The Roman Emperor Caligula oppresses the people and senators with radical despotism. Citizens are expropriated and executed for the benefit of the state treasury. His death sentences are issued on a whim and purely for experiment’s sake. But what turned the young Emperor into this tyrant?

It is the death of his beloved Drusilla that leads Caligula to a far-reaching realization: “Men die; and they are not happy.” Even the greatest dictators die and vanish from the world stage. So, for what use are art, literature, or rule over the greatest empire in history to him?

The French writer and philosopher Albert Camus called his first play a “tragedy of knowing” and therein combines the political with the existential.