That Time Caligula Taxed a Fish Fart and Almost Got Stabbed For It
Turns out Romans would tolerate incest, murder, and deified horses—but they drew the line at expensive oysters.
So there’s Caligula, Emperor of Rome, God-King of Assholes, and certified nut-bar, staring at the imperial balance sheet. The numbers weren’t so much “in the red” as they were “actively on fire.” He’d burned through the treasury on—and I’m quoting my boy Suetonius here, probably—“a series of fuck-stupidly expensive boat orgies and a solid gold stable for his horse.” The horse, Incitatus, reportedly ate oats mixed with gold flake and had better healthcare than 99% of the empire. Priorities, you know?
Now, in our timeline, this is when Little Boots went full-on Looney Tunes, declared war on Neptune, and had his legionaries stab the shit out of the ocean. But what if his last remaining brain cell, fizzing like a dying firefly in that skull full of farts, had a different idea? Not a *good* idea, mind you. But different. Instead of fighting the sea, he decides to tax it. He levies the *Vectigal Piscatus*—the Great Seafood Tax of 39 AD. Every slimy, shelled, or tentacled thing pulled from the Mediterranean suddenly costs 25% more. From the pleb’s fermented fish-gut sauce, *garum*—which already smelled like a sea god’s unwashed taint—to the senator’s fifth helping of Lusitanian oysters, it all got hit.
The reaction was, to put it mildly, fucking volcanic. You see, the Romans didn’t just *like* seafood; they were absolute sluts for it. Patricians would bankrupt themselves for a prize-winning mullet, a fish so revered they’d watch it die on the dinner table because its color changes were considered arousing. (Don’t kink-shame, they didn’t have internet porn.) Suddenly, this wasn’t just a tax; it was a direct assault on the Roman libido. The back alleys of the Subura turned into a black market that would make the Medellín Cartel blush. Fishermen became the new kings, whispering sweet nothings about “unregistered sea bass” and “off-the-books eel” to shadowy figures in togas.
Caligula, bless his demented heart, responded by creating the *Cohors Piscatoria*—the Fish Police. Their sole job was to bust heads and sniff out illicit mackerel. This led to the Praetorian Guard, the most elite soldiers in the empire, kicking down doors and shaking down grandmas because their kitchen smelled a little too much of garlic-fried shrimp. The historian Tacitus (a miserable bastard, but you have to love him) almost certainly wrote a chapter about this, describing it as “the moment the august majesty of Rome was reduced to the level of a fishwife’s squabble.”
Ultimately, it wasn’t making his horse a consul or shagging his own sisters that did him in. It was the goddamn fish. In our timeline, Cassius Chaerea, a Praetorian officer, killed Caligula for making fun of his high-pitched voice. In this one, the motive was the same, but with an added grievance: the price of his favorite squid had tripled. The conspiracy to shank him in that hallway probably coalesced over a shared meal of contraband calamari. Upon taking the throne, Claudius’s first act wouldn’t have been some grand political reform, but repealing the fish tax, to the roaring approval of a grateful, garlic-breathing populace. The lesson here? You can take a Roman’s freedom, his dignity, even his wife—but stay the fuck away from his dinner.
