|
 ANTONINUS
(called
'CARACALLA')
A.D. 198-217
Caesar: a.d. 195-198
(under Septimius Severus)
Augustus: a.d. 198-217 (a.d.
198-209: with Septimius Severus)
(a.d. 209-211: with Septimius
Severus and Geta)
(a.d. 211: with Geta)
(a.d. 211-217: sole reign)
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (earlier Lucius (Julius or Septimius) Bassianus,
nicknamed Caracallus, commonly called Caracalla), A.D. 188-217. Born at
Lugdunum while his father was governor of Gallia Lug-dunensis, Caracalla was a
docile, affable youth who changed with the passage of time. As he matured into
his teens, his rivalry with his brother, Geta, intensified, and after he
murdered his sibling late in 211, his mental and physical illnesses became quite
serious, eventually causing his decline and murder.
Caracalla was appointed Caesar and princeps iuventutis in December 195
(often erroneously cited as 196), shortly after his father had defeated
Pescennius Niger and settled affairs in Asia Minor. At this time he was also
re-named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, for his father was now claiming to be the
son of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161—180). Severus' main purpose in all this
was to establish ties to the golden age of Rome and to make clear to Clodius
Albinus that he was establishing his own dynasty — into which Albinus no longer
figured. In 197 he became Pontifex and Des-tinatus Imperator.
After Clodius Albinus had been defeated in
February of 197, Severus once again turned his attention to the East,
taking his family with him on a conquest of Parthia. The offensive was a great
success, and upon taking the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon on January 28, 198,
the 10-year-old Car-acalla was raised from Caesar to Augustus, while his
9-year-old brother, Geta, was hailed Caesar.
The family remained in Syria in 199, as
Septimius failed on two occasions to capture the city of Hatra. Then
they traveled to Egypt, entering that country before the year was out and
remaining in Egypt for almost a full year, after which Caracalla aided his
father, and on January 1, 202, Caracalla shared the consulship with his father
in Antioch.
In that same year, his father celebrated his decennalia with lavish
games, and Caracalla was forced into a
hateful marriage with Plautilla, the daughter of the corrupt and arrogant
praetorian prefect Plautianus. If anything
positive could be said about the marriage, it was that the dowry was
immense and the ceremony was as grand as Rome had ever seen.
However, Caracalla despised his new bride as
much as he did his avaricious and treacherous father-in-law. Indeed,
Caracalla and Plautilla may justifiably be
compared with Drusus and Livilla, in the same way Severus and Plautianus
equate to Tiberius and Sejanus. It was a re-run of palace politics that almost
exactly duplicated the situation that existed about 175 years earlier. The
situation was not a productive arrangement to anyone but Plautianus, who was
profiting immensely from the trust and responsibility
Severus had given him. Caracalla grew more hateful of his lot in life
with each passing moment. By January 205, only a few days after he had been
elected consul for a second time (this time sharing the honor with his brother),
Caracalla arranged the murder of Plautianus, and subsequently divorced and
banished his unwanted bride.
Caracalla spent the next three years in cosmopolitan Rome and rural Campania
with his family, and it was during this period that his social excesses and his
sibling rivalry grew to intolerable proportions. Caracalla and Geta were both in
their teens now, and their father did not approve of the direction in which
their energies were being spent, so he invented the need to personally take
charge of a campaign against the Caledonians in what is modern Scotland.
After the two young heirs had shared the consulship again in 208,
Severus prepared for the campaign that
would be his last. In 208 the family
departed Italy and arrived at Eburacum (mod. York), which served as a
base for the campaign. Throughout most of the war, Geta and Julia Domna
remained there, while Caracalla and Septimius led the legions.
Septimius was ill at the time, and so Caracalla assumed overall responsibility
for the campaign. This led to some disagreements, and he
became quarrelsome toward his father. At one point, the bickering became
so heated that we are told Caracalla appeared ready to stab Severus in the
back in full view of the army. However, a
sword was not necessary to slay his father, for on February 4, 211, the emperor
died of natural causes.
Caracalla made a peace with the Caledonians which was not entirely unfavorable
to the Romans, but did require that the border be withdrawn to Hadrian's Wall.
The three remaining family members returned to Rome bearing Septimius' corpse.
Along the way the hatred and mistrust that had long been evident between the
siblings grew to new proportions. Indeed,
each was so concerned about being poisoned by the other that they did not
dine or lodge together.
Their return to the capital began with a celebration of their father's funeral
and consecration, but soon turned into a fratricidal war within the palace,
which had to be physically divided to prevent their murdering one another. Their
mother, Julia Domna, was at her wit's end, and it was only her strong objection
that prevented the brothers from dividing the Empire between themselves along
geographical lines, Geta in the East and Caracalla in the West.
With Geta gaining numerous and important allies to his cause, the brinksmanship
being practiced by the brothers lasted only about 10 months from the day their
father died. After an earlier plan to poison Geta was exposed, Caracalla
convinced Domna to invite Geta to meet with him late in December, perhaps on the
26th. Together, he said, the three of them could work out their differences and
put everything right again. But the laurel branch turned out to be a sword;
Caracalla had his guards burst into the meeting room and slay Geta shortly after
he had arrived.
All in Rome were shocked and many outraged, though few could have considered it
a surprise. Caracalla hastened to the praetorian camp where he pled his case
with the guardsmen, insisting he had killed Geta while defending his own life.
The story was not convincing enough, so he offered a bonus of 2,500 denarii per
man to gain loyalty and support. He furthermore increased the payments-hvkind
made throughout the ranks of the army, and increased the salary of the
legionnaire from 500 to as much as 750 denarii per year. Though he offered no
money or payment-in-kind, Caracalla was able to convince the senate to support
him as well.
The murder was bad enough, but what followed was difficult to accept, for
Caracalla ordered a general massacre of Geta's partisans, and some 20,000 are
said to have perished. Among those killed were the
former Caesar, Pertinax Junior; Caracalla's
former wife, Plautilla (who was in exile on the island of Lipari); and
many others, from the lowliest friend or athlete to praetorian prefects and
senators.
At last, Caracalla was sole emperor of
Rome. The many promises he had made, however, were costly, and there was
an urgent need to raise revenue. To this effect, Caracalla doubled the
inheritance tax on estates, and in 212 he
introduced a law, the Constitutio Antordniana, which granted citizenship
to virtually all free men in the Empire. This greatly increased his base
of taxation, principally that on inherited estates and slaves. Hidden
within this law was also a hint of
Caracalla's infatuation with Alexander the Great, who likewise tried to
integrate all the people he conquered.
In 213 the young emperor assumed his fourth
and final consulship, but departed
Rome early in the year to wage war against the Alemanni, a confederation of
Germanic people who are first mentioned by ancient sources during this
campaign. It is at this time that the emperor began to wear the caracallus
(the hooded cloak from which his nickname, "Caracalla," is
derived) and the wig of golden hair
arranged in the German fashion.
Caracalla claimed a military victory, but
he won more through subsidies, the regular payment of which kept the
Germans pacified for another two decades. For all of this, he won the title
Germanicus Maximus from the senate. In the following year, Caracalla defeated
the Danubian Carpi and reorganized a number
of provinces as he made preparations to conquer the non-Roman east.
Conquering Persia, be it under Parthian or Sasanian control, was a goal common
to many emperors, and a disproportionate number of them died in their attempts.
For Caracalla, however, this ideal took on a dimension
far greater than simply adding to the holdings of Rome, for it also fed
upon his desire to replicate the legendary accomplishments of Alexander the
Great.
In 214 Caracalla attended the Pythian games at Philoppopolis, Thrace, where he
was hailed "Alexander" (with the title appearing on the commemorative coins
struck for the games). Indeed, that Caracalla envisioned himself as
Alexander novus is not surprising, for Alexander was about 22 years old when
he crossed the Hellespont and launched his Persian
invasion. At the similar age of 26, Caracalla held an identical position
— leader of the most powerful Empire in the Mediterranean world. Both men
thought in terms that were larger than life, and both were driven by an
insatiable (and perhaps slightly insane) desire to conquer the East.
Later in 214, Caracalla recruited a phalanx of 16,000 men, whom he had outfitted
in the same fashion as would have been Alexander's soldiers nearly 550 years
before. He recruited soldiers from Sparta, supposedly added elephants to his
arsenal, and even chose commanders who had the same names as Alexander's own
subordinates.
Caracalla next followed in Alexander's footsteps, visiting Troy and honoring it
as did Alexander before him. The now-deranged emperor staged military exercises
there to honor the heroes of the Trojan War. He himself played Achilles, and one
of his closest friends, Festus, played the role of Patroclus. However, to
fulfill the Homeric drama, it was necessary
for the otherwise healthy Festus to die, which he did with immaculate timing.
A grand funeral was held for this fallen (poisoned) comrade, anointing the
upcoming war.
In addition to obvious mental illness, Caracalla was also suffering from
physical ailments. One of his visits while in the East was to Perga-mum,
where he sought a cure at the shrine of Aesculapius. (He had previously
visited a shrine of the Celtic healing god Apollo Grannus in Germany, and later
sought relief at the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria.)
In 214, the emperor wintered in Nicomedia,
where he remained until early April of 215. He then embarked for Antioch,
arriving there in May, 215 with eight legions and establishing his headquarters.
His mother, Domna, remained there, coordinating many aspects of the campaign and
monitoring the Imperial correspondence.
The emperor first campaigned unsuccessfully in Armenia, and then
went to Alexandria, arriving in December of
215. Not surprisingly, he visited Alexander's tomb and sought cures for his
illnesses while he wintered in that city of half a million people. During
his stay, a great tragedy occurred that resulted in the slaughter of tens of
thousands of unarmed Alexandrian citizens. What prompted the slaughter is not
certainly known, but it may have been jeers directed at him for his
impersonations of Alexander, his murder of
Geta or the unfounded insinuation that he was having an affair with his
mother. Regardless of the cause, Caracalla lured
many of those who jeered him into a
confined area (on false pretenses, just as he had done with Geta) and had
them butchered to the man. The slaughter continued for several days in all
quarters of the city, as his soldiers raped, robbed and murdered without cause,
restraint or discretion. Caracalla and his soldiers remained in Alexandria until
March or April of 216, when they departed for Antioch.
Caracalla could now focus on his much anticipated Parthian campaign. He began
by humbly requesting to marry the daughter of the Parthian king, Artabanus. This
overture was rejected, perhaps wisely. Enraged, Caracalla crossed the Euphrates
and invaded Media. He spent the winter of
216 at Edessa, where he imprisoned the king of the Osroene, Abgar, whom
he also had lured to his court through trickery.
This was an ideal point in time for invading Parthia, since the kingdom had
been divided between rival siblings, Artabanus IV and Volo-gases VI. Since the
two Parthian brothers could not get along, they had divided their kingdom at
some point after the death of their father, Volo-gases V. This sibling rivalry
offers an uncanny historical parallel to the situation that had just been
resolved in Rome. In any case, the dispute of the Parthian brothers was
eventually resolved by the vassal king of Persis, Artashir, who overthrew the
Parthians within a decade of Cara-calla's war.
Although the Parthians had been unprepared for Caracalla's earlier
invasions, the kingdom was now ready to
oppose his aggressions. However, while en route to Mesopotamia,
the 29-year-old emperor was murdered near Carrhae on April 8, 217, as he stopped
by the side of the road to relieve himself.
Responsible for the coup was Caracalla's praetorian prefect and successor
on the throne, Macrinus, who may have feared for his own
life based on some correspondence he had
read. Delivering the fatal sword thrust was a soldier named Martialis,
who held a grudge against the emperor.
Caracalla's body was cremated and his ashes
sent to his mother, Julia Domna, who was then residing in Antioch. Widowed and
deprived of both of her sons, Domna was ordered by Macrinus (who had been
hailed emperor) to accompany Caracalla's ashes back to Rome, where she later
starved herself to death. Caracalla was deified Divus Antoninus Magnus
either early in September (perhaps on the 1st) of 217 under Macrinus, or in 218
under Elagabalus.
Numismatic Note: The early
coinage of Caracalla, from c. 196 to 211, followed patterns established by his
father. There are many interesting
"dynastic" issues bearing two or more portraits, and a considerable number of
interesting reverse types. During this period, Caracalla's portrait demonstrates
his maturation from a small boy to a young man of 23; however, his most
interesting coinage begins in 212, after he had murdered Geta. The
portrait is now fully bearded and develops
over the next five years into a baroque image, often with a menacing
scowl.
In 215 (or toward the end of 214), Caracalla introduced the double-denarius,
an entirely new coin that is usually mistakenly called an antonin-ianus,
after Caracalla's given name. It
was an inflationary coin: though presumably tariffed at two denarii (for
it was 'radiate'), it only weighed as much
as 1-1/2 denarii. Caracalla took another inflationary measure in 215,
when he reduced the weight of his aureus by 10 percent. These were only
part of his overall plan to increase
revenue to pay for his massive army.
Other interesting types were struck to celebrate Severus' victories in
Britain, and the rebuilding of the Circus
Maximus in 213. Regrettably, the emperor's greatest architectural
achievement, the Thermae Antoninianae (Baths of Caracalla), is not
commemorated or depicted on coinage. Caracalla's commemorative coinage,
inscribed DIVO ANTONINO MAGNO, was struck
by Elagabalus or Macrinus, presumably at the same time as the issues that
honor his mother, Julia Domna. |
