Antoninus Caracalla

Of the two sons whom Septimius Severus left, Geta and Bassianus—of whom the one the army, the other the father called Antoninus—Geta was judged a public enemy, but Bassianus obtained the empire. Concerning his ancestors we think it vain to repeat ourselves, since everything has been sufficiently said in the Life of Severus. His boyhood, then, was winning, talented, affable to his parents, pleasant to his parents' friends, acceptable to the people, agreeable to the senate, and even, for winning love to himself, advantageous. He was not slow in letters, not sluggish in kindnesses, not tenacious in giving, not slow to mercy—but so he seemed under his parents. Finally, if ever he saw the condemned thrown to the wild beasts, he wept or turned away his eyes, which was more than amiable to the people. As a boy of seven, when he had heard that a playmate of his, a boy, had been rather severely flogged on account of the Jewish religion, for a long time he looked askance neither at his own father nor at the father of the boy, as if they were the authors of the flogging. To the people of Antioch and Byzantium he restored, by his intervention, their ancient rights, with whom Severus had been angry because they had aided Niger. He conceived a hatred of Plautianus for the sake of his cruelty. The favor of the Sigillaria, which he had received from his parents, he gave away of his own accord to his clients or his teachers.

But these things he did as a boy. When, however, he had passed out of boyhood—whether by his father's admonitions or by the cunning of his nature, or because he thought he should be made equal to Alexander the Great of Macedon—he became more restrained, graver, more truculent even in countenance, so that many would not believe that he was the same man whom they had known as a boy. Alexander the Great and his deeds he always had on his lips. Tiberius and Sulla he generally praised in company. He was prouder than his father; his brother he despised with great haughtiness toward him. After his father's death, going to the Praetorian Camp, he complained among the soldiers that he was being beset by his brother's plots, and thus had his brother killed in the Palace; his body he ordered at once to be cremated. He said, moreover, in the Camp that his brother had prepared poison for him and had been disrespectful to their mother; and he publicly gave thanks to those who had killed him. Finally, he added pay to these as more faithful toward himself. Part of the soldiers, at Alba, took the killing of Geta most ill, all saying that they had pledged their loyalty to the two sons of Severus and ought to keep it for the two. The gates being shut, for a long time the emperor was not admitted until their minds had been soothed—not only by the complaints about Geta and the accusations brought forth, but, as usual, by the enormousness of the donative the soldiers were pacified. And from there he returned to Rome. Then, having a breastplate beneath his senatorial robe, with armed soldiers he entered the Senate-house. These he placed in the midst, between the benches, in a double row, and thus made his speech. He complained of his brother's plots, obscurely and in disorder, to that man's accusation and his own excuse—which indeed the senate too did not gladly accept, when he had said that he had granted everything to his brother, had freed his brother from plots, and that his brother had nevertheless made most grievous plots against him and had not

returned love for brotherly love. After this he restored to those who had been relegated and deported their return to their native land. Thence he went forth to the praetorians and remained in the Camp. The next day he sought the Capitol, and addressed affably those whom he was preparing to kill, and, leaning on Papinian and Cilo, returned to the Palace. When he had seen Geta's mother weeping, and other women, after his brother's murder, he attempted to kill the women, but was restrained from this lest the cruelty of his slain brother be increased. Laetus he forced to death by poison sent by himself; for he had been the first among the urgers of Geta's death—who was also the first to be killed. He himself very often wept for his death; he killed many who had been accomplices in his murder, and likewise the man who had honored his image. After this his cousin Atrus, to whom the day before he had sent portions from his dinner, he ordered to be killed; who, when he had thrown himself down through fear of the assassins and had crept to his wife with a broken leg, was nevertheless mockingly caught by the assassins and killed. He killed also Pompeianus, the grandson of Marcus, born of a daughter and of Pompeianus, to whom Lucilla had been married after the death of the emperor Verus—whom he had both made consul twice and set over all wars, which were then most serious; and indeed in such a way

that he seemed to have been killed by brigands. Then in his sight Papinian was struck with an axe by the soldiers and killed; and when this was done, he said to the assassin, "You ought to have executed my order with the sword." There was killed too, by his order, Patruinus before the temple of the deified Pius, and their corpses were dragged through the street without any reverence for humanity. He killed also the son of Papinian, who three days before, as quaestor, had given a costly show. In those same days countless men were killed who had favored his brother's party. There were killed too the freedmen who had served Geta. Then there was slaughter in all places, and slaughter done even in the baths, and some were killed even while dining—among whom too was Sammonicus Serenus, very many of whose books for learning survive. Into the gravest peril came also Cilo, twice prefect and consul, for this reason: that he had advised concord between the brothers. And when this same Cilo, his senatorial robe being taken off, was dragged barefoot by the city soldiers, Antoninus suppressed the riot. He committed, moreover, many killings afterward in the city, several men being everywhere seized by the soldiers and killed, as if he were avenging a sedition. Helvius Pertinax, a suffect consul, he killed for this reason alone, that he was the son of an emperor; nor did he ever cease, under various occasions, to kill those who had been his brother's friends. Often against the senate, often against the people, he inveighed haughtily, either by edicts posted up or by speeches delivered, showing too that he would be a Sulla.

These things done, he sought Gaul, and as soon as he came into Narbonensis he killed the proconsul. Then, all who were managing affairs in Gaul being thrown into confusion, he earned a tyrant's hatred—although he sometimes feigned himself even kindly, though he was by nature truculent. And when he had done many things against men and against the rights of cities, being seized by disease, he was grievously ill, and toward those who tended him was most cruel. Then, preparing a setting-out to the East, the journey being abandoned, he settled in Dacia, and around Raetia killed not a few barbarians, and exhorted and rewarded his soldiers as if they were the soldiers of Sulla. Indeed he forbade himself to be called by the names of the gods, which Commodus had done, though many called him Hercules because he had killed a lion and other wild beasts; and when he had subdued the Germans, he called himself Germanicus, either in jest or in earnest, foolish and mad as he was, asserting that, if he had conquered the Lucanians, he would have to be called Lucanicus (the sausage). Condemned at that time were those who made water in a place in which there were statues or images of the prince, and those who took crowns off his images to put others on; condemned too were those who wore, tied to their necks, remedies against quartan and tertian fevers. Through the Thracias he made his way with the prefect of the guard; thence, when he crossed over into Asia, he ran into danger of shipwreck, the yard being broken, so that he went down into a skiff with his bodyguards; whence, taken up into a trireme by the prefect of the fleet, he escaped. He frequently took boars; he stood up even against a lion, when, in letters sent to his friends, he boasted and bragged that he had attained to the virtue of Hercules.

After this, turning to the Armenian and Parthian war, he made a war-leader who suited his own character; thence he sought Alexandria, called the people together into the gymnasium, and rebuked them; he ordered too that the able-bodied be levied for military service. But those whom he had levied he killed, after the example of Ptolemy Euergetes, who was the eighth to be called by this name. Moreover, a signal having been given to the soldiers that they should kill their hosts, he made a great slaughter at Alexandria. Then, having entered through the country of the Cadusii and the Babylonians in tumultuary fashion, he engaged the satraps of the Parthians, with wild beasts too let loose against the enemy. Letters being sent to the senate as if after a victory, he was called Parthicus; for the name of Germanicus he had obtained while his father was alive. Then, when he again wished to make war on the Parthians and was wintering at Edessa, and from there had come to Carrhae for the sake of the god Lunus, on his birthday, the eighth day before the Ides of April, on the very Megalesia, when he had withdrawn for the needs of nature, by an ambush set by Macrinus the prefect of the guard—who after him seized the empire—he was killed. The accomplices in the murder were Nemesianus and his brother Apollinaris and Triccianus, who served as prefect of the Second Parthian Legion and who commanded the extraordinary cavalry; Marcius Agrippa, who commanded the fleet, not being ignorant, and besides very many of the officials, at the instigation of Martialis.

He was killed in the middle of the journey between Carrhae and Edessa, when he had dismounted from his horse to relieve his bladder and was among his bodyguards, the conspirators of the murder; finally, when his groom was helping him onto his horse, he stabbed his side with a dagger, and it was cried out by all that Martialis had done it. And since we have made mention of the god Lunus, it must be known—a thing handed down to memory by all the most learned, and so held even now especially by the people of Carrhae—that whoever shall have thought the Moon ought to be named by a feminine name and sex, he, addicted to women, shall always be their slave; but whoever shall have believed the god to be male, he shall be master of his wife and shall suffer no female plots. Whence, although the Greeks or the Egyptians, in that gender by which they call a human being female, also call the Moon a god, mystically, nevertheless, they call it Lunus (the male Moon).

I know that many have set down in their writings concerning the death of Papinian in such a way that they have not assigned a cause for the murder, different writers reporting different things; but I have preferred to publish the variety of opinions rather than to be silent about the murder of so great a man. It is handed down to memory that Papinian was a most close friend of the emperor Severus, and that, having studied with Severus under Scaevola, he succeeded Severus in the advocacy of the treasury, as some say, and was even a relative through his second wife; and that to this man especially each son was commended by Severus, and on this account he favored the concord of the brother Antonines; that he even worked to prevent his being killed, when Bassianus was already complaining of his plots; and that for this reason he was killed by the soldiers, together with those who had been supporters of Geta, Antoninus not only permitting but even urging it. Many say that Bassianus, his brother being killed, charged him to clear the deed both in the senate on his behalf and before the people, but that he replied that parricide could not be so easily excused as committed. There is also this little tale, that he refused to dictate a speech in which his brother was to be inveighed against so that the case of the one who had killed might become better; but that he, refusing, replied that this was another parricide—to accuse the innocent man who had been killed. But this is altogether unfitting; for neither could a prefect dictate a speech, and it is established that he was killed as a supporter of Geta. And indeed Papinian is reported, when, seized by the soldiers, he was being dragged to the Palace to be killed, to have foretold, saying that the man who should be substituted in his place would be most foolish, unless he avenged the prefecture so cruelly sought after—which happened; for Macrinus killed Antoninus, as we have set forth above. He, made emperor in the camp together with his son, called his son, who was named Diadumenus, Antoninus, for this reason: that by the praetorians Antoninus was greatly longed for.

Bassianus lived forty-three years and reigned six years. He was carried out with a public funeral. He left a son, who afterward was himself also called Marcus Antoninus Heliogabalus; for so the name of the Antonines had become ingrained that it could not be plucked from men's minds, because it had taken hold of the hearts of all like the name of Augustus. He was ill-natured and crueler than his harsh father. Greedy of food, eager too for wine, hateful to his own people, and, except for the praetorian soldiers, detested by all the camps—in short, in no way like his brother. He left at Rome as works the magnificent baths of his name, whose hot-bath chamber the architects say cannot be made by any imitation by which it was made; for the gratings underneath are said to be of bronze or copper, to which the whole vaulting was entrusted, and there is such a span that the men learned in mechanics deny that this very thing could have been done. He left also a colonnade in his father's name, which contained that man's deeds and triumphs and wars. He himself received the name Caracalla from the garment which he had given to the people, hanging down to the ankles, which had not been so before; whence today caracallae of this kind are called Antonine, much in use among the Roman common folk. He also built a new road, which is beneath his baths—the Antonine, that is—than which you would not easily find anything more beautiful among the streets of Rome. He brought the rites of Isis to Rome and built magnificent temples everywhere to that goddess; he celebrated the rites too with greater reverence than they had been celebrated before. In which indeed it seems to me strange how the rites of Isis are said to have first come to Rome through this man, when Antoninus Commodus celebrated them in such a way that he both carried Anubis and performed the halts of the procession—unless perhaps this man added to the celebration, and did not first introduce it. His body was carried into the tomb of the Antonines, that that resting-place should receive his remains which had given him his name.

It is worth knowing how he is said to have married his stepmother Julia as his wife. When she, being most beautiful, had, as if by carelessness, bared the greatest part of her body, and Antoninus had said, "I should wish, if it were permitted," she is reported to have replied, "If it pleases you, it is permitted. Or do you not know that you are emperor and give laws, not receive them?" On hearing this, his unbridled madness was strengthened to the accomplishment of the crime, and he celebrated those nuptials which, if he knew that he truly gave laws, he alone ought to have forbidden. For he married his mother (by no other name was she to be called) and joined incest to parricide, since indeed he united in marriage with her whose son he had lately killed. It is not amiss to add too a certain sneering thing said against him; for when he was adding the name of Germanicus and Parthicus and Arabicus and Alamannicus (for he had conquered the people of the Alamanni), Helvius Pertinax, the son of Pertinax, is said to have said in jest, "Add, if it please you, also Geticus Maximus"—because he had killed his brother Geta, and the Goths were called Getae, whom that man, when he crossed to the East, had conquered in tumultuary battles.

Of the killing of Geta many prodigies arose, as we shall set forth in his Life. For although that man departed from life first, we have nevertheless followed the order, that he who was both born first and who had first begun to reign should be written of first. At that time indeed when he was hailed Augustus by the army while his father lived—because that man, ailing in his feet, seemed unable to govern the empire—the minds of the soldiers and tribunes being beaten down, Severus is said to have turned over in his mind to kill this one too, had not his prefects, grave men, opposed it. Some say, on the contrary, that the prefects wished this to be done, but that Septimius refused, lest both his own severity should be stained with the name of cruelty, and, since the soldiers had been the authors of the crime, the youth should pay for foolish rashness the penalty of so grievous a punishment, so that he might seem to have been killed by his father. This man, however, the harshest of all, and, that we may comprehend it in one word, a parricide and incestuous, the enemy of father, mother, and brother, was, by Macrinus, who had killed him, through fear of the soldiers and especially of the praetorians, enrolled among the gods. He has a temple, he has Salii, he has the Antonine fellowship—he who snatched from Faustina her temple and her divine name; at any rate the temple which her husband had founded for her beneath the slopes of Taurus, in which afterward this man's son, Heliogabalus Antoninus, built a temple for himself or for the Syrian Jupiter or for the Sun—it is uncertain which.