Incitatus Dio (155-235 AD) indicated that the horse was attended to by servants and was fed oats mixed with gold flake, and that Caligula made the horse a priest. The accuracy of the received history is generally questioned. Historians such as Anthony A. Barrett suggest that later Roman chroniclers such as Suetonius and Dio Cassius were influenced by the political situation of their own times, when it may have been useful to the current emperors to discredit the earlier Julio-Claudian emperors. Also, the lurid nature of the story added spice to their narratives, winning them additional readers. One suggestion is that
Coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor Coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor The Coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor was a ceremony in which the ruler of Europe's then-largest political entity received the Imperial Regalia at the hands of the Pope, symbolizing both the pope's alleged right to crown Christian sovereigns and also the emperor's role as protector of the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy Roman Empresses were crowned as well. The Holy Roman Empire was established in the year 800 under Charlemagne. Later emperors were also crowned by the pope or other Catholic bishops, until Charles V became the last Holy Roman Emperor to be