All hail a horse’s ass!

Suetonius — whose reports have been accurate in the past — tells us that Caligula (12-41, Roman emperor 37-41) tried to appoint his horse Incitatus a Roman consul, just before Caligula’s brief reign was cut short by his own bodyguards, ‘round about 2,000 years ago.

Whom did those bodyguards think they were protecting, do you suppose?

Now, a Roman consul was the most powerful government post after the emperor. And Caligula tried to appoint a horse?

Did any of the Roman senators complain about this?

Nope.

You know why?

Because the Roman senators, like our own, were chickenshits afraid to lose their access to luxury, money and power. Mostly money and power.

Truth is, Caligula anointed Incitatus as a consul to insult the Roman Senate. And every damn one of those senators knew that if they complained about it they would be executed.

Or “primaried.”

Other sources, including Cassius Dio, speaking exclusively to Courthouse News, said that before Caligula got what was coming to him, he gave Incitatus a marble stable, an ivory manger, jewel-incrusted collars, a team of 18 servants, and fed him oats mixed with gold.

No one has reported what Incitatus thought of all that. I don’t suppose Incitatus ever thought he needed it, or wanted it, or noticed it. He would have been just as happy with a bag of oats and a midsize agora to run around in.

Two thousand years later, in our own presumed republic, what is a Senate for?

Isn’t one of its purposes to raise the question: Umm, Your Majesty, do you really need to feed your horse gold, when your citizens are hungry for oats?

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As the editorial We were saying, Caligula was executed by his own bodyguards, after watching a bloody, and wildly popular, game, in which people killed animals, and one another — for fun! It was a reality show.

And to one guy, the only guy that mattered, Incitatus was the hero.

So. This is all god’s honest truth, so far. According to one god, anyway. The Romans had so many of them. How many do we have today? Really. How many? Aside from money.

I know what you’re thinking: After they killed Caligula, what happened to Incitatus?

Here the record is murky.

Some say, vide supra, that he was allowed to live out his life in ignominious unsplendor.

Others claim that a furious mob of hungry Romans butchered and ate him.

Where lies the truth? If truth can lie. Which it does, or pretends to, today. And did back then. Obviously.

Pardon me … or the editorial Us. We have strayed from our theme, which is … O yeah, Incitatus.

Voluminous research by Courthouse News in the bowels of the Vatican archives (no jokes here please) turned up a contemporary report by a so-called “Mister Ed”, who claimed he had talked to, and interviewed, Incitatus, before that unfortunate horse was torn apart and eaten by a hungry mob.

According to Mister Ed, the Vatican scribes tell us, Incitatus wanted to be appointed Minister of War, but was upstaged by a slick-haired pony named Pete, who whinnied Caligula into appointing Pete as co-consul to Incitatus. So Rome had two consuls in one.

But since Pete the Pony had no brains, he was assigned to play the back part of Incitatus.

And that’s how Rome came to be governed by a horse’s ass.