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
Holy Roman Emperor of Eastern Francia fell within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. The various German princes elected one of their peers as "King of the Germans", after which he would be crowned as emperor by the Pope. After Charles V's coronation, all succeeding emperors were called "elected Emperor" due to the lack of papal coronation, but for all practical purposes, they were simply called "emperors". The term "sacrum" (i.e., "holy") in connection with the German Roman Empire was first used in 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa. Charles V was the last Holy Roman Emperor to be crowned by the Pope