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
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I () (10 March 1503 – 25 July 1564) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1558, king of Bohemia and Hungary from 1526, and king of Croatia from 1527 until his death in 1564. Before his accession, he ruled the Austrian hereditary lands of the Habsburgs in the name of his elder brother, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Also, he often served as Charles' representative in Germany and developed useful relationships with German princes. The key events during his reign were the contest with the Ottoman Empire, which in the 1520s began a great advance