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In Caligula's time, 12-41 A.D., the popular rendezvous of Rome's patrician bounders was Lake Nemi (Nemorensis Lacus). There among symbolic oak trees was the Temple of Diana, richest in Latium. Diana was the moon goddess, Caligula's unreachable hope. Every time she was full he would stretch out his arms to her, implore her to his embraces.
Despite all his obsessions and oppressions, Rome's citizens, soldiers and provincials admired Caligula. That was not his real name. His real name was Gaius Caesar. But, because he was charming as a little boy when he plopped in soldiers' boots along the Rhine with his father Germanicus, everyone called him, and con tinued to call him through his short life, Caligula. Caligula means "Little Boots."
Presumably it is for the memory of Caligula the soldier, rather than Caligula the desperate debauchee, that Premier Mussolini's engineers and archaeologists are laboring at Lake Nemi.
*U. S. antiquarians know him well as the director of Rome's Musco di Villa Giulia.
†Practically all the Julian clan had unbalanced minds. Julius Caesar, Augustus' uncle, had epilepsy.