staff, schools for drivers, horse riding, etc. The technical name of these enterprises was factio; the chief manager was called dommus factionis. The factiones differed from each other in colors.

Two companies of the republican time dressed their riders one in white, the other in red, and therefore bore the name: one - russata, the other - albata. In the imperial time, probably, these two were joined by blue and green (lat. factiones veneta and prasina); temporarily under Domitian, there were also gold and purple ones (Latin purpureus pannus and auratus pannus). Of these parties, only the blue and green ones played a prominent role in imperial times; all the interest of the visitors of the Circus was concentrated around them. Interest in horses, in drivers, the excitement of stakes - all this, inflated by the participation of the upper strata of society up to the emperor, led to the fact that the interests of the Circus were the most pressing and vital interests of Rome.

Interest was concentrated on the permanent bearers of this or that advantage - companies, suppliers of horses and drivers - and inflated by the companies themselves; the spectator got used to assimilate the interests of the company, and thus, a passionate participation in the fate of not the horse or the driver, but the party, turned out. Passion reached to fights and battles; influential people of one party tried to damage the other; the emperors themselves spent a lot of time in the stables of their favorite party and supported it with the power of their power to the detriment of the other. With the decline of culture, passion reaches its climax at the Hippodrome of Constantinople. The addiction to the parties supported the interest in the carriers of the glory of the party - the charioteers and horses, especially the charioteers, since victory depended on their dexterity of everything.

Horses were also of great interest. Everyone knew the famous left-wingers (lat. funales), who won hundreds of times. Spain, Africa, Italy, Greece, Cappadocia competed with the height of blood and racing qualities of their horse factories. The consumption and demand for horses was enormous; horse factories obviously gave good incomes to large breeders. Particularly large enterprises of this kind have created the wonderful pastures of Africa; many mosaics have been preserved that testify to the love for horses, interest in them and the prevalence of horse breeding in this Roman province. Each horse had its own name and its own genealogy; hundreds of names have been handed down to us by various monuments, from mosaics to lead tessers. The winning horses celebrated real triumphs on their way to their stables.

These were the elements that made up circus life. Rome and the provinces lived this life with equal passion. Antioch or Lyon were not inferior in this respect to Carthage and Corinth. They might not know in Rome how the war with the Germans or the Parthians ended, but everyone knew who won on the last circus day - blue or green.

You must admit that modern historical science is simply committing a crime against history, considering the Roman circus an uninteresting entertainment element. I would even say that this is a bigger mistake than not paying attention to the Caribbean Sea of ​​pirate times, where the first stages of the history of ancient civilization were repeated in detail in the Middle Ages.

It is no coincidence that Incitat first became a key figure in the Circus Arena, and then began to walk a horse in the administrative field, systematically moving to the "senatorial stall" - he became a citizen of Rome and became rich to the limit necessary for the property qualification to enter the senate:

Like Tiberius, who had a favorite dragon, Caligula got himself a favorite horse. Previously, his name was Porcellus (which means "Piglet"), but Caligula decided that this name was not beautiful enough, and renamed the horse Incitata - "Swift-footed". Incitatus always came first on the run, and Caligula adored him so much that he first made him a citizen of Rome, then a senator, and finally put him on the list of candidates for the post of consul. Incitat got his own house and servants, he had a marble bedroom, where there was a large straw mattress that was changed every day, there was an ivory feeder and a golden bucket for drinking, and paintings by famous artists hung on the walls. Whenever Incitat won a race, he was invited to dinner with us, but he preferred a bowl of barley beer to fish and meat, which Caligula always regaled him with. We had to drink twenty times to his health.

If it seemed to you that this was the pinnacle of mockery of the sentors (mentally imagine the Senate of the Russian Federation), then prepare popcorn - we are talking about antiquity, where people entered into subtleties, and the golden palace was only the beginning.

After Caligula declared himself a god, he needed priests. He was the high priest for himself, and the subordinate priests were Claudius, Caesonia, Vitellius, Ganymede, 14 ex-consuls and, of course, Incitatus. For the post, each was required to pay 8,000,000 sesterces. In order for the horse to raise the necessary funds, on his behalf all the horses of Italy were subject to an annual tribute.

Finally, he declared his horse "the embodiment of all the gods" and ordered him to be revered. To the usual form of the state oath was added "for the well-being and good luck of Incitat."

Although, by the way, the Senate did not remain in debt, soon after the election of Incitatus as a senator, the conspirators kill Caligula, but they cannot touch the horse, because. the expulsion of a member of the Senate is a double-edged sword and a dangerous precedent.

After the assassination of the emperor, in defense of Incitatus, it was said that, unlike other senators, he did not kill anyone and did not give the emperor a single bad advice. Senators also faced a problem: according to Roman law, before the end of the term, no one from the Senate, even a horse, could be expelled. But a way out was found.

Emperor Claudius recalls the measures that he took after the death of Caligula and the seizure of power:
"" Another leading senator, demoted by me, was the horse of Caligula Incitat, who in three years was to become consul. I have written to the Senate that I have no pretensions to this senator's personal morality or his ability to carry out the tasks hitherto assigned to him, but he no longer has the necessary financial qualifications. I reduced the allowance given to him by Caligula to the daily ration of a cavalry horse, dismissed his grooms and placed him in an ordinary stable, where the manger was made of wood, not ivory, and the walls were whitewashed, not decorated with frescoes. However, I did not separate him from his wife, the mare Penelope, that would be unfair."

It is worth mentioning that the name Caligula itself is a pseudonym. As a child, Guy constantly lived with his parents in military camps. He walked in soldier's clothes, wore a soldier's pseudonym. And in the rest of his life, the emperor cared for the people, was a great ascetic and a favorite of the soldiers:

He owes his nickname "Caligula" ("Boot") to a camp joke, because he grew up among the soldiers, in the clothes of an ordinary soldier. And what affection and love of the troops such an upbringing earned him was best seen when, by his very appearance, he undoubtedly calmed the soldiers, who were indignant after the death of Augustus and were already ready for any kind of madness.

His other names look no less cool: Castorum Filius (“Son of the Camp”) and Pater Exercituum (“Father of the Army”). Therefore, I propose to draw some conclusions, and in the era of a hyper-information society, change the polarity of one political term.

Let's see in the legendary Incitat a symbol of skillful mockery of tyrants and ignoramuses who have usurped power. It is he who is needed more than ever by our time and our country.

So Derzhavin played with words,
Embraced by indignation.
And I surrender (guilty!),
That Caligula is famous for that,
What the horse thought, they say
Send to be present in the Senate.
I remember: in my youth I captivated
His irony me;
And my thought painted
Within the walls of the sacred tribunals,
Among the dignitaries, a horse.
Well, was he out of place there?
For me - in the front saddle
Why not be a horse in the Senate,
When to sit would people know
More appropriate in a horse stall?
Well, is the sound of a cheerful neighing
Was more harmful to the empire
And servile silence
And the flattery of breathing speeches?
Well, is the horse a beautiful muzzle
Did not overshadow insignificant faces
And did not shame with a proud posture
People who are accustomed to prostrate? ..
I still have the same opinion
Which is hardly where we met
This is for cowards and slaves
Great contempt.