Caracalla, Aurelius Antonīnus
Bassiānus
The eldest son of Septimius Severus. His name Caracalla was derived from a species of Gallic
cassock which he introduced at Rome; and that of Bassianus from his maternal grandfather.
Caracalla was born at Lugdunum (Lyons), A.D. 188, and was appointed by his father to be his
colleague in the government at the age of thirteen years; yet he is said, even at this early
age, to have attempted his father's life. Severus died A.D. 211, and was succeeded by his two
sons, Caracalla and Geta. These two brothers bore towards each other, even from infancy, the
most inveterate hatred. After a campaign against the Caledonians, they concluded a disgraceful
peace and then wished to divide the Empire between them; but their design was opposed by their
mother, Iulia, and by the principal men of the State; so that Caracalla now resolved to get
rid of his brother, by causing him to be assassinated. After many unsuccessful attempts, he
pretended to desire a reconciliation, and requested his mother to procure him an interview
with his brother in her own apartment. Geta appeared, and was stabbed in his mother's arms,
A.D. 212, by several centurions, who had received orders to this effect. The praetorian guards
were prevailed upon, by rich donations, to proclaim Caracalla sole emperor, and to declare
Geta an enemy to the State; and the Senate confirmed the nomination of the soldiers. After
this, the whole life of Caracalla was only one series of cruelties and acts of extravagant
folly. All who had been in any way connected with Geta were put to death, not even their
children being spared. The historian Dio Cassius makes the whole number of victims to have
amounted to 20,000 (Dio Cass. lxxvii. 4). Among those who fell in this horrible butchery
was the celebrated lawyer Papinianus. And yet, after this, by a singular act of contradiction,
he not only put to death many of those who had been concerned in the murder of his brother,
but even demanded of the Senate that he should be enrolled among the gods. His pattern was
Sulla , whose tomb be restored and adorned. Like this dictator, he enriched his soldiers with
the most extravagant largesses which extortion enabled him to furnish. The augmentation of pay
received by them is said to have amounted to 280 millions of sesterces a year. As cruel as
Caligula and Nero, but weaker than either, he regarded the Senate
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Caracalla. (Vatican.)
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and people with equal hatred and contempt. From motives of avarice, he gave all the
freemen of the Empire the right of citizenship, and was the first who received Egyptians into
the Senate. Of all his follies, however, the greatest was his admiration of Alexander of
Macedon. From his infancy he made this monarch his model, and copied him in everything which
it was easy to imitate. He had even a Macedonian phalanx of sixteen thousand men, all born in
Macedonia, and commanded by officers bearing the same names with those who had served under
Alexander. Convinced, moreover, that Aristotle had participated in the conspiracy against the
son of Philip, he caused the works of the philosopher to be burned. With equally foolish
enthusiasm for Achilles, he made him the object of his deepest veneration. He went to Ilium to
visit the grave of Homer's hero, and poisoned his favourite freedman, named Festus, to imitate
Achilles in his grief for Patroclus. His conduct in his campaigns in Gaul, where he committed
all sorts of cruelties, was still more degrading. He crossed over the Rhine into the countries
of the Catti and Alemanni. The Catti defeated him, and permitted him to repass the river only
on condition of paying them a large sum of money. He next marched through the land of the
Alemanni as an ally, and built several fortifications. He then called together the young men
of the tribe, as if he intended to take them into his service, and caused his own troops to
surround them and cut them in pieces. For this barbarous exploit he assumed the surname of
Alemannicus. In Dacia he gained some advantages over the Goths. He signed a treaty of peace at
Antioch with Artabanus, the Parthian king, who submitted to all his demands. He invited
Abdares, the king of Edessa, an ally of the Romans, to Antioch, loaded him with chains, and
took possession of his estates. He exercised the same treachery towards Vologeses, king of
Armenia; but the Armenians flew to arms and repulsed the Romans. After this, Caracalla went to
Alexandria, to punish the people of that city for ridiculing him. While preparations were
making for a great massacre, he offered hecatombs to Serapis, and visited the
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Caricature of Caracalla as an Apple-seller. (Avignon.)
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tomb of Alexander, on which he left his imperial ornaments by way of offering. He
afterwards devoted the inhabitants for several days and nights to plunder and butchery, and
seated himself, in order to have a view of the bloody spectacle, on the top of the Temple of
Serapis, where he consecrated the dagger which he had drawn, some years before, against his
own brother. His desire to triumph over the Parthians induced him to violate the peace, under
the pretence that Artabanus had refused him his daughter in marriage. He found the country
undefended, ravaged it, marched through Media, and approached the capital. The Parthians, who
had retired beyond the Tigris to the mountains, were preparing to attack the Romans the
following year with all their forces. Caracalla returned without delay to Mesopotamia, without
having even seen the Parthians. When the Senate received from him information of the
submission of the East, they decreed him a triumph and the surname Parthicus. Being informed
of the warlike preparations of the Parthians, he prepared to renew the contest; but Macrinus,
the praetorian prefect, whom he had offended, assassinated him at Edessa, A.D. 217, on his way
to the Temple of Lunus. His reign had lasted more than six years. It is remarkable that this
prince, although he did so much to degrade the throne of the Caesars, yet raised at Rome some
of the most splendid structures that graced the capital. Magnificent thermae bore his name
(see
Balneae), and among other monuments of lavish
expenditure was a triumphal arch, on which were represented the victories and achievements of
his father, Severus, and of which an illustration is given on page 118. Notwithstanding his
crimes, Caracalla was deified after death by a decree of the Senate.
