103 - The Equestrian

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 103, The Equestrian. Caracalla had donned the purple in early 211 AD, at the age of 23, and from that moment on he dedicated himself to the task of being a brutal, unforgiving, and moody tyrant towards everyone except his soldiers. He was as bad as they'd come, and I think the only reason we don't put him down as the worst emperor of all time is that, for one, he wasn't emperor for that long, and two, most of the really terrible things he did were merely exaggerated extensions of what his father had already done. He didn't have the time or the imagination to take a healthy empire and really wreck it the way that, say, Commodus had done, which is what it takes if you want to be considered the worst of the worst.

I don't see Caracalla's reign, then, representing a turning point in the history of Rome, but I do see it as representing a breaking point. His time on the throne became a sort of malevolent high-water mark that future emperors alternatively tried to dial back from, or ratchet back up to, depending on their dispositions. Caracalla, in his enrichment of the soldiers and his scorning of all other men, inadvertently set a standard that everyone would point to down the road as either a cautionary tale or as a shining beacon of light. Things can never again be like they were under Caracalla. Things must go back to the way they were under Caracalla. The former argued by the old men of the senate, the latter by the hard men of the army. This running argument was a major current in the tension that would define the coming crisis years.

When put succinctly, the argument sounds like this. Is the army the tool of the state, or is the state the tool of the army? Caracalla, for his part, probably was not acting from any deeply thought out political philosophy, nor probably did he care a whit that future generations would fight over his legacy. He just wanted to enrich the soldiers and scorn all other men. Like I say, no imagination at all.

But before we get to the business of bringing a violent and ignoble end to a man who deserved just that, we should swing back and briefly touch on three things. The first trivial, the second architecturally interesting, and the last fairly momentous.

First, I can't believe I didn't mention this before, but, yeah, how did Caracalla get his name? As I said in episode 100, he was known as Lucius Septimius Bassianus until his father became emperor, at which point his name was changed to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Caesar. His contemporaries, including the historians Cassius Dio and Herodian, generally shorthanded this to simply Antoninus. The name Caracalla, not really used in his lifetime, and really not used in his presence, was a nickname that referred to a particular type of gallant cloak that the emperor habitually wore. As the years passed, it became easier to label him with that distinctive cognomen rather than Antoninus, which was a name practically every emperor adopted so as to associate their reign with that now clearly past golden age. The same sort of thing happened with Caligula, who was referred to in his own time simply as the Emperor Gaius.

The second thing, the architecturally interesting thing, are the Baths of Caracalla, which the emperor ordered built in 212 and which were completed in 216. This massive, massive complex in the southeast of Rome was one of the last great construction projects of Roman antiquity. Before too long, Constantine will drag the imperial capital to Byzantium, and Rome itself will fall on hard times. Even in Italy, the dominant imperial cities will become Milan and Ravenna, depending on the decade, leading to a general disinclination in spending money to gussy up a city past its prime.

The complex, which sprawled over thirty-three acres, was by far the greatest and most ambitious bathhouse in bathhouse-crazy Rome, and more than any of its predecessors was a full recreational facility—sports rooms, baths of all kinds, grottos, libraries, gardens, the works. The thing was, and its ruins still are, quite a sight to behold. It cost a pretty penny, and no doubt displaced a lot of residents and businesses, but I think we can be pretty sure that that wasn't of any interest at all to Caracalla. One of the other last great building projects in ancient Rome, the Baths of Diocletian in the northeast of the city, copied profusely from the design of Caracalla's baths, which at that point had been operating for fifty years. Both baths continued to operate well after the nominal fall of the Western Empire.

The last thing, the momentous thing, was that in 212, shortly after becoming emperor in his own right, Caracalla extended citizenship to every free man in the empire. Slaves were still slaves, and women were still women, but by the stroke of a pen, or maybe the hammering of a chisel, every free man within the borders of the empire became a citizen of Rome. What had once been a valued prize, a prize so valuable that wars had been fought over who could have it and who couldn't, was now as common as the beggar in the street.

But before you start getting the wrong idea, no, Caracalla did not issue his edict of universal citizenship because he was feeling the moral tug of equal justice or something like that. No, as Gibbons says, by the time Caracalla issued the order, Roman citizenship was far more a burden than it was a privilege. Universal citizenship increased the tax base. Period. End of story. But even though it was now more of a burden than it was a privilege, that did not mean that citizenship did not still come with privileges.

However base and immediate his motivations had been, Caracalla's edict was a landmark moment in the history of Rome and the history of Western civilization. In an instant, one of the greatest legal distinctions of all time was blown to pieces. They were all Romans now. Well, except for the women and the slaves, but they don't count.

When Caracalla left Rome in 213 AD to travel the empire and become the common enemy of mankind, it was the last time the people of Rome would ever see him. He was still in the East in 217, taking a victory lap after his triumph over the Parthians, when he met that violent and ignoble end I was just talking about.

As I mentioned in passing last week, Caracalla posed too great a danger to too many men to not have one of them get desperate enough to attempt assassination. Not that I am in any way advocating a determinist reading of history, but the life and times of Caracalla just scream when he'll get assassinated, not if he'll get assassinated. The wind finally came when an oracle in North Africa started blabbing to anyone who would listen that Marcus Opelius Macrinus, one of Caracalla's praetorian prefects, was destined to wear the purple.

Everyone knew that prophecies like that were extremely dangerous, even during the reign of a relatively mild prince, but to have it floating around during the reign of a violent paranoid like Caracalla, well, that was basically a death sentence. The prophet in question was rounded up and brought to Rome for questioning, and the praetorians tried everything to get him to recant—threats, bribery, torture—but the oracle stuck to his story. Eventually, the praetorian officers in charge of the investigation were obliged to send a report off to the emperor, who was traveling around Syria with the imperial court in tow.

At this point, the Invisible Hand of Destiny, also known by its more common name, the Lucky Break, stepped in, giving Macrinus a chance to save his own skin. The report in question arrived with a bundle of other business, and Caracalla, never much for mundane governance, handed the entire untouched bundle to the good prefect Macrinus, with instructions for him to take care of the trivial matters, and brief him if, by some miracle, there was actually something interesting in there. Macrinus retired to his quarters and began working through the dispatches, when he came across a particular report from the praetorians back in Rome. I can only imagine that Macrinus muttered a fair share of curses under his breath as he read what the oracle refused to unsay. At a minimum, those few brief sentences were going to cost Macrinus his long and successful career. More likely, though, they were going to cost him his life.

Macrinus had been born in modern Algeria around 165 A.D., and, like Septimius Severus, was the son of an equite. But unlike Severus, he did not have influential uncles in Rome, and so he was never recommended for senatorial status. As a result of his status, he never held any of the traditional posts up-and-coming Roman politicians usually hold, and never held any position of authority in the legions. But he nonetheless distinguished himself as an able administrator, and routinely secured important posts within the imperial bureaucracy during the reign of Septimius Severus.

As you probably noticed, there were essentially two paths to public prominence in the Roman Empire. One was to be a great soldier, which Macrinus was not. The other was to be a great lawyer, which Macrinus, over the years, established that he most assuredly was. It was on the strength of his prowess as a jurist, then, rather than on the strength of his prowess as a fighter, that Caracalla named him praetorian prefect shortly after becoming emperor.

The appointment of a civilian to what was essentially a military post was not uncommon at all, and in fact emperors—the good ones, anyway—liked to represent both paths to prominence in their choice of prefects. One old military hand to keep the troops in line, and one capable bureaucrat to handle all the administrative work that had accrued around the guard over the years. Whether or not Macrinus was aiming this whole time to become emperor himself one day is unknown, but I would have to say that it's pretty doubtful. Over the years, prefects had aspired to be emperor in all but name, but their equestrian status, the very thing that qualified them to be prefect, disqualified them from being emperor. Sejanus had made probably the most concerted effort to get around this by marrying into the Julio-Claudian family, but most other ambitious prefects simply considered that final step a bridge too far, and were content to wield power behind the throne.

The empire had seen Italian emperors, and then Spanish emperors, and then even African emperors—emperors who were the sons of emperors, emperors who were the sons of equites, and even an emperor who was the son of a freedman, but all those men, by the time they donned the purple, were listed on the senatorial rolls. Which is why it was patently absurd that this loose-cannon oracle was predicting the reign of an equite named Marcus Opelius Macrinus. But no one could get the silly nutcase to shut up, so, absurd or not, Macrinus had to take the implications of the prophecy seriously.

With no way of keeping the information from Caracalla forever, and Cassius Dio reports that the emperor had perhaps already heard rumors about the prophecy, Macrinus' kill or be killed instincts took over, and he initiated a conspiracy to assassinate Caracalla. He was likely not too worried about negative blowback for the regicide he was contemplating—it's not like Caracalla was a beloved figure, even in the army, they only liked him because he continued to pay them—so the main concern was simply where, when, and by whom the deed would be done.

We don't know exactly how the murder exactly happened, despite the rich detail we find in the histories describing it, because those reports conflict with each other, and were most likely third-hand accounts of third-hand accounts anyway. The most commonly told version, probably because it was endorsed by Gibbon, is that in April of 217, Caracalla's entourage was on its way to a temple near the eastern frontier, and specifically, very near the site of the disastrous Battle of Cary, when the emperor called for a pit stop. Macrinus had already convinced a disgruntled soldier—most likely disgruntled at being passed over for promotion—to be his assassin, and with the emperor all alone by the side of the road taking care of business, Macrinus signaled for the disgruntled soldier to approach the emperor on some invented pretense.

As the head of the imperial bodyguard, the other praetorians took their cues from Macrinus, and when the prefect seemed unconcerned about this single soldier approaching the emperor, they too relaxed their vigil. The soldier came up alongside the emperor, and without warning, pulled out a dagger and began stabbing Caracalla to death. The assassin was instantly dropped by an archer and the bodyguard, but the damage had been done. Caracalla's bloody corpse lay motionless in the dust. He was twenty-nine years old, and had ruled the empire for just over six years.

Just like practically every other time an emperor was assassinated, the death of Caracalla opened up a power vacuum that needed to be filled, and filled fast, or everything was going to go to hell. Without having the time to work things out in advance with a ready, willing, and able Nerva or Pertinax, Macrinus had gone ahead and killed Caracalla without a shadow emperor waiting in the wings, which usually means big trouble.

Word quickly spread of the emperor's death, and the legions, especially the legions in the east, where most of the imperial court currently resided, suddenly found themselves once again in the business of king-making. The senate, who were supposed to have the final authority in these matters, found itself too far away from the action, and too weak anyhow, to get a word in edgewise. For three days, candidates were nominated and rejected by the legions for various reasons, until, with fearful desperation beginning to creep into everyone's hearts, the praetorians decided that it was time for them to put their weight behind one of their own.

The senior prefect, a man named Adventus, begged off the job, but Macrinus, perhaps swayed by the prophecy that had got them all into this mess in the first place, accepted the drive to make one of the praetorian leaders emperor. He had put on a pretty good show of surprise and grief following the murder of Caracalla, and so no one suspected that he was in fact the man behind the man who had killed the emperor. With the praetorians united, the rest of the legions resigned themselves to Macrinus. And in what would have been an unthinkable reality just a few days before, Rome found itself with its first ever emperor of equestrian rank.

Back in Rome, the senate too resigned itself to Emperor Macrinus. They were so happy to be rid of Caracalla that they probably would have supported inanimate carbon rod for the job, but beyond just being not Caracalla, Macrinus did bring to the table some nice attributes. He was an accomplished lawyer, and as prefect he had always been fair and judicious with the senate, so the overall feeling was that basically the empire could do a lot worse. I mean, it just had, right?

In time, they would come to regret their decision, not really for anything Macrinus did while in office, though they did nail him for a few things that he did while in office, but because it dawned on them one day that they had set a terrible precedent in allowing someone outside the senatorial club to take the job. But at the beginning, it was all, yay, Caracalla is dead, long live Macrinus.

The brief reign of the equestrian emperor is notable for one other small bit of trivia. He would be the first emperor never to set foot in Rome while in office. When the rapid succession of barracks emperors comes marching down the road pretty soon, this will become more and more the norm, but up until this point, every emperor had spent at least part of their reign in the capital. But only in office from April 217 until June 218, Macrinus would simply never get the chance.

The new emperor sowed the seeds of his own destruction right from the very beginning. He had been ruthless enough to kill Caracalla, but he was unable to extend that ruthlessness to the rest of the Severan family. In an attempt to appear liberal and generous and guilt-free, he refused to purge the imperial family and at first even allowed them to remain in Rome with their standing more or less unaffected by the fact that they were no longer technically the imperial family anymore. Taking up residence in Antioch, Macrinus thus allowed a group of people suddenly booted from power, free reign in Rome, to connive their way back in.

It's not that the Severans had any great love for Caracalla, or any reason at this point to suspect Macrinus of having killed him, but as emperor, Caracalla had been the linchpin that held them all fast to power, and now that he was dead, they were suddenly adrift. It should come as no surprise, then, that they conspired like mad to pin themselves back down. After he started receiving reports that the Severans were in fact plotting against him, Macrinus finally ordered them exiled from the capital, back to their maternal home city of Emesa. But really, not to sound cruel, if he wanted to stay emperor, he should have killed them all. They had no less planned for him, and he should have known that.

Julia Domna, for her part, did what Macrinus could not do, and, facing exile from the capital, decided that enough was enough. She went on a hunger strike, and died shortly thereafter. Life had taken a harsh turn for the empress following the death of her husband, and this last insult to her dignity was too much to bear. Probably a good thing that she died too, as it spared her from witnessing the further depravities of her extended family.

Said depravities mostly arose at the instigation of Julia's sister, Julia Mesa, who, by virtue of her relation to the Augusta, had lived a rich and untroubled life, but, much to her chagrin, she had never tasted the real power her sister had once wielded. Julia Mesa wanted that power, and had no compunctions about how she was going to get it. She had already been eyeing the fortunes of her two grandsons, who were the only males in the extended Severan family, and as such, stood as a very likely candidate to succeed the childless Caracalla, should he remain childless.

With Caracalla dead, those two boys now stood as the only real heirs to the house of Severus, the legitimate imperial house of Severus, that had been betrayed and exiled by that treacherous equite Macrinus. That these boys would become a rallying point for discontentment could have been seen from a mile away. The two boys in question were the only sons of Julia Mesa's two daughters, and together they all packed up and headed back to Emesa in 217.

The elder boy was named Varius Avidius Bassianus, and at this point he was fourteen years old. His younger cousin, named Marcus Julius Gessius Bassianus Alexianus, was himself only nine at the time of Caracalla's death. The fact that they hadn't reached manhood yet is probably what saved them both, as even at this point in history, the Romans looked sideways at murdering children. But really, Macrinus not killing them both when he had the chance turned out to be a blunder of the first order. Because soon enough, Macrinus will be dead, and history will come to know those two young harmless pups as his imperial successors, who we know as Elagabalus and Alexander Severus.

But before we get to that, we should get back to Macrinus, and his attempt to stabilize the empire, his own claim to the throne, and the fortunes of what he hoped would be a new dynasty all at the same time. In case you're wondering, things will not go smoothly.

Caracalla had, as you can imagine, left the empire in pretty dismal shape. His persistent draining of the treasury to heap rewards upon the legions had created a two-fold problem for his successor. One, there was very little money left in the imperial treasury, and two, the army expected to keep receiving the same kind of lavish donatives they had received under the late emperor. When Macrinus got into power and recognized the fiscal mess the empire was in, he immediately tried to scale back the soldiers' pay to a reasonable level, which immediately ticked them off something fierce. It didn't help that he had promised them the moon when they agreed to support him, but I can forgive Macrinus a little on that front, because, come on, campaign promises aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

The other pretty massive problem Caracalla had left for Macrinus was his utterly disastrous forays into foreign affairs. Locals in Dacia were upset about hostages Caracalla had taken, the people of Armenia were angry about Caracalla's imprisonment of their popular king, and the Parthians, well, the Parthians were understandably annoyed at that whole fake wedding real massacre thing we talked about last week.

In trying to set all of this right, Macrinus took the angle of least resistance, and in so doing, earned himself the scorn of both the senate and the legions for appearing weak. He returned the hostages to Dacia, appointed the son of the man Caracalla had imprisoned to take over the throne of Armenia, and in Parthia, well, Parthia was a bit more difficult. They had come barging west with a pretty good sized army, on a mission of vengeance, and the lifelong jurist was forced to don armor to go out and meet them.

The legions were by this time pretty cocky about their ability to handle the Parthians, who were about to completely fall apart and be reformed as the much more powerful Sassanid Empire, so they were dismayed to find that after one inconclusive battle, Macrinus was suing for peace. They were doubly dismayed when they discovered that it was the Romans who would be paying the Parthians to prevent further hostilities, and it was a huge sum of money that they were going to be paying them. And hey, aren't you the same guy who said you were too broke to pay us? So now not only are you proving to be kind of a cheapskate, but it turns out that you are a coward to boot, and a liar. You are not who we signed up for, sir."

The sinking of his standing with the legions was soon matched by the sinking of his standing with the senate. Macrinus, who had once seemed at least an acceptable alternative to Caracalla, was now proving to be nothing of the sort. It did not help that Julia Mesa, who still wielded considerable informal influence, had instigated a pretty vicious whisper campaign against the now she probably guessed had killed her nephew.

Julia played the moment perfectly. Just when Macrinus' reputation was bottoming out, and everyone was wondering how they were going to ditch this loser, Julia offered them a solution. She announced that her eldest grandson, fourteen-year-old Varius Avidius Bassianus, was actually the biological son of Caracalla, and the true heir to the imperial throne. When intelligent men did the math, they perhaps did not necessarily buy wholly the theory that at the tender age of fourteen Caracalla had fathered a child with his maternal cousin, But hey, stranger things have happened, and Macrinus seems pretty much like a non-starter, so you say the boy is the true heir to the throne? Well, let's go with that.

Next week, they'll go with that. But what that turned out to be was about a hundred times worse than Macrinus. And almost immediately after the teenager history calls Elagabalus won the throne, even the legion that had been the first to support him was ready to revolt against him.