Gods against the Emperor: Reassessing the Death Omens of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian in Suetonius and Cassius Dio

Abstract Focusing on the omina mortis reported by ancient authors for Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, this paper argues that Roman literature – primarily Suetonius and Cassius Dio – employed imperial portents to deconstruct the legitimacy of these individual emperors. By expressing a broader understanding of power in imperial Rome and by co-opting imperial religious narratives on political legitimacy, these alleged signs utilize the culturally perceived divine origin of an emperor’s power to explain and justify the deaths of ‘bad’ emperors, primarily through narratives of divine punishment and/or abandonment.