From History.com
Researchers are actively searching for Emperor Caligula’s 2,000-year-old wild party boat believed to be at the bottom of the volcanic Lake Nemi, located in Italy (south of Rome). It is believed that the lavish and blood-thirsty Emperor Caligula used this 400-foot vessel for wild sex parties and orgies.
Teaming up with police divers and officials from Italy’s civil protection agency, the mayor of Nemi, Alberto Bertucci, has initiated searches of the lake. Using sonar to sweep the waters and high-tech scanners that use ground-penetrating sound waves to detect objects buried up to 9 feet deep, they are hoping to recover the legendary vessel.
So who was Caligula and why did he have such a giant party boat? The third of Rome’s emperors, Caligula achieved feats of waste and carnage during his four-year reign (37-41 A.D.) unmatched even by his infamous nephew Nero. The son of a great military leader, he spent his childhood at his father’s posting on the Rhine, where he wore a miniature uniform. Based on his outfit, which included tiny shoes, the general’s troops gave the future emperor his nickname “Caligula,” meaning “little boot.” As emperor, Caligula was known for his thirst for murder, hedonist tendencies, brazen ego and out-right crazy ideas (as an expression of his absolute power he planned to appoint his horse to the high office of consul).
Caligula’s personal and fiscal excesses led him to be the first Roman emperor to be assassinated, so it comes as no surprise that 2,000 years after his short-lived rule of Rome, his notorious orgy boat has been left at the bottom of a muddy lake. In fact, it believed the boats were deliberately sunk after Caligula’s assassination to hide the evidence of his lavish and debauched reign.
We have some insight into what this luxury-style orgy boat could have looked like from the Roman historian Suetonius. He described the boats as having, “ten banks of oars…the poops of which blazed with jewels…filled with ample baths, galleries, and saloons, and supplied with a great variety of vines and fruit trees.”
