The first six months of Gaius Caligula’s reign as Emperor were successful and popular. 

After that, wrote his biographer, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus: “So much for Caligula as emperor; we must now tell of his career as a monster.” 

The same could now be written about Donald Trump.

Gaius Caligula

Among his litany of crimes, according to Suetonius:

“He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death, and trying to rouse him to gaiety and jesting by a great show of affability.

“He had the manager of his gladiatorial shows and beast-baitings beaten with chains in his presence for several successive days, and would not kill him until he was disgusted at the stench of his putrefied brain.” 

Donald Trump has never been charged with murder. But during his second Presidential debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he previewed the dangers of a Trump Justice Department: “If I win I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.”

Donald Trump

He made similar threats against Republicans. On March 16, 2016, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”

Paul Ryan, then Republican Speaker of the House, said: “Nobody should say such things in my opinion because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable.”

Caligula’s egomania soon reached psychotic heights.

• He  gave himself several surnames: “Pious,” “Child of the Camp,” “Father of the Armies,” and “Greatest and Best of Caesars.”
• Flattered that he had risen higher than princes and kings, he began to believe himself a god.
• He appeared at the temple of Castor and Pollux to be worshiped as Jupiter Latiaris.
• He also set up a special temple to his own godhead.

Trump’s egomania is literally stamped on his properties. Of the 515 entities he owns, 268 of them—52%–bear his last name. He often refers to his properties as “the swankiest,” “the most beautiful.”  

Among the references he’s made to himself: 

• “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.” 
• “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”
• “My Twitter has become so powerful that I can actually make my enemies tell the truth.”
• “My IQ is one of the highest–and you all know it.”

When Caligula wasn’t ordering wholesale Stalin-like purges—ranging from Roman aristocrats to slaves—he was setting new records for debauchery. 

According to the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus: “He lived in habitual incest with all his [three] sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above. Of these he is believed to have violated Drusilla when he was still a minor.”

Trump has never been charged with incest, but he’s repeatedly made sexually inappropriate comments about his daughter, Ivanka:  

• “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father …”
• When Trump appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, he was joined on stage by Ivanka. After they kissed, Dr. Oz said: “It’s nice to see a dad kiss his daughter.” Trump: “I kiss her every chance I get.”  The remark was edited before the show aired.
• When asked how he would react if Ivanka, a former teen model, posed for Playboy, Trump replied: “I don’t think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”  
• “You know who’s one of the great beauties of the world, according to everybody? And I helped create her. Ivanka. My daughter, Ivanka. She’s six feet tall, she’s got the best body.”