# Standard Loeb accounts record restoration of maiestas prosecutions after a brief halt

Date: 1914

## The fact

Rolfe and Dio print that Gaius at first shut the maiestas files and then reopened treason as a political weapon. A brief halt is not a constitution. Restoration is the harm.

## Context

Tiberius’s last years had already made maiestas a terror. Reopening it after a popular pause is a resilience shock because it teaches that mercy is reversible personal weather.

[Caligula](/people/caligula) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, museum, or agency page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Cassius Dio Book 59 — LacusCurtius (https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/59*.html; LacusCurtius / University of Chicago).

## Significance

Printed restoration of treason-as-politics weakens any claim that the early reign was a rights turn.

Printed restoration of treason-as-politics weakens any claim that the early reign was a rights turn.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Caligula: https://factrail.ai/people/caligula

## Drivers

- Democratic Resilience: https://factrail.ai/drivers/democratic-resilience

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caligula-Roman-emperor
- https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/59*.html

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cal-treason-trials-restored