Dr. Alex Imrie
Appearances
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
He seems to be the man to kind of take hold of the reins again and restore a little bit of stability to the Roman state after the arguably wilder eccentricities of Commodus' final years with all the games and all the wannabe Hercules-type vibes that were coming out of Commodus' regime then. That regime of Pertinax, however, crashes within two or three months.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It's only, I think, 86 days before he is assassinated by his Praetorian Guard. It's at that point that we have the infamous episode, the auction of the empire, as Cassius Dio calls it, where we have a couple of senators bidding to receive the good graces of the Praetorian Guard. Now that's in Rome.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
The winner of that is one Didius Julianus, who is apparently very wealthy, but doesn't seem to be terribly well equipped to actually rule an empire now that he's got it. Maybe a bit of buyer's remorse comes in quite quickly. Now it's at that point that we see Severus raising his standard. His legions in Pannonia, the acclaim him emperor.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And as he's not alone, there are a couple of other regional governors who are also proclaimed emperor at this point. We have Clodius Albinus in Britain, and we have Piscinius Niger in Syria, both at the head of multi-legion forces. But Severus being on the Danube frontier is physically the closest, and this allows him to perform what is effectively a lightning march on the capital.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And Dio and Herodian, the sources tend to agree that he meets very little resistance on the way. This is, on the one hand, a marker of maybe Julianus' rank unpopularity with pretty much everybody.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
But it's also an indicator of just how much military force Severus has behind him on that frontier, being able to persuade not only his own legions, but a couple of neighboring governors to back his cause as well. There's very little to oppose him at this point, but his children are at risk. They could be taken hostage, I would imagine.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
That would be the most likely outcome of events if Julianus had been able to take custody of them.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Severus is absolutely victorious over Darius Julianus in an extraordinarily short period. As I say, he marches from Pannonia, meets basically no resistance, enters into Rome. He receives the quick acclamation of the Senate. Julianus is cast away, he's declared a public enemy and is murdered in the imperial palace in relatively short order.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Then Severus has a successful march into the capital itself. Now it's interesting here that Dio and Herodian offer us slightly different takes on that. In one telling we have Severus marching in full armor, his army behind him, a very unsubtle image of imperial power projected.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
But in another telling, he stops at the gates almost and then changes out of his armor into a toga and comes in in a very civil mode of introduction to the Roman capital. The reality is, though, the armies behind them in either case doesn't really matter what he's wearing. There is very little ambiguity about who or where the real power resides.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And so it's no surprise, really, then, that the Senate, I think, opt to support his claim in the year 193. Now, Severus will spend the next four years fighting civil wars. Albinus and Niger will not give up without a fight.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So he goes against Piscinius, Niger, and Syria first. He spends the first year and a half of his reign waging a war to the east against the Syrian legions, which he manages to conclude relatively swiftly, relatively successfully. And it's at that point that Caracalla becomes really important to our story.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Well, Caracalla first. It probably changes his life, I would say, more than Geta's in the short term, because he is used by his father to consolidate the Severan dynasty as a nascent regime. He's also really put into the firing line because it is Severus elevating Caracalla to the rank of Caesar in 195 that causes the second civil war that Severus has to fight.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So at the end of his campaign against Niger, Severus retroactively adopts the entire Severan family into the Antonine household. It's a very bizarre political conceit to kind of retcon the history, which bolts his family onto that of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. So that he has lines of legitimacy, it seems, going every direction. His rule is unassailable on terms of legitimacy.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Now, the problem for Severus is that in doing that, in putting his son to the fore like this, he has basically broken a treaty with Clodius Albinus, the governor of Britain. He had made this treaty in 193 with Albinus to name Albinus his heir apparent, his Caesar, as a way of buying off that rival to the west to allow him to wage a war in the east.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It's clear that in 195, with Niger defeated, Severus feels no need to hold on to that treaty for any longer. And Caracalla is the vehicle. He is the weapon that is used to signal to Albinus that Albinus is getting no bite of the cake anymore and it's war. And he's less than 10 years older this time, Caracalla. So he is just being used by his dad. Yeah, he's not even 10.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
He's just before his 10th birthday, probably is when he is named the Caesar and the heir apparent. Now, again, that's quite a bold statement to have a child as your heir apparent. And it's exactly that. He's used as a tool to signify that the Severan regime is ready to stand on its own feet and will brook no alliances with other factions anymore. And it triggers a bloody civil war.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
196 through 197, we have a fairly intense campaign where it seems that Claudius Albinus... brings most of the military power from the British Isles over into Gaul, and ironically meets Severus in battle at Lugdunum, at Leon, where Caracal is born, the year 197. And Cassius Dio tells us that this has about 150,000 men on either side, duking it out on the fields outside Leon.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And this is the largest single Roman land battle in history, if we believe Dio's numbers.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
That's right. I mean, partly we just don't hear about Geto tremendously much, and that, it seems, is a literary choice on the part of the authors, I think, in order to accentuate or emphasise maybe the role of Caracalla within the imperial succession, etc., at least initially.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
The literary portrait is one thing, but the reality is that Severus doesn't actually give Geta any role or any constitutional importance at that point. When he elevates Caracalla to Caesar, Geta gets nothing, really, at all.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And when eventually after the civil war against Clodius Albinus is concluded, Severus goes and wages another war against Parthia, basically I think to recoup some booty and some material gain and to focus all his legions on an external enemy. At the end of that campaign, he elevates Caracalla again to become Augustus, so a co-emperor with him.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
That's probably the early days of the year 198, and that's timed, it seems, to coincide with the anniversary of Trajan's Day of Accession, his Diaz Imperio. So Severus, again, is trying to play all the propagandistic games and using his children to attach his regime to all of the best and all of the best-liked facets of Roman imperial history over the preceding centuries.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So Caracalla is made Augustus at that point, and it's only then that Geta's brought in and given anything, and he's made Caesar at that point. So although there's only 11 months separating the brothers, Caracalla is far more senior in the line of succession than Geta is at this point.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So yeah, so on the point of terminology, yes. Caesar and Augustus begin as names from within that Julian family line, so Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus. They take on relatively rapidly. official titles, or they become rather, relatively rapidly, official titles. Augustus just refers to the emperor and Caesar refers to the heir.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And you're right, when Caracalla is made an Augustus in 188, that is a shared position now with his father. And this evokes, it seems, the shared empire of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
This is something that I think, again, Severus is well aware of the visual language of this kind of move and is exploiting that to elevate this idea of an Antonine link between his family and that of Marcus Aurelius.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've seen Severus called the master of the arts of revolution. He is just somebody who, if he's not incredibly skilled personally with PR, he certainly has somebody within his court that knows what they're doing because he is really terribly good at it. And this whole Antonine association isn't just a kind of passing reference.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It becomes a core pillar of the visual language of this regime as a whole. And that's something that really comes to characterize Caracalla and Geta in the late 190s into the early 200s, we have Caracalla and Geta appear on coins, appear in statuary, and they are presented as young Antonine children. They have this kind of cherubic facial feature going on.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
They have this lovely, soft, fluffy hair style kind of thing happening. And importantly, on coins, if it weren't for the titles... I think many people would struggle to distinguish between the two. So, I mean, that's another interesting facet of this in as much as while Karakal is definitely given more constitutional authority, nominally, I mean, he's a child, how much is he actually doing?
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
In terms of the propaganda that the regime is pushing out and the mass media that they're pushing out, the Severan children are almost indistinguishable. And I think that's by design.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I think Severus is saying with this that he has two children, that the future of the dynasty is assured, and that these two brothers are, while they may have different stations, they are indivisible and almost indistinguishable from one another. That's how close they are. That's how wonderfully loved up the Severan family is.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Now, it's interesting in that we have further evidence that Severus wants to use them in this idea of a vast program of family unity being promoted. The two boys feature very prominently, for example, in the secular games of AD 204. This is a large cultural set of games that has gone on from the earliest phase of the Imperial era.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It has huge religious overtones and the Imperial family usually plays a significant part. Severus has every single one of his family members play a significant role. They each lead different sections and delegations of this set of games. Beyond the family propaganda, though, we have a sense that not all is well in the house of Caesar.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
We have a sense that the two boys, while being very close in age and while being presented as indivisible princes, just don't get along. I mean, the pair of them just don't seem to enjoy each other's company, and we have early early signs that they're intensely competitive with one another.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Although much of this will only come out in our sources when the sources get onto the middle point of that first decade in the 200s. Because what happens before is that attention is focused on the problematic Praetorian prefect, Plotianus. Because it seems, at least in Daiwa's telling, that Plotianus
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
a prefect who is alleged to have staged or attempted to stage a coup in the year 205 to overthrow the Severan household, Dio claims that he's almost like a pressure valve that holds the boy's competition in check. It's only when this troubling Praetorian is eliminated and executed that the boys' rivalry really starts to accelerate and explode because there's nothing to hold it in check.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
There is no external force that the boys are both focused on rather than on each other.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So in the early phase, it seems that both boys just, as you might expect young princes to have, sizeable entourages who seem to just encourage their worst impulses. They are a bunch of yes-men. Spoiled teenagers as well, I guess, aren't they? Absolutely. Well, this is it. They are teens.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And I think that's something that even scholars sometimes overlook, the fact that they are probably just quite natural teenagers themselves. Moody and hormonal and not very predictable. And yet they are facilitated by huge entourages who encourage them to compete with one another. This is seen in Dao, for example, where we have them at the chariot races.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
If one boy, one teen, one prince chooses one faction, Dallar will be sure to pick an opposing faction because, God forbid, they pick the same faction. And it seems to intensify and the public rivalry that grows between the two boys gets even more visible. Daioh tells us, for example, of one occasion where the two boys themselves were engaged in chariot racing.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
One presumes just through the middle of the capital and there's a chariot crash and Caracalla breaks his leg in that competition. And Severus is lauded at that point for kind of just ignoring the two of them and getting on with his work. But it's an indicator that this is a public problem now for Severus, and it gets increasingly embarrassing as the first decade of the 200s draws to a close.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And this image of Caracal and Geta chasing through the streets after one another in their chariots actually put me in mind of the animated Prince of Egypt cartoon. I don't know if any of your listeners will remember that when the Ramesses and the Moses characters basically destroy an ornamental city in their chariots. That's very much the image I got from this.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
These two tearaways not really caring whose way they get in or what they damage or destroy as long as they get to have their little competition with one another. This is becoming a much more public embarrassment for Severus that he has to do something about.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
At least partially, it's this animosity between his two sons that seems to prompt his decision to take the entire imperial court, along with a huge army, over to Northern Britain when the governor writes to Severus and claims that there's some trouble on the frontier. He takes an expeditionary force of about 50,000 men. This is a ridiculously large force.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
for what is ultimately, sorry Britain, a relatively insignificant frontier at this point. And it seems to be partly to remove his sons from the corrupting influence of Rome and to expose them to austerity and military life so that they might start to behave like emperors.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Yeah, I mean, I tend to obviously think that the British campaign has a little bit more complexity to it than the likes of Dyer wants to tell us.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
But I am tickled by the fact that this old soldier who has spent a lot of his reign at war in a kind of military context thinks that that might be the answer, to get his boys out of the city, away from the soft life and make them live in a tent for a few years and come to their senses.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So if Severus's intention was to get the boys to see sense and work together, he doesn't seem to go about it in a tremendously effective manner. When they're in Britain from 208 until just after Severus's death in 211, the pair of them seem to have completely different remits. So Caracalla, as a co-emperor from the outset, is given command at least of part of the military.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
He seems to go on campaign with his father in the year 208-209. And in 210, when Severus, it seems, is becoming increasingly ill and physically unable to lead a force himself, Caracalla seems to be handed the mantle of command and takes an expeditionary force into what is now modern-day Scotland. So he's very much the military one of the pair.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Geta, by contrast, seems to be getting trained, at least, in a much more administrative capacity. From all accounts, we don't get a sense that Geta ever leaves the imperial headquarters at Ibarakum in modern York. This situation is complicated, of course, though. It's never just as simple as that, because Severus does something else when the family's over in Britain.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I've said how Geta basically gets no slice of the cake. He's made Caesar in 198. In that intervening decade, he basically gets nothing more. He's made a pontifex, so he's made a priest. Some people want to mistakenly call that, oh, well, he's made Pontifex Maximus. He's not. He's not. He's not made the head priest. He has made a priest.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
In 209, however, Severus makes the decision that the time has come and that Geta will also be elevated to the rank of Augustus. So you've got three now. Wow. So in 209, we have a tripartite principate. And for me, that is one of the core moments for understanding this pair of brothers.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Not just how Geta might feel, finally being given a bit of a share in the Imperial power alongside his brother, who he's had to be in the shadow of for the best part of a decade. I also try to think about it from the perspective of Caracalla. I can only imagine that being really a jarring moment.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
He has assumed, perhaps, that he is going to share Imperial power with his father for all of his father's life. he will succeed his father and then he'll decide what happens. Whereas no, in 209, he is forced to share the imperial mantle with his brother, who we've just said he's fought hammer and tongs with for the best part of a decade. This is a very interesting constitutional move.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I'm still not sure I understand Severus's logic, to be honest, but it does change the dynamic within the Severan imperial household.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
There's no doubt about the fact that she is a pivotal figure in both young men's lives at that point. In Britain, given that she's a member of the imperial court but obviously would be in no way attached to the military, it's more likely that she spent more time with Geta during that campaign.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Now that said, Julia's role in our literary reconstructions of the period is fascinating because it shifts everything. depending on the source. Dio very much has Julia as an ambitious political operative in her own right. We get the sense that she is hungry for power behind the scenes and that this kind of characterizes all of her decisions. In Herodian,
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
we get what I tend to think is probably the most likely relationship between Caracalla and Geta and their mother, that Julia Domna is the voice of reason. She is the rational one within the household and is always trying to bring her wayward sons together.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I mean, it's incredible. For somebody like me, this is just a pot of gold. I mean, if you'd asked me a decade ago when I first started studying these as a postgraduate student, would I expect any filmmaker, let alone somebody like Ridley Scott, devote time to the Severn family, I would say, well, I hope so, but I don't expect it. So I am absolutely psyched. It's brilliant.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
After Severus dies, we have this allegation in Herodian that Caracalla and Geta loathe each other so much that they just decide they want to split the empire in two. And that Caracalla will rule from the west and Geta will rule from the east. Caracalla in Rome, Geta probably in Alexandria.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And that the two armies will almost face off against each other at the Hellespont so that they can monitor each other's movements. It's a kind of wacky situation if you sit down and analyze it.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It's an extraordinary proposition. There's no real reality to it, probably, but it's a very good vehicle for Herodian to show what kind of character Juliet is, because Juliet is the voice of reason who stops her sons from this course of action. emotionally appealing to them that they can't divide their mother into.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So that's the kind of thing that they would be doing by carving up the empire in doing this. So Julia is very much this voice of reason, it seems, within the imperial household. And the Senate, it's not just the literary, the Senate also seemed to want to believe this as well.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Because when Severus dies, she is given a couple of really unusual titles by the Senate, which reflect this idea of her as the peace-bringer. She's given the qualities of Pia Felix, so pious and sort of Felix-lucky or happy, and she has made mater sanatus. So she's almost made a de facto guardian of the Senate in their interests to stop these two kids from tearing the empire apart.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So we've got the image of Juliet as the rational one. That is not really what we get in the Historia Augusta, of course. The Historia Augusta is not interested in something so mundane as that kind of image. The Historia Augusta tends to use Julia in order to attack Caracalla from whatever angle it chooses at that point.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
In the Historia Augusta, we get an allegation that Caracalla and Julia are excessively close, and there's an allegation of an incestuous relationship between the pair. That's in the life of Caracalla. In the life of Geta, we get the sense that
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Julia is not in fact Caracalla's biological mother and that Julia therefore is always championing Geta's cause and the reason for Geta's elevation is owing to Julia's intervention behind the scenes with Severus. Now that ties into the kind of wicked stepmother trope that Caracalla will face as well so there's a lot of literary baggage around here.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
But my advice to you and your listeners is basically if you want to establish anything about Julia and the Suns, avoid the Historia Augusta. Stick with Herodian because you're getting nothing of real value out of the HE at this point.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I mean, I'm sure on the Twittersphere, there's going to be a bunch of historians really already nitpicking, but I am truly excited.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Okay, so the British campaign was in its third year by this point and had not produced really any decisive outcome. Severus had claimed a quick victory and had given himself and his two sons the imperatorial title of Britannicus. This may well be another reason for the campaign as a whole just to get tea and medals for Caracall and Geta.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
But they're still stuck there, and it looks like they're going to be stuck there for a while. And in February 2011, the situation changes only with the death of Severus on the frontier. In that moment, we see almost like a light switch.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
The two boys, now forced to share power together but alone, without the influence of their father, seem to make every effort to conclude the British campaign within a matter of days, weeks if not days. They immediately call a treaty with the northern tribes, insofar as they're able. They may believe a small military force in northern Britain, but the pair of them then race back to the capital.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
They're in one big train, though, and this is kind of an interesting point about this. It seems that they start to just completely separate from one another. They barely have any contact at all. They're also already on the way back to Rome. They're not even left Britain and they're trying to angle the courtiers towards their faction.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
They're trying to get their people in the right places within the imperial court to support them over their brother, adversary, rival. I don't even know what we would label it at this point. And this continues when the boys get back to Rome. I mean, the funeral stuff for Severus, we've got his urn, it's back in Rome, that's all fine. The brothers seem to divide the imperial palace into two.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And this may be where Herodian gets his idea about wanting to divide the empire into the imperial palace, more or less as a partition wall put up in it, and the two boys never meet one another. They are intensely worried about each other, poisoning them. So they have huge bodyguards start to grow up around them.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Now, indeed, they continue to promote this idea of family harmony that Severus has tried to do for the last decade. One of the big themes in the imperial coinage and inscription of this period is Concordia Augustorum. So the harmony of the emperors, which, I mean, anybody who knew These two surely must have seen this as an utter fallacy.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Now, Dio, who loves a good old man or portent, gives us a sign that this situation, this rivalry, but this kind of cold war will only last for so long. He says that anybody who could see this knew that something terrible was bound to happen. And he offers us this sort of beautiful set piece of the Senate trying to meet with the priests of Concord to sacrifice in the Emperor's honour.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
But the people who want to make the sacrifice get lost and can't meet each other and they're wandering around Rome and the palace trying to find one another and they can't do it. They can't make this harmony sacrifice work. So something bad is going to happen. And this is where it comes to head.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
We're not told about any sort of big events or things where they try and appear together, but Dio tells us that in public appearances, they do try and maintain the conceit that is familial unity. So I would say in scenes like that in the Colosseum and Gladiator 2, yes, it wouldn't be uncommon, I would think, in this period for the two boys to be sat together as co-emperors, whether they are...
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
maniacally laughing genuinely with one another as gladiator 2 has it is another question i think that ultimately the the atmosphere within that royal box might be a little bit more icy cold than ridley scott would have us believe all right then come on then let's you said that it gets to a head so what is this it goes cold war turns hot it does and then some i mean if severus is dead in february 211 the whole situation comes to its violent conclusion before the end of december 211
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So the boys have been living in Rome in this kind of partitioned life for a while, growing bodyguards, much suspicion, only barely holding on to the imperial conceit that they're together. Now, it seems that they're both trying to outmaneuver one another and to assassinate the other one, basically.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I mean, Dio tells us that Caracalla wants to do it from the moment Severus dies, but is held back or can't make it work. Herodian tells us that the pair of them are equally as bad as each other and are just continually plotting in an escalating fashion. Now matters come to a head when they realize, I think, that they're not going to be able to get around each other's huge bodyguards at this point.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So Dio at least tells us that Caracalla petitions his mother, Julia Domna, to call a meeting between the two boys at which the pair will arrive unarmed without all their bodyguards. And that seems to make sense. That is something that the Empress could and would have done. And it seems that the meeting is to arrange a reconciliation.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So Caracal and Geta both attend this meeting in Julia Domna's chambers, and we have different tellings of what happens next. In Herodian's telling, We have Caracalla simply losing the plot, going feral.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
That's exactly it. I mean, I think about my own route into classics, and while I would love to say I was kind of immersed in classical literature from a very young age, that simply isn't the case.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
The actual act of the murder is lost, but using interpolations from other sources, we get the sense that Caracalla just launches himself at Geta in a frenzy and stabs him dozens of times in the chamber there right in front of Julia Domna. So he does it personally.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
He kills his brother right there. So says Herodian. Oh, wow. Now, Cassius Dio gives us a slightly different telling. Cassius Dio does tell us that he basically delegates the task. Cassius Dio tells us that when the meeting is underway, Caracalla gives a signal. And at that point, 10 centurions, presumably picked from within the Praetorian Guard, burst into the room.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And this is an even more harrowing scene, I think, if it can be, than Caracalla murdering Geta by hand. Because in Daioh's telling, at the sight of the centurions bursting in, armed and dangerous, obviously, Geta runs to Julia Domna and clings to her and pleads for his life. And nobody pays attention.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
The centurions launch themselves at Geta whilst he is in his mother's arms and assassinate him right there. And Daioh tells us that Julia, in trying to shield Geta, also received a wound to her arm in the midst of this. So...
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
taking pause for a minute because I mean it's always entertaining to talk about these wild emperors and their murderous tendencies but I try and get my students to think about this moment in time just for a second if there's any historical reality to it it is absolutely heinous and it is highly traumatic
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
We have Caracalla either murdering or ordering the murder of his brother and co-emperor in their mother's arms in the Imperial Palace. This is an unprecedented act of political murder. And in the aftermath, Caracalla immediately runs from the chamber and petitions the Praetorian Guard for their support. He claims that he was the target of a plot
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I mean, I started getting into the ancient past through watching things like Spartacus, and you have no idea how distraught I was to learn that there was no I'm Spartacus moment with Kirk Douglas, but that was the kind of vehicle that got me into the ancient past. And so, yes,
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Which, you know, looking aside from the literary agendas of the sources, may well be true. But the act of murder itself is pinned wholly on Caracalla at this point.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Well, you're right. I mean, after murdering Geta, this whole family line about the family being lovey-dovey and unified can no longer hold water. Caracalla engages in the practice that we give the modern label, damnatio memoriae. It's not just a condemnation of the memory, it is an abolition or a destruction of the memory. Now, this is well seen in modern times.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
For example, in Stalinist Russia, you have the idea of the vanishing commissars, people just disappearing out photographs. In antiquity, it usually involved defacement, destruction of statuary, inscription which recorded their names. Any kind of public presentation of that condemned figure was eligible for destruction or vandalism.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And Caracalla is renowned to have engaged in the most violent, the most extensive, the most virulent example of damnatio memoriae during the Roman imperial period. Our literary sources tell us that not even the coinage which bears Geta's devices was spared from Caracalla's wrath. He attacks statues.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
There's a scene where, I think it's Dio tells us, Caracalla literally with a sword himself hacks at statues bearing Geta's likeness and image. We have evidence from our coinage that survives that it has been brought back in, counter-stamped. Bits of Geta's face have been chiseled off the coins. His inscription around Rome is completely wiped out.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
There's a really good example of this on the Arch of the Silversmiths in modern central Rome, where you can see on the actual arch, the inscription has been chiseled out, and there's a very very conspicuous gap on the family portraits where Geta would have been. And that's kind of the point. It's not an erasure to make everybody forget, so to speak.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Having seen the trailers alone, there will be inaccuracies, there will be points where the directors have made some very interesting choices, but as a piece of mass media, it's worth its weight in gold to ancient historians like us to draw in people, to learn more, because the actual history behind these characters is just as entertaining, if not more so, I'd suggest.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It's a deliberate act designed to make people remember that this person is condemned and is damned for eternity. So Yeah, it's a very, very extreme reaction. But it's also a component in Caracalla's new rationale for his regime. He can't claim to be one of the family indivisible anymore. He has to change the narrative.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And as part of that, Geta is condemned as somebody who plotted against him, somebody who looked to overthrow him. And so the act of damnatio memoria, extreme as it is, is politically consistent.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And that was one of many. That is probably one of my favourite images from the Severan era as well. It's actually my laptop's desktop background. This is the so-called Berlin Tondo, and it's a relatively small artifact.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It was made in Egypt, but you're right, it has a beautiful family group, or what would have been a beautiful family grouping, except for the smudged-out face, conspicuously smudged-out face of Geta in the bottom left field. But we still have the neck and shoulders. It's just a conspicuous rubbing out of the face. And I think I'm right. I've said this before, I think, in other places.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I think I'm right that chemical analysis has showed that dung or feces might even have been used to erase the face of Geta on that image. So it's a double insult. It's a double condemnation. If they can denigrate as well as erase, they choose to do so. And as a final marker of Caracalla's wrath, He doesn't deify Geta.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Geta doesn't initially get made a god in the way that some previous Roman emperors have been made. Instead, Caracalla seems to keep offering sacrifices to the manes or to the departed spirits of Geta. Now, you might think that sounds like a relatively nice move, but what it does is it basically locks Geta's soul in the underworld and stops him from becoming a god in his own right.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So even then, it's petty and it's cruel.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So Caracalla and Gaeta are the two sons of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Septimius Severus is known commonly as the African Emperor. Certainly, he comes from modern-day Libya and is really the only emperor at that point to have come from that part of the Roman Empire to hold the imperial power. So Severus seizes power in a coup in the year 193, and by then he has his two sons.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
They're not even 10 years old at that point. Caracalla's born in 188, Geta's born in 189, so only 11 months separate them age, and they are princes from a very early period.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
That's correct, yep. It's a common thing in the sources that we might come on to later to infantilize Geta a little bit just because he's that younger brother. But in actual fact, there is only, as I say, about 11 months separating them. They are remarkably close as brothers.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So listeners, if they've dropped into my previous engagements with history and the ancients, this will probably sound like a little bit of a broken record to them, but... Oh, we still do. We've always got to do it, my man. We've always got to do it. Absolutely. I'm always happy to talk about these sources because there's a lot to say.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
We have three main sources that we work with for re-establishing the history of Caracalla and Geta as individuals. Ironically, two of them really don't say a tremendous amount about Geta in particular. We will come on to that sort of distinction maybe later. We have, firstly, the historian Cassius Dio.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Now, Cassius Dio was a senator during the sort of later Antonine era under Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and served as a senator through the early Severan period as well. He writes about his contemporary era in a very dour way. He's not tremendously fond of any of the Severan rulers, it has to be said, and so
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
We have a fairly negative character portrait of Caracalla built up very early and very little is said about Geta until about midway through that contemporary account. The other source we have that is near contemporary is the author Herodian. He's probably writing a little bit further into the third century.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
We get a little bit more maybe of Geta's personality coming through in that source, but the focus tends to be very much on the mutual animosity that builds between the two brothers. Now, ironically, the best source we have for constructing anything that we might have to consider character portraits of these two comes from the Historia Augusta.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Now, this is a very late 4th century, maybe even early 5th century set of Latin biographies, and the calibre or the quality of this set of works is still a huge matter of academic disagreement. Historically, people thought they were just absolute trash. They were fictionalized accounts that just pulled facts and indeed sources out of the air.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
There was a bit of a shift back in recent years to think that these might be kind of clever literary games going on within the set of biographies that comprises the H.A., Whereas now, more recently, people are thinking that the author of the Historia Augusta is really reliant on other late Latin historians, such as Aurelius Victor.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
There's been a couple of really good publications about that particular relationship in recent years.
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
We get very clearly defined character pictures of both men, both boys, through these lives, through these biographies. But whether there is much truth to them is another matter.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So when the two boys are born, so 188 and 189, they're born into an empire which is, with hindsight we can see, is coming to the end of one particular era, the Antonine era. This has been the so-called Golden Age, the Pax Romana, where we've had emperors transition power peacefully and stably for the best part of a century at that point.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
This is the end of the era that really commences with Nerva and Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius is regarded to be the final good emperor in that set of five that cover the second century. Now, Marcus Aurelius is not the... just the kind of sagely Richard Harris type character that we see in Gladiator 1.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And it's only in some later Latin sources that we have this question of Marcus Aurelius maybe regretting having to hand over the empire to Commodus, which is, again, what we see with the Richard Harris version. The history, the reality is, though, that there doesn't seem to be this moment where Marcus Aurelius says that he's going to restore the Republic.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
I mean, that was never really a reality at this point in the empire. What happens is Marcus Aurelius hands over the reins of power, or brings in, rather, his son Commodus to share imperial rule with him. He brings Commodus in in the mid-170s, following a bit of a fright for his own regime, which is where one of his provincial governors, the governor of Egypt, Ovidius Cassius, rises in revolt.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Now, there's a lot of convoluted literary tragedy that's sort of injected into that tale, but ultimately the reality is Marcus Aurelius has been frightened that his regime isn't tremendously safe, and so he brings Commodus in as the official future of the dynasty. He'd been made a Caesar as a young boy, that heir apparent.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
He was made a co-emperor alongside Marcus Aurelius, really for the last decade pretty much. of Marcus Aurelius's reign. Now when Marcus Aurelius dies, Commodus is the last man standing. He is the only emperor. There is no shared principate like we've seen in the earlier phase of Marcus Aurelius's rule. And we appear to have a fairly stable first couple of years of Commodus's reign.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
There is a question of whether there's a bit of internal plotting going on and from the outset Commodus it seems is faced with a bit of unpopularity within the senatorial order especially. This is something that's reflected in
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
gladiator one where we have i think it's derrick jacobi give us the voice of the senate who are none too impressed with the the rather showy flashy wannabe gladiator that is the emperor commodus and we have this sense that commodus is kind of just going from one small crisis to another across the 180s And this culminates around the year 191, where we have a great fire in Rome as well.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So nothing seems to be going tremendously well for Commodus, and he is assassinated at the very close of the year 192. So when Caracalla and Geta are born in the late 180s, they're in an empire that is, I think, in the midst of what will become painful change. It's a painful transitional process. Now, They couldn't have predicted that, obviously, at this point.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
When Caracal and Geta are born, their father doesn't even seem to be anywhere close to the imperial throne. He is just one of many regional governors. He is the governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, so a section of Gaul, modern-day France, the headquarters or the capital of which is in modern Lyon.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
So it's a fairly cosmopolitan city by Roman standards in the Latin West, and they're probably brought up as relatively well-to-do aristocratic children, in the first couple of years. Now, they moved to Rome before the fatal event.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
Absolutely. So brought up in not just Latin, but trained in Greek as well, Greek being pretty much the lingua franca at this point rather than Latin. and given all sorts of insights into the cultural capital that one will need as a well-to-do Roman. So they'll be trained in oratory and rhetoric. They'll be given education about history and philosophy.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It's a fairly rounded or multifaceted education for a young up-and-coming Roman child at that point. And they'll have been drilled into with stories of great heroes like Alexander the Great, who will become much lauded by Caracalla in particular later.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
It's interesting in as much as, from what we can establish in the sources, it doesn't seem like the children follow their father through his later Because Severus, their father, will become governor of Upper Pannonia, so a very militarized region on the Danube frontier.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
And he will be in that position in the year 192-193 when Commodus is murdered and we have a variety of crises affecting the empire within a very short order. The children, it seems, are in the city of Rome, from what we can establish. This just reflects the fact that they're not tremendously important characters, maybe in their own right, being so young at this point.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
But they are housed in the capital. Now, we can tell that because when civil war begins and Severus starts to march on Rome, eventually, the boys have to be ushered out of the capital in secret, it seems. So there's a suggestion there that they were just living a fairly...
The Ancients
Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
regular life as far as Roman aristocratic children can, but had to be ushered out of the city at a point where there may have been danger to their lives owing to their father's attempt to take the imperial throne.
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Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II
100%. I mean, when 193 starts, even then, there's no real sense that Severus is even in consideration, as it were, for becoming an emperor. We have the throne handed to the aged, very experienced senator and multifaceted governor, Helvius Pertinax. And in many ways, he seems the ideal candidate for the throne. He has a wealth of senatorial and military and gubernatorial experience.
The Ancients
Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
I think our sources give us a very particular version of who this individual is. But often he is a foil either to the violent extremity of Caracalla or he is just the pre-runner to the later Severan era. I mean, often when you read even textbooks about this era, you'll have the Severan era and Macrinus will barely get a mention, such as the kind of limited amount that we know of him.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
In terms of his background, we know that he was born in the Roman province of Mauritania, so on the North African coast. And this is something that will become important for his story later. He was not from a senatorial family. He was not from a highly aristocratic family. He was a member of the equestrian order, so that second property class of Rome.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And I don't want listeners to think that this is a kind of... middle class, for want of a better description. These people are still often obscenely wealthy, it's just that they don't have the family bloodlines of the senatorial order. The equivalent, some said they're like the knights or something, is that right? Absolutely.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
I mean, the name, the Ordo Equestria, the Equites, it really all has that kind of equestrian knightly vibe to it, and historically it was, you know, these people could afford horses to engage in warfare with. But certainly by Macrinus' time, it is just a large social class within Roman society. And so this is the kind of context into which he's born.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Dio and Herodian are fairly much in agreement that he is trained as a lawyer. And I think it's Dio who tells us that he's maybe not the most inventive legal mind out there, but he is quite diligent in his following of the law. And this seems to bring him into the orbit of the Praetorian prefect in the early 3rd century, Plotianus, infamous for his attempted coup later on against the Severans.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yes, we talked about him in the last episode, didn't we? Yes. We did, yep. So sort of the internal problems that the Severan household faces in the 3rd century, a lot of it comes down to this Plotianus figure. And according to Dio, Macrinus is quite lucky, actually, not to be tarred by association and kind of gotten rid of after the Plotianus affair.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
But it seems that for a while he kind of holds junior magistracies thereafter. I think the one office that Dio tells us Septimius Severus allows him after is kind of like a traffic superintendent on the Via Flaminia. So it's a little bit of a kind of step down from working in the Praetorian prefect's office.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Well, that's how I like to imagine it. I'm sure it was probably much more administrative, but I do like to imagine him as a kind of glorified traffic cop for a few years in the wilderness. But he eventually, as Severus's reign goes into Caracalla's, his career seems to steadily increase again. He occupies a number of procuratorial posts and ends up as Praetorian prefect himself.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
So in early 217, Caracalla is in the midst of a military campaign against Parthia, against the Parthian Empire. This is something that he had started in 216.
The Ancients
Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yes, that's correct. And under the Parthian royal household, we've not quite got to the stage in history where this becomes the much more aggressive Sassanid Persian regime. We're still in the final years of the Arsacid Parthian royal household. Now, the campaign that Caracalla wages has been rather inconclusive to everybody's frustration.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
The first campaigning season, 216-17, appears not to have produced a single meaningful clash between Roman and Parthian forces. I think its Herodian gives us this rather convoluted idea of Caracalla trying to outsmart the Parthians at a wedding reception, which is, I think, a lot of historical bunk. But in reality, it's been a frustrating year of campaigning.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Caracalla wages another campaigning season immediately because that's basically his style. That's him. He is a soldier emperor at that point. And it's quite clear, I think, reading between the lines of our sources, particularly Cassius Dio, that this is not going well. The soldiers themselves are starting to get a little bit frustrated, I think, with the lack of any kind of decisive outcome.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And importantly for Caracalla, we've seen a real diminishment in his imperial concilium. That is to say, the group of senators or people that would usually surround an emperor and offer day-to-day advice. The account that Dai offers us is very fragmentary, but it suggests that basically there's only one senator left in that circle at all, this consular guy called Aurelianus.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
So Caracalla is in the field, mired down in a campaign which doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Macrinus is there as Praetorian prefect, but it seems that there is a much smaller circle around Caracalla at this point as well, as everybody seems to be getting increasingly fed up with him as an emperor as much as a commander.
The Ancients
Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yeah, Caracalla has been in the midst of this rather frustrating campaign. It seems visiting a number of kind of local sites and towns and religious sites. And he's been to a lunar deity near the site of Cari, which, you know, those of you that maybe know Roman Republican history know that that is a kind of disastrous area for Rome generally.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Crasses meets his gold-plated finish near Karai. And it's on the way back from that visit that he stops to empty his bladder and his guards, or at least an officer within the guard, descends upon him and stabs him brutally. And yeah, like Matilda, I just love this idea of these two letters coming across. It's highly dramatic. It's very...
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
dio in as much as the whole thing is kicked off by this portent or this prophecy. There's no real insight into the nitty-gritty of what's going on. Actually, it's all down in our literary sources to this prophecy. that Macrinus will seize power and his son will be named an emperor as well.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
It would be interesting to know exactly what was really going on in the military camp around that point, but one way or another, Macrinus feels vulnerable and it seems that he doesn't waste any time to take action, lest the letter from Antioch get to the front and reach Caracalla's eyes before he can do anything.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yeah, it does seem, no matter who you read, that there seems to be a brief interregnum because Macrinus can't step forward and say, right, chaps, we did a good job here. It's my turn now. There's no way that that would be acceptable, even with just the army surrounding them. So Macrinus, I think Matilda's right to say that's probably what he does. He makes this great show.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Oh my goodness, there's been a murder and the assassin is hunted down by some of Caracalla's loyal bodyguards and is killed. So in a way that helps Macrinus because there are no loose ends to implicate him at that point in the murder, even if later on the kind of story creeps out that he's been implicated in some way.
The Ancients
Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And so it seemed that there are at least a couple of days between the murder of Caracalla and the accession of Macrinus where the army, those who are around from the imperial court, are more or less compelled to put somebody on the imperial throne. The army is hundreds of miles into enemy territory at this point.
The Ancients
Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
The Parthian king seems to be raising forces to counter the Roman army in this region. An army and empire without a commander at this point is unthinkable. And so Macrinus, as one of the most senior magistrates of the court, is apparently installed at this point. And this in itself is a remarkable chain of events because, as I said earlier, Macrinus is an equestrian. That does not happen.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Macrinus is the first man of equestrian status to achieve the purple. This is a real watershed moment for who gets to be in charge of the Roman Empire.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Thank you for having us. Fantastic to be here and to share a space with Matilda, who probably dating myself, I knew first when she was one of my students and now she has become an extraordinary scholar of the third century.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Oh, it's undoubtedly a difficult position. And it's ironic, though, you say that he would be worried about news getting to Rome. It seems that Rome is probably the safest environment that he could have been in. Certainly Dio and Herodian a little bit less. They say it's questionable why he didn't just disband the army immediately upon ending the Parthian campaign, which we'll get onto in a moment.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
and just hightail it back to Rome. Why he dallied in the east and why he himself ended up in Antioch for a while, it seems that he himself wasn't sure how to respond to the kind of myriad problems and myriad little situations that he was facing as emperor and that would ultimately cost him his life. In the immediate sense, he does send letters to the senate in Rome and
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
It's interesting the way he tries to seize the initiative but also pander to the Senate as well. In his first letter, he apparently just claims a bunch of imperial titles. This is where his imperial nomenclature changes and he adds Severus to his naming tradition.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
The Senate are a little bit confused by how presumptuous this new de facto emperor is being, I think, by claiming all of these imperial titles. But at the same time, they're just tremendously happy that somebody has gotten rid of Caracalla. And so in the very short term, they're just kind of happy to let things roll and let him be the emperor.
The Ancients
Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Now, his second letter follows after he concludes the parting campaign. he initially tries to negotiate with the Parthian king, because the Parthian king's bearing down on the Roman army at this point. The Parthian king's having none of it. He wants Rome out of the Mesopotamian region.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
He wants them to rebuild all of the forts that they've destroyed at their own cost and basically to apologize to everyone on their way out. So, you know, rebuild the wall, I suppose you could use a modern political parlance. Now, Macrinus refuses. I mean, he's in no position to accede to that kind of demand.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And indeed, it would have been political suicide with the army around him to be seen, I think, to surrender everything. So he has to fight, initially at least, and that doesn't go very well. The Roman army is defeated in the field at Nisibis, and he has to come to another negotiated conclusion. Now, In historical terms, he doesn't give away as much as the Parthian king seems to have wanted.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
So it's not a completely dishonorable peace. And yet, in his communication, he's trying to big this up, that he has secured peace with honour. And this is where the threads start to unravel, because not everybody accepts this narrative. And certainly the army, while they may have been frustrated by Caracalla's campaign, this slightly ignominious end to their campaigning does him no favours either.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And so I think it's very easy to see with hindsight how Macrinus, his regime, comes unfurled within the space of months. But it would be a mistake to class him as inactive. I think he gets an unfair rap. I think he is dealing with a very difficult and unprecedented situation.
The Ancients
Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
He's having to set a new political narrative in motion at the same time as having to inherit a campaign of his predecessor, which is less than stellar. And I think this whole move about keeping the sovereign women alive...
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yes, sure, we know it's a strategic tactical error, but if he is trying to paint himself as this Severan continuator, as a way of kind of glossing over his equestrian heritage, it seems to me at least a sensible move. I mean, I would hate to sort of put myself into McCrinish's shoes, but... I think it's coherent as a set of policy.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
So I think there's a reason why he doesn't retreat to Rome immediately. But I think, ironically, that may have been the one course of action that could have saved his regime long term.
The Ancients
Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
He's initially named as Caesar, and that is the extent of his formal acclamations that get agreed by the Senate. Macrinus will later name Diogenes and his son as a co-Augustus in the kind of frantic last few weeks of his regime, but the Senate barely even hear about this by the time he's assassinated.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
I'll just look for them until they're frowning at me over my answers. And hope to goodness that I keep myself right.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yeah, it's kind of gruesome stuff. I mean, just to go back a second, I'm a little bit more cynical on the whole Elagabalus as the son of Caracalla thing. I think everybody knew this was complete hokum, but we're being offered so much cash that it was an easy conceit to accept.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And also, I think it was probably a very thinly veiled statement by this quote-unquote Severan cause that they have more bloodline claim to being the Severans than Macrinus with his new Severan name coming out of nowhere. And yeah, events at Raphinae, I think, kind of show that the ground is ripe for the Severans to stage this counter-revolution.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
It's interesting that Macrinus, I think it's in Herodian's telling of this episode, sure, Julianus has been sent with detachments to try and secure the third legion. Macrinus is at Apamea because that is the legionary fortress site of the second Parthica when it is in the east. So he is actively trying to court that legion at the point where Julianus is murdered.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And Herodian tells us that Macrinus gives this long speech and offers a bunch of money and a ton of honours and the troops at Apamea take the money, accept the honours and then one of them pulls Julianus' head out the basket to show Macrinus and Macrinus is just penniless, defeated, and that's it. Has to go back to Antioch, empty-handed, but at least with his head.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Oh yeah, there's a big battle, all right. The big battle takes place just outside Antioch, actually. The sources disagree a little bit on the location of the battle. Some want to see it situated further east. But it seems that in all of Macrinus' attempts to secure a power base, he really doesn't have a tremendously large force around him.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
It's mainly comprised of his loyal Praetorians and some other local people. formations that he has brought with him to fight this battle and all of the defected forces that are now team Elagabalus are on top of him and a large battle ensues and doesn't the account of the battle shifts and changes between our sources and one telling Macrinus' forces just don't put up a fight.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
They're steamrollered by the Elagabalan forces. But, and I think this is where Matilda can offer insights, there is another telling where Macrinus' forces actually put up some kind of stiff resistance and Elagabalus' forces, all of these cheats and defectors, on the verge of breaking and retreating.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
It seems like both of them, Macrinus and Diogenes, actually survive the conflict itself and they make to flee. They are caught in different locations. It seems that Macrinus is caught in Bithynia, so that modern Turkish coastline. That's quite far.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
It seems like he's trying to make for a port to actually get out of Dodge and maybe even go towards Rome. Maybe he's realized at this point that he has to get to the capital in order to raise any kind of significant resistance. And I think it's Herodian's telling, although it might be Dao,
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
maybe do actually because it's kind of supernatural he gets in the boat and the boat starts to make progress and then a contrary wind comes and forces that boat back into port and Macrinus is captured thereafter and his captors don't really know what to do with him at first but it seems like on the road back to Antioch
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
They make the decision just to assassinate him and he is killed or beheaded en route. Now, he sent his son, I think, at some point in that escape, he's actually sent his son, so the sources tell us, towards the Parthian border.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
He sent his son to fall on the good graces of the Parthian king after their negotiated settlement, which suggests that maybe, if there's any truth to it, maybe the settlement was a little bit more substantial than our sources want to accept. But in any event, it's a futile effort. His baggage train or whatever, his cortege is caught and he is murdered in the middle of that escape route as well.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
In terms of his His immediate political legacy, it's almost non-existent, is condemned. He is a road hump, it seems, or a bump in the road, rather, in the otherwise uninterrupted Severan story. His legacy is condemned by the new Severan regime, and that's really pretty much the end of it. As you say, it is so short, he's not really had enough time to lay down any more significant roots or
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
create any kind of significant legacy. And certainly, while the senators seem to have been happy enough to accept him in the short term, equestrian as he was, Dyer's account is just characterized start to finish by a rank snobbery as a senator against this absolute upstart. Now, Herodian's account is interesting because it's written slightly later.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
It's written probably in the 240s, maybe even into the 250s AD, at which point Who gets to be a Roman emperor is slightly different. So we find a little bit more emphasis in Macrinus' identity and Macrinus' apparent attempts to explain that identity in Herodian's account. But that's probably because Herodian was writing under the emperor Philip the Arab, who himself was of equestrian origin.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
descent and had risen to imperial power through military strength and through a coup that way. So that's quite an interesting way that Macrinus' identity is squared away by one writer owing to history repeating a little bit later down the line. Only a couple of decades, mind you, but still the divergence in the sources there is quite obvious. Dio of his time arch senatorial.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yeah, that's a really good point. There is in some ways a bit of a blank slate that's just ripe for Hollywood to put in something where the evidence drops off for us. I mean, yeah, like you Tristan and Matilda, when I looked at Macrinus, when I've read about Macrinus, I would not immediately assume that he was going to be the subject of a Hollywood epic.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Even though he's glad Caracalla's dead, he just cannot swallow this lower class person. Again, still obscenely wealthy, holding the imperial throne.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Oh, that's a bold statement. I think we're kind of heading that direction, maybe regardless, but it is a really interesting counterfactual. I tend to agree with Matilda. I think Macrinus deserves a lot more attention. I think he... is completely overwhelmed by the circumstances that he inherits. I think that's really the defining feature of him.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Now, I'm somebody who would like to go back and revisit his rise to power, though, because this whole prophecy declaring that he will be an emperor seems a very neat way to explain it in narrative terms and to kind of almost... give him a blank slate or a green light towards this. I would like to know whether he was a little bit more calculating, you know, the protege of Plotianus at one point.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Has that kind of ambitious Praetorian identity rubbed off on him? The scheming bureaucrat. Yeah, well indeed, that pencil pusher is there more than meets the eye to the pencil pusher, perhaps. But I think, yeah, I would tend to agree that he may even have had good intentions towards the imperial government. Certainly he wants to make that argument.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
but just he entirely underestimates the situation that he faces immediately militarily in the East, politically with the remaining Severans, and in kind of social class structure about just how acceptable somebody with his background will be wearing the purple.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Certainly not cast by somebody as titanic as Denzel Washington, I should get right off the bat. I am already starstruck and yet struggling to kind of square away what I've read about Macrinus, short-lived that he is, with this major Hollywood star who's going to make him into this character I think that people will come away Well, maybe.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
I think just from the trailer, I already am intrigued and kind of already predisposed to admire what he's doing with this character. So it will be interesting.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Okay, so, well, shall we start with Geta laying on the floor in the Imperial Palace, absolutely brutalized by his older brother or by a bunch of centurions that he ordered. After that, Caracalla runs to the guard and the army and tries to secure his regime with those constituencies very quickly, which he does relatively successfully.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Now, interestingly, the Historia Augusta gives us a little bit of a hint that there might have been some discord for Caracalla in as much as they have the second Legion Parthica that's based at Albanum. Close the doors on him because they swore allegiance to both brothers. And what is this he's coming to them with about? Sorry, where Albanum did you say? Yes. Where's that?
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
About 20 miles outside Rome, which is interesting in as much as it's called the Second Legion Parthica. You would think it was stationed in the east, but for all intents and purposes, and hugely oversimplifying it, it becomes something of a kind of mobile reserve, a mobile field army that the emperors can take with them. Usually on campaign in the east, it has to be said.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
So Caracalla secures the support of the army. He has less success maybe securing the support of the Senate. He certainly gives a couple of speeches where he decries Geta as this villain and this enemy of the state and shores up his own regime. But it's quite clear that he is never going to enjoy life in the capital.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
So about six months, no more than eight months maybe after the murder of Geta, he's already gone. He's already outside Rome and he is on a journey that will be predominantly military. He will do multiple campaigns and he will never return home from. Now,
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Before we get onto that, I should say that there's one other point that he does while he's in Rome, which is, you know, I'm laboring because it's one of my major passions when I study it. Before he leaves Rome, he seems to enact an edict that we now know as the Constitutio Antoniniana or the Antonine Constitution.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
In one move, in one edict, he gives the rights of Roman citizenship to nearly every free person living within the Roman realm. It's a constitutional watershed. And certainly, historically, scholars thought that citizenship was this kind of mechanical process. You're defeated by Rome, and then you're gradually brought into the body politic. It doesn't seem to be the case.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Modern studies have suggested that only around 33% of the empire's total population were enfranchised in 212 prior to the edict. So this is a remarkable move. And it's something that is quite avant-garde, it seems, for an emperor who's usually known as a bloodthirsty tyrant.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
He seems to want to secure this huge loyalty base after the murder of Geta, and this is one of the ways he does it, just by making everybody citizens in one move.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yeah, it is a watershed moment for how citizenship is perceived. Certainly. There have been a lot of arguments about what is the actual application of it. It could be just a kind of legal expedient to make everything a bit smoother. It could be a political expedient, as I've argued, to kind of make everybody accept the new narrative that Caracal is laying down, that Geta was this villain.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
But whatever the rationale for it, It's a remarkable move, which is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Register, I think it is. So it has a very, very esteemed now afterlife, but it's introduced by this kind of murderous villain who spends the next five years on campaign on the northern frontier, and then eventually the eastern frontier, where he wages war on Parthia.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And if you're looking for the kind of the spark notes, the short version... He raises an army basically wherever he goes, through Germany, through Thrace, through Greece, into Asia Minor. The only other really important point that I would raise for listeners, if we're doing a very short version of Caracalla's reign here, is that he visits Alexandria, the city of Alexandria in Egypt.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Now, Caracalla, you may know, is a big Alexander the Great fanboy. Oh, he loves him, doesn't he?
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Cannot get enough of Alexander. Claims that he's Alexander reborn, according to the senators, according to Dio. Although I question that to some extent. Anyway, he arrives in Alexandria. This is supposed to be the pinnacle of his imperial tour. I mean, he's going to the city of his idol. He's visiting the tomb of Alexander, and he's offering sacrifices to the god Serapis as well.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Now, he stays there for a few months. He arrives in the winter of 215, and he leaves in the early months of AD 216. The visit has gone incredibly sour at that point, though. There are sources, Dio Herodian, the Historia Augusta, they all agree that for some reason or another, there's a breakout of civil disobedience, rioting in the city, and Caracalla puts it down violently.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And the sources, while they may exaggerate slightly, they agree that he probably killed around a quarter of the city's population before leaving. I mean, it's a remarkable contrast. That emperor giving everybody citizenship... and then laying waste to one of the foremost cities of the empire before he leaves. It's a remarkable story of kind of extremities, I would say, as Caracalla's reign.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
And then his final months are spent on campaign against Parthia.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
Yeah, I mean, family dynamics are complicated in the Roman imperial period. I mean, I suppose you could make that argument for any monarchical or autocratic system. What goes on within the family dynamic is an absolute mystery, and that for me as well is one of those big mysteries. If Di was correct that she was in the room at the point of Geta's murder, then
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
It is, to our modern sensibility, absolutely unthinkable that she could then go on and be the faithful servant and the administrative figurehead of this regime for another four and a half, five years. It is utterly, utterly remarkable. I mean, Dio paints her in a very particular way, as I'm sure Matilda will talk about later. He depicts her as being kind of power-hungry in her own right.
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Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome
So there's a little bit of a complicating factor in how our ancient literature talk about Julia Domna in as much as She's a powerful imperial woman, and she can't really shake that baggage from some of these rather conservative men. But it is, to this day, one of these big mysteries. How on earth did they work that out? It's a very difficult dinner table situation thereafter.