Benito Mussolin finally suceeded in accomplishing what had been considered the impossible. By lowering the waters of lake Nemi, by way of ancient drainage tunnels originally constructed to protect the nearby Temple of Diana from flooding, he was able to retrieve the two giant Imperial aRoman pleasure barges which had rested on the lakes bottom for just a decade shy of nineteen centuries.
In their time, they were lavish and spectacular, the Titanics of their day, and were far more advanced than even the Romans had been though capable of achieving. They had the unusual feature of being constructed to easily navigate the relatively shallow waters of the lake, though they were each the size of two modern day regulation size tennis courts. But what was their orignal purpose?
They were commissioned by Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known to history as the mad emperor Caligula. Some eight months into his reign he was struck by a mysterious illness and was for a time feared near death. When he miraculously revived, he had undergone a marked change. The previously gracous, overly generous, youthful emperor, who had spent the first eight months or so of his reign in a hedonistic drunken binge of orgies and lavish banquets, was now reportedly quite insane, according to most accounts, and declared himself a god. He also began to display a heretofore unknown, perhaps hidden but now overt, predilection for cruelty. Fueled by paranoia, he began a reign of the most cruel excesses and vices ever noted to that time.
There were widespread executions, tortures, and confiscations of properties. No one, in fact, was safe, and very few who engendered his all too easily inflamed suspicions, were spared. Nevertheless, to Caligula, evey day was a party, a celebration, an excuse for a banquet or a circus, as he merrily went about his way running through the nations treasury.
But there is no record of his time on Lake Nemi, other than some hint that it must have occurred shortly after, or possibly during, his recovery from his near fatal illness. I am quite certain this was decided by way of the process of elimination, as his presence is more or less well documented at other times during his reign. So we might assume from this that his purpose here was one of hastening his recovery.
But there may have been more to it than that. Caligula had been, or now became, quite obsessed with his sister Drusilla. He wanted her, in every way. And now, perhaps, he would have her. Remember, Lake Nemi was the site of the Temple Of Diana The Huntress, ancient even in those days. The lake itself was known as "Diana's Mirror". There is no doubt due to the reflection the full moon cast upon the waters, which made it attractive from the beginning to the Goddess's devotees. it would have been considered conducive to meditation, to communion witht he Goddess.
One of the ships, as I said, contained a temple. The other was plainly a luxury, pleasure barge. Side by side, the two of them dominated the lake. One night, perhaps when the full moon shone down upon the lake, upon the ships, Caligula may have invoked Diana, calling her into the form of his sister Drusilla. He then, let us say, "communed" with his Goddess.
No one knows for sure how Drusilla felt about her brother's affections. It may have been just another in a long series of childhood precocous games to her, which finally culminated in the events of Lake Nemi. She may have been a more or less willing participant. Or a horrified, unwilling one, yet helpless to forestal or to prevent it.
All that is known for sure is Drusilla eventually died, while pregnant by Caligula, some say by his hand, as he ripped the child from her womb, then devouring it. Others say her death was a mysterious one and Caligula was heartsick over her sudden demise. Whatever the case, Caligula further degenerated as a result of her death.
Some say it was after his assasination, early in 41 C.E., that the ships were sunk by his vengeful enemies. Possible. But I propose that it was Caligula himself that destroyed the ships, after his sister's demise. I believe he then went on to execute the worshippers of the Goddess herself, and decimated the temple. He wanted no reminders left of his overwhelming grief.
He was a god. Drusilla, he had also declared, was a goddess. And all those who had attempted, in his tortured mind if not in reality, to harm him, and who may have suceeded in killing her, would soon pay a heavy price. Much like his former co-heir Gemellus, who Caligula may have ordered beheaded while on that lake that long ago, winsome, magical time.
As for the ships, they did not long survive their brief salvage rom the bottom of Lake Nemi. As the Nazis retreated from Italy toward the end of World War II, they set fire to the museum that was specially constructed to house them. Almost everything was destroyed, though luckily a few relics and artifacts somehow survived the conflagration.
Luckily, the ships destruction did not prevent a good deal of prior study from discovering a great deal about the techniques of ancient Roman shipbuilding, and about the time and culture of Rome itself.
