Qin Shi Huang was a ruler unlike any the world had ever seen. He rose his armies against every kingdom around him and conquered them all. He became the first emperor of a united China, and he left his mark on the world. He started the Great Wall, built the Terracotta Warriors, and left behind a legacy unlike any before.

No one had ever taken as much from life as Qin Shi Huang —and the thought of losing it terrified him. No matter how many armies he conquered, the specter of death still followed after him. He saw, ever in wait, the inescapability of his own mortality. He refused to accept it. After conquering China, the first Emperor waged a new war against death itself.

10He Had All Scholars Focus on Making an Elixir of Immortality

Qin Shi Huang feared that the people would rebel against him. If they learned about the past, he believed, they might long for a different time—and so he had every book of history, poetry, and philosophy gathered up and burned.

Some believe, though, that this was about more than controlling the people. Qin Shi Huang wanted every wise mind in China working on one thing: the secret of immortality. After all, he could not have strong minds wasting time on poetry when they could be helping him cheat death.

He had several alchemists put to work developing the elixir of immortality, but that, of course, was an impossible task. When two alchemists admitted they could not do it, Qin Shi Huang became furious. Every intellectual, he ordered, must suffer.

For failing to make him immortal, Qin Shi Huang had 460 scholars buried alive. These men, Qin Shi Huang declared, claimed to be sorcerers. If they really had magic powers, then they could bring themselves back to life.

9He Sent 6000 Virgins off to Find the Mountains of Heaven

As his scholars had failed him, Qin Shi Huang traveled to Zhifu Island, where he had heard that a man could find the secret to eternal life. There he met the magician Xu Fu, who assured him that it could be done.

Xu Fu promised him that the elixir of immortality was waiting for him on Penglai Mountain. This was not a real place—it was the mythical home of the Eight Immortals, and a pathway to the gods. Here, Xu Fu told the emperor, lived a 1,000-year-old magician named Anqi Sheng who would share the secret.

Qin Shi Huang was pleased. He gave Xu Fu a fleet of ships and let him sail out in search of the elixir of immortality. And, soon, Xu Fu returned, insisting that he had found it. The island of the immortals, Xu Fu said, was full of grass that would give the emperor eternal life—but the immortals demanded a sacrifice. He needed to bring 6,000 virgins to get the elixir.

Qin Shi Huang believed him, and he gave him what he needed. For the next eight years, Xu Fu did not go anywhere near the emperor—he just sailed around the sea with 6,000 virgins, while Qin Shi Huang patiently awaited an elixir that would never come.

As mystical as the story sounds, there is evidence that suggests it is true. On Zhifu Island, Qin Shi Huang etched the words, “Arrive at Fu and carved the stone”—an engraving that is still there today.

8He Forbid Anyone from Using First-Person Pronouns

Qin Shi Huang was convinced that he was going to become an immortal god. He even labeled himself one. After uniting China, he threw away the old title of “king” and took a new one: “huangdi.” It is a word we usually translate to “emperor,” but that is not quite accurate—it really means “god.”

He also made it law that, from now on, no one could use the first-person pronoun “zhen.” Now that all kings had bowed down before him, he declared, no one else could refer to themselves with a term that conferred respect. From now on, every Chinese citizen would have to refer to themselves with the word “wo,” a word that, at the time, meant, “this worthless body.”

After Xu Fu had promised him immortality, though, even Qin Shi Huang stopped using the word “zhen.” Now, he declared, he must be called “The True Man”—a title that told the world that he had become immortal.

7He Made Decoys Ride in His Carriage

To become immortal, though, Qin Shi Huang would have to stay alive until Xu Fu came back. This was not a sure thing. There had already been many attempts on his life, and he had made many enemies on the path to becoming emperor. He lived in fear of his own death at every moment—and so, when he traveled, he started putting a decoy in his royal carriage.

It ended up saving his life. A man named Zhang Liang was plotting his death. Zhang Liang was a man destined to become the chancellor to the Han king until Qin Shi Huang conquered the Han kingdom and reduced its nobles to nothing. Zhang Liang wanted revenge.

He teamed up with China’s strongest man, Gan Ba, who dragged a 160 lb (72.5 kg) hammer up to the top of a hill and waited for Qin Shi Huang to pass by. When the royal carriages came close, Gan Ba hurled the massive hammer at the royal carriage. The massive iron weight shattered it into pieces and killed everyone inside.

Qin Shi Huang, though, wasn’t inside. He was behind it, in an undecorated carriage that looked to be made for a commoner. His guards rushed into action, but Gan Ba tackled them head on, giving up his own life so that Zhang Liang could escape.

6He Travelled through a System of Tunnels to Avoid Going Outside

In his later years, Qin Shi Huang stopped going outside altogether. Unless it was absolutely necessary, he would no longer risk stepping out into the open air. Instead, he had a system of tunnels and underground pathways set up at his castle to make sure he never had to go outside.

He lived in a massive complex that was more than a third of a mile long—in its time, one of the biggest in the world. It held a massive palace surrounded by ten buildings, connected through walkways. These were majestic, heavenly things. One was an elevated walkway that crossed over a river, designed to look like the Milky Way shining in the sky.

In part, he was afraid of assassins, but it was more than that. Death itself was outside waiting for him, Qin Shi Huang believed. He stayed inside of his castles and his tunnels so that he could not be seen by the dark spirits that were searching for him.

5A Meteor Fell to the Earth Prophesising His Death

One year before the emperor died, a meteor fell to the earth. On its own, this could have been seen as an omen, but this was more than just a rock. On the rock that fell from the sky were inscribed the words: “The First August Emperor will die and his land will be divided.”

The Emperor was a superstitious man, but even he did not think the message was really engraved by the gods. He was sure that somebody had carved the rock after it landed, and he wanted to know who. He demanded that the person responsible confess, or everyone would pay.

When no one came forward, he had ever single person who lived near the place where the meteor landed rounded up, thrown in prison, and executed. He even had his men get the meteor itself and destroy it in a fire.

Even then, though, it still bothered him. Reportedly, after giving the order to kill every person there, he called in his musicians and had them play him songs about his immortality.

4He Fought a Sea Monster for Immortality

After the meteor landed, Qin Shi Huang grew impatient. He sailed off to Zhifu Island once more to find Xu Fu, the magician who had promised him an elixir of immortality.

Xu Fu assured him that he had found Penglai Mountain. Now, though, the path was blocked by a great sea monster, and he had no way to get through. This time, though, Qin Shi Huang would not wait around any longer. He would get a team of archers, he told Xu Fu, and kill the sea monster. This time, Xu Fu was not going to be trusted to go alone. The emperor was coming with them.

Qin Shi Huang and his team of archers sailed into the water, where the found a massive fish they believed to be a sea monster—which, today, is believed to have been a whale. The archers opened fire and killed it. When it was done, Qin Shi Huang returned to Zhifu Island and left a message that is still there today: “Came to Fu, saw enormous stone, and shot a fish.”

Xu Fu didn’t have any excuses left. He was to get the elixir from the immortals, Qin Shi Huang ordered, and return immediately, or else he would face the consequences.

Xu Fu assured the emperor he would do it. Then he gathered up his 6,000 virgins, put them in his ships, and sailed off—and never came back. With no way to keep the act up, he fled to Japan and spent the rest of his life in hiding.

3He Poisoned Himself with Mercury

Xu Fu never delivered the elixir of immortality, but Qin Shi Huang did not give up. He had his alchemists make him every medicine they could to keep him healthy and alive, and he drank everything they told him would work—including a bottle full of mercury.

Qin Shi Huang was making a tour around his kingdom when the mercury killed him. He had brought a vial of it with him, which his court doctors had assured him was an “immortal medicine.” Instead, though, it cut his life short, killing him when he was only 49 years old.

Qin Shi Huang was a two-month journey away from home, and his chancellors were afraid about what might happen when the people found out he was dead. His advisor, Li Si, was determined to hide that the emperor had died. For the next few months, he pretended Qin Shi Huang was still alive, sending out orders of his own that he claimed came from the emperor.

Meanwhile, the immortal emperor’s dead body was sent home, flanked by carts full of rotting fish to hide the smell of his decaying remains.

2He Tried to Become The God-Ruler Of Hell

If Qin Shi Huang could not be immortal, he was not going to accept being a peasant in hell. He was determined to become the ruler of the afterlife, and he got ready for it.

Before he even became the emperor, he had started work on his tomb. By the time he died, he had forced 700,000 enslaved laborers to work on it. His tomb was incredible. It had replicas of his palaces and towers, flowing rivers of mercury, and a ceiling full of jewels that recreate the night sky.

And it had the Terracotta Warriors. Qin Shi Huang believed that, when he died, the six states he had defeated would rise up against him in the afterlife. And so he had his army remade out of terracotta to protect him in hell and help him conquer the world of the dead.

Traps were set up to keep anyone from getting in and disturbing the emperor’s resting place. The tomb was buried and seeded with grass and trees to keep anyone from ever finding it. And, to make sure that no one would ever find it, the workers who made it were forced to seal themselves in and die with the emperor inside his tomb.

1He Did Not Choose a Successor

Qin Shi Huang had not planned on dying. He did not even like to think about it—and so he never sat down and wrote a will. He was determined, after all, to live forever, and so he saw no need.

With no will, it was not clear who was to take the throne, and the nation soon erupted into chaos. His eldest son Fusu was the obvious choice, but Qin Shi Huang’s advisor, Li Si, did not trust him. To keep Fusu out, Li Si forged a fake order declaring the second son, Huhai, the new emperor. Then he forged another, ordering Fusu to commit suicide.

The boys obeyed the orders they believed came from their father, and Huhai became the second emperor of China. His reign did not last long. Li Si and his co-conspirators soon turned against each other, and one had Li Si arrested and executed.

Li Si’s death was horrible. His nose, hands, feet, and genitals were chopped off, one-by-one, before he was finally cut in half down the waist. Then every member of his extended family, down to the third generation, was executed. Without Li Si, Huhai was unable to stop his people from rebelling, and he was soon overthrown.

In life, Qin Shi Huang had insisted that his dynasty would rule over China for 10,000 generations—but, after his death, it did not even last three years.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . He writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes.

Normally, when historical figures show up in movies, they’re exaggerated. Desperate to keep fiction more fantastic than life, filmmakers have to take all the complexity out and turn them into mad, cartoonish caricatures of real human beings.

Usually, anyway. Emperor Commodus, though, is the exception to the rule. When the creators of the movie Gladiator cast him as their villain, they actually had to tone the facts down a little. Because the things the real Emperor Commodus did were so completely insane that nobody would have believed them.

10 He Nearly Bankrupted Rome by Playing Gladiator

We’ve told you before about Commodus’s obsession with playing at being a gladiator. Regular readers may already know how he would strip naked, walk into the arenas, and bash physically handicapped people in the head in front of a roaring crowd of Roman citizens. But we haven’t told you just how big of a problem it was.

Commodus wasn’t like a normal gladiator. He was brutal, even by the standards of men who beat each other to death for the amusement of an audience. He would force gladiators to come to his home and practice with him. The invitation meant almost certain death; no one would dare beat him, and when he won, he would show no mercy. The lucky left his home with missing noses and limbs, and the unlucky never left alive.

When a fighting gladiator tried to spare his opponent’s life, Commodus would stop him. Hungry for blood, he would have the gladiators tied together and force them to fight until one was dead—or else they would never be freed.^[1]

Murder isn’t a normal pastime, but it even crippled the economy. Every time he showed up in the gladiatorial arena, Commodus charged the state a million sesterces for his appearance. His love of killing didn’t just cost lives—it helped spiral the Roman economy toward total collapse.

9 He Served Two People at a Banquet

Commodus’s depravity didn’t stop when he left the arena. He had a strange obsession with torturing the physically disabled—once even forcing men with dwarfism to fight each other with cleavers for an audience’s amusement—and he found ways to work torture into every part of life.

He even brought it into dinner. Once, he served two disabled men at a banquet. He invited a crowd of Rome’s elite to his home, had them gather his dining table, and then had his servants open up the silver platter to reveal two hunchbacked men smeared in mustard.^[2]

He didn’t actually eat them. The men were alive, put on the table as nothing more than a centerpiece meant to amuse his guests. They were forced to sit there on the cold silver platter throughout the whole dining party, naked and coated in mustard, pretending to be food to amuse the emperor and his friends.

8 He Renamed the Months of the Year After Himself

Commodus’s ego was unparalleled. He legitimately believed that he was a living god. He had the head of the Colossus chopped off and replaced with his own likeness and even pressured the Senate to officially declare him a living god.

But he wasn’t just any god; Commodus believed that he was specifically the Greek demigod Hercules. When his madness was its fullest, he started walking around with a cloak made out of a lion’s hide so that he could look more like Hercules, and he forced everyone to refer to him as “Hercules, son of Zeus.”

He even changed the language to force people to praise him. He renamed Rome “Commodiana” and called the Roman people “Commodiani.” And he changed the names of every month into variations on his own name.^[3] August became “Commodus,” September became “Hercules,” and the other ten months were all renamed to one of the many nicknames he’d bestowed upon himself.

7 He Fed His Friends to Animals

The emperors of the old world went mad with power in a way that modern man just can’t compete with. They could get away with things modern leaders can only dream of—and it gave them some crazy ideas.

But Commodus was unique. He was the only emperor born while his father ruled Rome, which meant that he started going mad with power from the first moments of his life.

It made him a little sociopath. According to the Roman rumor mill, the young preteen Commodus would have anyone who made fun of him “cast to the wild beasts.”^[4] Playmates who slighted him (or, one time, a slave who made his bath too cold) were all put to death.

He conducted experiments, too. As a boy, he wanted to be a surgeon, so he’d practice—on living people. Once, he cut open a fat man’s belly with scalpels just to see what it looked like inside. His teachers just had to stand by, watch, and even help him do it. If they didn’t, they’d be next.

6 He Repeatedly Threatened to Kill His Senators

Commodus didn’t like his senators very much. He wanted complete power over Rome, and having to listen to the grumblings of the people’s representatives drove him wild. He had plans to get rid of them altogether—and he wasn’t subtle about it.

He had a massive statue erected outside of the Senate house. It was in his own likeness, showing him as an archer, with an arrow pointed directly at the building. Every time they stepped in, they’d have to look at a massive bronze bust of his likeness staring at them, poised to kill.

Once, while he was fighting animals in a gladiatorial arena, he threatened his senators with an ostrich head.^[5] He decapitated the bird, held its severed head up, pointed a bloodied sword at his senators, and shot them a long look of pure hatred, letting them know that they were next. And meanwhile, behind him, a headless ostrich was running around bumping into things.

5 He Devalued Roman Currency

Commodus wasn’t just a dangerous, egotistical maniac, though—he was part of the reason the Roman Empire fell. He devalued the Roman currency, sparking off a chain reaction that would ultimately bring on Rome’s collapse.

In Roman times, devaluing currency was a much more literal process than it is today. Commodus actually lowered the amount of gold and silver in Roman coins, which made each coin lighter and literally less valuable. He wasn’t the first person to do this (Nero had started it), but Commodus devalued Roman coins by more than any emperor since then.

Even in his lifetime, it crippled the country. One Roman who lived through Commodus’s reign complained that he had brought Rome “from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.”^[6]

4 He Shirked His Duties

Commodus didn’t really bother with the duties of being an emperor, either. For most of his rule, he just put somebody else in charge. When he became emperor, he gave all of his duties to a man named Perennis—and then put himself in charge of the living-like-a-king part.^[7]

When he wasn’t fighting gladiators, Emperor Commodus was in his personal brothel. He had a harem of 300 concubines, which he’d built up by having his soldiers round up the most beautiful women and drag them to the palace by force.

Commodus had some weird fixations. He brought in a young boy, who he ordered to sleep with him naked and even forced to legally rename himself “The Boy Who Loves Commodus.” And Commodus brought in his family, too. Rumor has it that he made his own sisters join his harem and even gave one of his concubines his mother’s name.

The arrangement fell apart when Perennis realized he didn’t actually need Commodus and tried to kill him—but little changed. Commodus survived, Perennis was executed, a new guy named Cleander was put in Perennis’s place, and Commodus went right back into his harem.

3 He Betrayed His Friends

Cleander did all of Commodus’s work, but he didn’t get much of a reward for it. The whole of Rome turned against him when the country went through a food shortage. The person in charge of grain, a man named Papirius Dionysius, blamed it on Cleander to save his own head, and pretty soon, there was an angry mob out to kill Cleander.

Cleander ran to Commodus for help, and for a while, Commodus let him hide in his castle. But when his favorite mistress in his harem, a woman named Marcia, told him to throw Cleander to the mob, Commodus listened to her. After his years of service, he had his friend killed.

That’s pretty bad—but he didn’t stop at just killing Cleander. Commodus put Cleander’s head on a spear and gave it to the angry mob. Then he had Cleander’s friends put to death, along with his wife and children. And, to appease the crowd, he had the kids’ mutilated bodies dragged through the streets of Rome, thrown into the sewers, and left to rot.^[8]

2 He Slaughtered an Entire Family for Being Wealthy

Cleander’s wasn’t the only family Commodus massacred. He also had the Qunctilii family almost completely wiped out, but it wasn’t because they’d betrayed him or because anybody demanded it. They were just wealthy and respected, and as far Commodus was concerned, that meant it was just a matter of time before the people started calling for them to rule Rome.^[9] So they had to die.

He sent his men out to kill the entire family and very nearly wiped their whole line from history. Only one managed to survive: a boy named Sextus Condianus. When they came for Condianus, he filled his mouth with the blood of hare. Then he deliberately fell off his horse and spat out the blood, pretending to be bleeding from the mouth so that they’d think he’d saved them the work and killed himself.

It worked. They left him for dead, letting him sneak out and run off into the wilds. Afterward, though, Condianus had to lay low and stay in disguise, trying to avoid the bloodhounds Commodus had sent after him.

1 He Tried to Kill the Woman He Loved Most

Commodus’s mistress Marcia, the woman who’d told him to kill Cleander, seems to have been his one true love. He treated her like a wife, took her advice, and respected her more than any other person on Earth—until she disagreed with him, at least. Then, because love only goes so far, he tried to kill her.

Commodus was planning on declaring himself the sole supreme dictator of Rome. He was going to wipe out the Senate and start ruling on his own from inside the gladiators’ barracks. He was also going to announce it at a gladiatorial arena, dressed like a gladiator and flanked by gladiators.^[10]

Marcia begged him not to do it, believing he was about to ruin an entire country, so he sent out an order to have the love of his life murdered. The only reason Marcia survived was that Commodus’s boy sex slave, The Boy Who Loves Commodus, warned her. Apparently, he didn’t really live up to his name.

Marcia, working with others who wanted him dead, poisoned Commodus, but he vomited the poison up. While cleaning off the vomit in the bath, a wrestler named Narcissus was sent in to strangle him to death. That’s how Commodus really met his end—choked by a naked man while he washed vomit off of himself.

Every Roman emperor has a few crazy stories under his belt, but none of them compare to the tales of Caligula. He’s the one Roman emperor historians are fairly sure was certifiably insane.

Six ancient Romans wrote about Caligula’s life, and every one of them agreed that he was completely off his rocker. They left stories about him that are so ridiculous that some people now insist that these events couldn’t possibly have happened. But that’s not because we have any evidence against them. Caligula’s life was just too crazy to be believed.

10 He Invited His Horse To Drink Wine At His Dinner Table

Caligula probably never made his horse a consul, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t treat the animal like a human being. According to multiple Roman sources, Caligula treated his favorite force, Incitatus, better than most people.

This horse had his own home. It wasn’t just an upgraded stable, either. Caligula gave his horse his own multiple-room house, complete with furniture and a crew of slaves who were ordered to follow the horse’s every command.

At dinnertime, Caligula would invite his horse to dine with him. The horse would be brought to the dinner table, where the emperor and his horse would be served wine in golden goblets and would share a toast to the horse’s good health.^[1]

He even sent his soldiers out to make sure that the animal got some peace and quiet. Reportedly, after Caligula noticed that the crowds cheering at the games were bothering his horse, he sent his soldiers to force everyone in attendance to stay quiet—on pain of death—until the horse got some rest.

9 He Tried To Replace The Head On The Statue Of Zeus With His Own

Caligula wasn’t satisfied to just be an emperor. He wanted to be a god—and he set up his own cult to make sure it happened.

The emperor of Rome had temples constructed where people could worship him. Inside, there were life-size statutes of him made of pure gold that the people of Rome were encouraged to bow before and worship. And he didn’t stop there. Caligula had plans to chop off the head of the statue of Zeus at Olympia—one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—and replace it with a likeness of his own head.

He even hired his own team of priests with their own extravagant rituals. To show devotion to Caligula, a sacrificed bull wouldn’t be enough. His worshipers were expected to sacrifice flamingos and peacocks in his honor.

His obsession with declaring himself to be a god nearly caused a revolt. At one point, frustrated that the Jews weren’t worshiping him enough, Caligula ordered Petronius, the governor of Syria, to build a massive statue of him inside the Temple in Jerusalem.^[2]

The Jews were ready to riot, and it probably would have turned into a full-on rebellion if Petronius hadn’t talked Caligula out of it. In the end, though, Caligula had Petronius’s head chopped off as punishment for making Caligula change his mind.

8 He Ordered His Army To Attack The English Channel

Legend has it that Caligula once declared war on Neptune, the god of the sea, and ordered his men to stab the English Channel.

There’s some reason to think that the story’s a little exaggerated. But there’s no question that Caligula sent an army to the English Channel, and even the soberest versions of the tale don’t paint Caligula in the best light. He still sent his army into the ocean.

The version accepted by most historians is that Caligula was leading a failing campaign against the Britons and his men were on the verge of revolt because he’d cut their pay. So, to make it up to them, he led his entire army—including the artillery—to the English Channel and told them that they could fill their helmets with as many seashells as they wanted.

In lieu of pay, his men were to take “spoils from the ocean” as their reward for their hard work. Anything they could fit in a hat was theirs for the taking, he promised them.

“Go your way happy!” Caligula told his men as they scooped shells and rocks out of the ocean. “Go your way rich!”^[3]

7 He Ordered A Mass Execution Because He Thought People Were Praying Against Him

When Caligula took the throne, he invited some of the political enemies of Tiberius, the last emperor, to come back to Rome. Caligula even invited one to sit down with him personally and then asked how the man had spent his time in exile.

“I constantly prayed [to] the gods for what has come to pass,” the man told him, “that Tiberius might die and you become emperor.”^[4]

He was trying to flatter Caligula, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, the man accidentally got a few thousand people killed.

What Caligula got from the conversation was that this man had prayed to the gods for Tiberius’s death, and apparently, his prayers had been answered. That meant there was a pretty good chance that the people exiled by Caligula were praying against him, too.

After talking to the man, Caligula released an order to kill every person he’d ever exiled for trying to turn the gods against him. And he made it a long-term policy. From then on, when Caligula made an enemy, he had the person’s dead body paraded in front of him before he slept easy.

6 He Built Massive Floating Orgy Palaces

Caligula may have been crazy, but he definitely knew how to party. After he came to power, Caligula blew every penny he had on building two massive, floating pleasure palaces so that he could throw orgies inside.

Placed on Lake Nemi, these gigantic barges had prows covered in jewels and floors paved with glass mosaics. The vessels were filled with massive statues and golden cups. Even the sails were made of purple silk, a material so rare at the time that it was exclusively used to make the emperor’s clothes.^[5]

Caligula hosted crazy orgies on the Lake Nemi ships, and his favorite guests were his own sisters. But he didn’t stop at incest.

Caligula ordered his noblemen to bring their wives when they visited. He made them line up in front of him, inspected their bodies, and picked his favorite to bring into his chamber. Then he came back out, sat down with her husband, and made the man sit through a detailed review of how his wife was in bed.

5 He Rode A Horse Across A Gulf Just To Prove a Fortune-Teller Wrong

Caligula’s greatest achievement was building a 5-kilometer-long (3 mi) floating bridge across the Gulf of Baiae. At the time, a bridge like that was completely unheard of—and he did entirely out of spite.

Before he’d become emperor, an astrologer named Thrasyllus had predicted that Caligula had “no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Gulf of Baiae.” Caligula built the bridge just to rub it in that the astrologer had been wrong.^[6]

Caligula got every ship he could find to line up across the gulf. Then he had slaves lay earth on top of the ships to make a huge bridge. Caligula hopped on his horse and rode back and forth across the bridge for two days straight so that everyone knew the fortune-teller had been wrong.

4 He Had An Audience Devoured Alive Because He Was Bored

During intermission at the games of ancient Rome, criminals would be executed for the amusement of the crowd. After they had been lined up, their throats were slit while the audience either rewarded their deaths with light applause or shuffled out to get refreshments.

That wasn’t Caligula’s idea, but he was a big fan. Caligula liked the games so much that he made it illegal to schedule a court case or a funeral while the games were in session, just to make sure nobody missed them.

Once, when there were no criminals to be executed during intermission, he took matters into his own hands. He ordered his guards to throw a random section of the audience into the ring. Then he unleashed the animals so that he could watch these people get devoured alive.^[7]

3 He Wouldn’t Let Anyone Mention Goats Around Him

As a young man, Caligula had an issue with body hair—and he was very sensitive about it. Hair grew everywhere on his body except for the top of his head, where he had a bald spot.

He made sure, though, that no one got away with making fun of him. It’s likely that he stopped artists from drawing his bald spot as it shows up in written descriptions of him but rarely in ancient art. To deal with the hairiness, he made it a crime for anyone to say the word “goat” in his presence.^[8]

As emperor, he had the power to do pretty well anything he wanted as he frequently reminded everyone around him. He didn’t stop at banning people from talking about goats. In fact, he used his powers in ways only dreamed of in socially anxious Internet memes.

When he got fed up with having to talk to people all the time, Caligula made it illegal to greet him twice. Anyone who wanted to shake his hand could do it one time, but that was all you got. After that, you had to leave him alone—or else.

2 He Forced A Man To Drink With Him After Murdering The Man’s Son

Caligula once executed a man for being handsome. He spotted a good-looking man with a nice haircut and a snappy sense of fashion, and he got so jealous that he had the man executed for it.

The man’s father did everything he could to save his son’s life. He begged Caligula to spare his son, but it had the opposite effect. In response, Caligula sped up the son’s execution. But in return, Caligula invited the father to dine and drink with the emperor himself immediately following the son’s death.^[9]

The man was forced to drink a toast to the emperor’s health, eat food at his table, and accept every gift Caligula gave him, all while staring at the person who’d just killed his son. According to the senator Seneca, the father had to sit there and smile throughout, knowing that his other sons would die if he showed the slightest hint of grief.

1 He Threatened To Beat Up A God

It’s easy to think that Caligula might have just had a wicked sense of humor or that he might have been putting on a show. But there’s a lot of reason to think that the emperor was truly mentally ill.

There are reports that Caligula had major delusions throughout his life. Reportedly, he rarely slept for more than three hours at a time because his hallucinations were at their worst at night. For example, he once stayed up all night complaining that the ocean had been talking to him.

There are also reports that he would openly talk to the god Jupiter—but not in a devout, religious way. He’d argue with an imaginary god, carrying on heated conversations with a being that no one else could see.

The philosopher Seneca claimed that he once saw Caligula threaten Jupiter. They’d been watching a ballet when thunder started to crash across the horizon. Furious at the gods for interrupting his show, Caligula stormed outside, started yelling at Jupiter, and threatened to beat the god to death.^[10]

Which just might be the sobering reality behind the madness of Caligula. Some Roman emperors were made to seem mad by their detractors, and some went mad with power. But Caligula may just have been mad inside and out.

“Ruthless,” “witty,” and “scheming” are only a few of the words that describe the first female emperor of China, Wu Zetian. Despite the obstacles that stood in the way of her uphill climb to power, she overcome a plethora of opposing forces and remains one of the most impactful, influential women in Chinese history.

Known and referenced as the “scheming shrew” of China, historians of her time tried to remove Wu’s name and impact from history. However, thousands of years later, snippets of the life that Wu Zetian lived and her achievements are being released.

10 She Was Emperor Taizong’s Secretary

Wu Zhao was born circa AD 624 to a wealthy, high-ranking family. Due to her father’s occupation and strong ties to the court, he encouraged Wu to acquire the education that many women in her time could not receive. It is said that as soon as Emperor Taizong laid eyes on Wu at the age of 14, he awarded her the title of carin (fifth-ranked concubine), calling her Mei-Niang, which means “charming” or “beautiful.”

Even though Wu was a concubine, she was still able to pursue art and music in the palace.^[1] By following her own interests, she continued to seek out knowledge that would set her apart from all of the other girls. Through Wu’s beauty and intelligence, she enticed Emperor Taizong and became his secretary for ten years. As Wu spent more time with Taizong, she learned about state affairs and was in charge of several important documents. When the time came for Wu to reign, she used what she had learned under Emperor Taizong in her own government.

9 She Had An Affair With Taizong’s Son To Get Back Into The Palace

In 649, Emperor Taizong died. Traditionally, when an emperor dies, his concubines would have to shave their heads and become nuns. However, Wu wasn’t like any of the other concubines. When Wu was in the court, she had won the affections of Li Zhi, Taizong’s son (later named Gaozong as emperor). So when Li Zhi came to honor his father in Ganye Temple, she seduced him and tried to convince him to take her back into the royal court.

Empress Wang (Gaozong’s wife) noticed the situation and took things into her own hands. Wang’s inability to bear children, which had created a rift between her and Gaozong, prompted her to tell Wu to stop shaving her head so that she could come back into the palace. As soon as Wu was brought back to court, she was given the title of the second concubine (the zhaoyi).^[2]

8 She Used The Death Of Her Daughter To Become Empress

After giving birth to two sons in 652 (Li Hong) and 653 (Li Xian), Wu gave birth to a daughter in 654, who was found strangled to death in her crib. Wu quickly put the blame on Empress Wang, claiming that Wang was jealous of her child. Not only did she accuse Wang of the murder, but she also accused Wang and her mother of witchcraft, ensuring that Wang and her family would be removed from the court. After Empress Wang and Consort Xiao left the court, Wu ordered them to be killed.^[3]

There are several speculations as to how Wu had Wang and Xiao killed, but it has been said she had their hands and feet amputated. Then, their arms and legs were tied together, and they were thrown into barrels of wine to drown. Though the killer of Wu’s daughter is unknown, several ancient Chinese and modern-day historians claim that Wu killed her daughter in a precarious attempt to become the empress of the Tang dynasty.

7 She Killed Anyone Who Was Against Her Position As Empress

As soon as Wu secured her spot as empress, she began to dispatch a secret police force who arrested those who were against her reign or plotted against her despite their status. One example of the efforts of these secret police was the death of Zhangsun Wuji, the brother-in-law of Taizong and close ally of Gaozong. Similar to several aristocrats in the Tang dynasty, Wuji failed to agree with Wu’s rise to empress. So in order to shut him up, Wu had Xu Jingzong accuse Wuji of treason, and eventually, Wuji was forced to commit suicide.

Eventually, Emperor Gaozong, Wu’s husband, suffered a stroke that blinded him and resulted in several administrative duties being passed onto Wu. During this time, Gaozong was worried about Wu’s control of the court and recruited his senior minister of the Zhongshu Sheng (legislative department), Shangguan Yi, to depose Empress Wu. However, it was too late. Once Wu was notified of Yi’s plans, she executed him.^[4]

6 She Deposed Her Eldest Son And His Wife To Become Emperor

After Emperor Gaozong’s death in 683, Wu placed her oldest son, Li Hong (Emperor Zhongzong) on the throne. Zhongzong was controlled by his wife, Lady Wei, who appointed all of her family members to high positions. However, Lady Wei proved to be a nuisance, as she tried to mimic Wu’s actions to climb to the top as empress. Wu quickly replaced Zhongzong with her younger son Ruizong (Li Dan), and Zhongzong was deposed.

Even though Ruizong was in power, he was a puppet emperor, and she forced him to abdicate in 690. She then named herself “Zetian” (Ruler of the sky) and “Wu” (meaning “military” or “weapon”) and rose to power.^[5]

5 She Considered Herself A Living Buddha

Being the emperor of the (second) Zhou dynasty wasn’t enough for Wu Zetian. She had statues of the Maitreya commissioned in her image and claimed herself to be the incarnation of the Maitreya Buddha (a Buddhist bodhisattva who saves suffering beings).^[6] She also called herself Empress Shengsen, which means “Holy Spirit.”

4 She Was Superstitious And Paranoid

Now that Wu was the emperor of Zhou dynasty (which was originally the Tang dynasty), she continued to have an irrational (or perhaps rational) fear of the court officials who were against her reign and had them imprisoned and replaced through her system of secret police.^[7]

To justify the nature of her reign, Wu also focused on symbols and good omens. Yet, despite the several good omens that came her way, when a mountain seemingly appeared after an earthquake, one of her ministers was convinced that it was a sign that her reign was not to be. Wu refused to believe that this was true, instead proclaiming the mountain to be a good omen. To get rid of the minister’s claims, she had him banished.

3 She Had Sexual Relationships With Several Men In The Palace

Even in her old age, Wu had her fair share of men. She had an affair with a fake monk named Huaiyi, which resulted in anger and disagreement in court. After Huayi was gone, she had an affair with the infamous Zhang brothers. Despite her effective and impactful rule throughout the Zhou dynasty, the affection that the Zhang brothers expressed made her forget about her responsibilities, and she lived her final years as emperor entertaining herself in their presence.^[8]

Members of her court finally had enough and ordered the brothers killed in 705. Wu was forced to abdicate. Zhongzong was restored as emperor, and the Zhou dynasty was ended. Wu spent the remaining months of her life in retirement until she died at the age of 80 or 81.

2 She Was Respected By Women And The Common People

Wu did a lot for those who were in need. She focused on the building of irrigation systems and lowering taxes for those who lived in poverty or were farmers. Due to this, many of the common people of the short-lived Zhou dynasty respected and revered Wu.

She also had an large impact on women’s rights. She gave positions to women in the courts and had scholars write biographies on important, influential women. Due to her reign, women had more freedoms and could express themselves in ways that would not have been possible at any other time. Wu influenced more women to actively participate in politics and even influenced other female leaders, writers, and artists.^[9]

1 Her Tombstone Is Blank

Despite all of the improvements that Wu brought during her reign, she was remembered as an dowager empress, not an emperor. And due to the scandals that surrounded her name, her tombstone was left blank.^[10]

Poetry enthusiast and amateur writer. Occasionally writes on https://onlyforamomentblog.wordpress.com/ and enjoys watching Netflix.