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Case file s1251 · Ghosts and legends · 41
41
Horti Lamiani (2006-2009): Planietria ricostruttiva degli Horti Lamiani
Horti Lamiani (2006-2009). C. Miraglia. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
January AD 41
Place
Horti Lamiani, Esquiline Hill, Rome, Italy
Field
Roman emperor · Royalty and nobility on the timeline
Legal tradition
Roman testamentary law and imperial succession; Roman burial rites · Roman law
Historical event
Assassination of Caligula by the Praetorian Guard
Religion
Tiberius: Ancient and traditional religions (recorded as ancient Roman religion on Wikidata)

Suetonius says Caligula ignored Tiberius's will, killed his co-heir, and haunted the gardens he inherited until his sisters reburied him

Kind 2: what Suetonius says. Tiberius's will named Caligula and his other grandson, the boy Tiberius Gemellus, as joint heirs. When Caligula entered Rome, the Senate and the crowd gave him full power and the will was set aside. He adopted Gemellus and later sent a tribune to kill him without warning. When he fell ill he made his sister Drusilla heir to his property and the throne. He later had his other sisters condemned as adulteresses. The senator Lucius Aelius Lamia had left his gardens on the Esquiline to Tiberius, and Caligula inherited them in 37. In January 41 Caligula was stabbed to death; his wife Caesonia and his daughter were killed with him. His body was carried to the Lamian gardens, half burned on a hasty pyre and covered with turf. Suetonius writes that the gardens' caretakers were disturbed by ghosts, and that a fearsome apparition appeared every night in the house where he was killed until it burned down. His sisters, returning from exile, dug up the body, cremated it and placed it in a tomb. Bill Thayer, editor of the online translation, suggests the ghost story began as a pun on the Lamiae, Roman night spirits. Archaeologists excavated part of the gardens from 2006, and the site is now shown as the Nymphaeum Museum of Piazza Vittorio.

What the law took from it

An emperor's will had no force once the Senate and the army preferred one heir, and the excluded heir was killed within months.

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Suetonius says Caligula ignored Tiberius's will, killed his co-heir, and haunted the gardens he inherited until his sisters reburied him,” story s1251, https://www.celebrity.estate/caligula-ghost-41, updated 30 October 2026.

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