Pod Insights The Ancients Caracalla & Geta: The Real Emperors of Gladiator II About this episode The new Hollywood blockbuster Gladiator II features two of Rome's most villainous emperors - the brothers Caracalla and Geta.
And in today's episode of The Ancients were delving into the real history of these scheming siblings. Their story is a blood-stained and chilling one. It stretches from their opulent upbringing to their tumultuous rivalry and culminates with a brutal murder in front of their very own mother in 211 AD. Joined by Alex Imrie, Tristan explores how much we really know about Caracalla and Geta, their rise to power and their relationship - or perhaps lack of one.
Presented by Tristan Hughes. The producer is Joseph Knight, audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
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Transcript 11,235 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:58 Tristan Hughes? It's early 211 A.D. The Roman Emperor Septimius Severus lies on his deathbed in York. His two sons, already proclaimed emperors, stand nearby. They're young and roughly the same age. Both have enjoyed incredibly lavish upbringings, driving chariots around Rome, pampered by yes-men, and indulging in the countless luxuries of palace life. But there's one massive problem: they cannot stand one another. Hatred between these two brothers ran deep. Severus wanted his two sons to rule together to display peace and harmony, coexisting and cooperating at the peak of power.
3:41 Tristan Hughes? But these two young men, well, they had a very different idea. As soon as their father died, the clock was ticking, and it would end in blood, in murder, in fratricide. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we're adding to the massive ancient history hype around the release of Gladiator 2. The movie is set a couple of decades after the original and features a number of characters loosely based on real figures, including the two young colourful emperors Caracalla and Geta. These brothers, who ruled together in the early 3rd century A.D., although not for very long.
4:26 Tristan Hughes? Thanks to this new movie, the names Caracalla and Geta have risen to the fore. So who were the real Caracalla and Geta? What do we know about them? Their rise to power, their relationship with one another, or lack of? That is what we're going to explore. Our guest is Dr Alex Imrie from the University of Edinburgh. Now, I've known Alex for many years. He even marked one of my papers when I was an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh back in the 2010s. Alex, he's a great speaker who has been on the podcast in the past to talk through the stories of both Commodus, another infamous Roman emperor famously played by Joaquin Phoenix in the original Gladiator, the original villain.
5:10 Tristan Hughes? And Alex, he's also been on to talk through the story of Caracalla in depth. What a chaotic story this is. Let's get into it.
5:19 Tristan Hughes? Alex, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast.
5:22 Speaker 04 I am thrilled to be here. It's a really exciting time to be a Severan historian, so can't wait to get going.
5:27 Tristan Hughes? It's exciting to have you back on because I remember, I said, University of Edinburgh, so I have very fond memories of studying back then. And I believe you have had a look at some of my papers back when I was at university too. So the tables have turned, but I'm always very, very glad to get you on the podcast. And as you've hinted at there, to talk about these emperors that feature, they're right at the heart of Gladiator two. I mean, how are you feeling that your historical figures, I mean, that you've studied for years are now at the centre of one of the biggest ancient history movies of recent times?
6:00 Speaker 04 I know. 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, to devote time to the Severan family? I would say, well, I hope so, but I don't expect it. So I am absolutely psyched. It's brilliant. I mean, I'm sure on like the Twitter sphere, there's going to be a bunch of historians really already nitpicking, but I am truly excited.
6:27 Tristan Hughes? I think you're right. And I think with this new release, there is that more and more kind of popular interest in who these figures are. And yes, we can, we will explore like the true figures of who these emperors are, what the sources say. And yes, I'm sure Gladiator two won't be completely accurate to that, but it is gathering interest, isn't it? It is because of that, that we're doing interviews like this so that people can then go and find out the real stories behind these Titanic Roman emperors.
6:56 Speaker 04 That's exactly it. I mean, I think about my own route into classics and while I would love to say I was, I was kind of immersed in, in classical literature from a very young age, that simply isn't the case. I mean, I, I started getting into the ancient past through watching things like Spartacus and, you know, you have no idea how distraught I was to, 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, 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
7:41 Speaker 04 more so, I'd suggest.
7:43 Tristan Hughes? I think you're absolutely right. And that's one of the key things that we're really going to delve into in this episode. But first thing, a bit of an overarching question first of all, Alex, who are Caracalla and Geta?
7:53 Speaker 04 So Caracalla and Geta are the two sons of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Now, Septimius Severus is known commonly as the African Emperor. Certainly, he comes from modern day Libya and is, 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, they're, they're sort of only, they're not even 10 years old at that point. Caracalla is born in 188, Geta is born in 189, so only 11 months separate them age and they are princes from a very early period.
8:34 Tristan Hughes? So Geta is the younger of the two, but as you've highlighted there, it's not like a huge amount of years between them. They are, they are roughly of a similar age.
8:43 Speaker 04 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.
8:57 Tristan Hughes? And what are these sources that we have to really understand, like the great stories that we have surrounding these two figures and this whole time period?
9:05 Speaker 04 So listeners, if they've dropped into my previous engagements with history at the ancients, this will probably sound like a little bit of a broken record to them, but
9:13 Tristan Hughes? Oh, we've always got to do it, my man. We've always got to do it.
9:16 Speaker 04 Absolutely. I'm always happy to talk about these sources because there's a lot to say. 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. 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 we have a fairly negative character portrait of Caracalla built up very early,
10:00 Speaker 04 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. 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. Now, this is a very late fourth century, maybe even early fifth century, set of Latin biographies, and the caliber or the quality of this set of works is still a huge matter of academic disagreement.
10:43 Speaker 04 Historically, people thought they were just absolute trash. They were fictionalized accounts that just pulled facts and indeed sources out of the air. 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 HA, 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. And there's been a couple of really good publications about that particular relationship in recent years.
11:16 Tristan Hughes? It has quite a lot of colourful information, I'm guessing that the, you know, and it's debating whether it's truth or fiction. Is that what we're kind of looking at there?
11:23 Speaker 04 That's absolutely right. 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.
11:35 Tristan Hughes? Okay, so let's go back to the beginning with Caracalla and Geta. So late 180s AD, and then that last decade of the second century AD. I mean, Alex, paint us a picture of the world that these two brothers are born into, because it's a really interesting time of change in the Roman Empire. And also, that can kind of link us in with key figures from Gladiator I, and another figure that you've done an episode with us before about Commodus. So it's a kind of piece that all together, this kind of rise in status of Caracalla and Geta, and that whole decade at that time.
12:09 Speaker 04 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. 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
12:51 Speaker 04 character that we see in Gladiator I. 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. 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,
13:33 Speaker 04 the governor of Egypt, Avidius Cassius, rises in revolt. 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. 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
14:11 Speaker 04 other, 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. 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 Gladiator 1, where we have, I think it's Derek Jacobi, give us the voice of the Senate, who are none too impressed with 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
14:51 Speaker 04 the 180s. And this culminates around the year 190 with a, or 191, where we have a great fire in Rome as well. 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. When Caracalla 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 Galia Lugdonensis,
15:32 Speaker 04 so a section of Gaul, modern-day France, the headquarters or the capital of which is in modern Lyon. 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 events.
15:53 Tristan Hughes? So, sorry, as aristocratic children, so I'm guessing, learning Latin, learning what it meant to be a civilized Roman, I'm guessing?
15:59 Speaker 04 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. 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, much lauded by Caracalla in particular later.
16:35 Tristan Hughes? So from those beginnings in Lyon, in Lugdonum, in Gaul, so where does their journey take them, following, as you've hinted at, this great turmoil starts to seize the empire?
16:44 Speaker 04 So it's interesting, inasmuch as, from what we can establish in the sources, it doesn't seem like the children follow their father through his later gubernatorial roles, because Severus, their father, will become governor of Upper Pannonia, so a very militarized region on the Danube frontier, 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, but they are housed in the capital. Now, we can tell that because-
17:28 Speaker 04 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 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.
17:52 Tristan Hughes? So this is almost like they could either be taken, they could either be killed outright or be taken as hostages in this time where, and he say, so this is the 193, so year of the five emperors, which is a massive time. And Severus is making this big play, isn't he? So all of a sudden, his young children Caracalla and Geta, I mean, not of their own choice, but because of their father's actions, like their trajectory, the whole trajectory of their life has changed depending on the outcome of Severus's actions of his march on Rome.
18:20 Speaker 04 100%. 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. 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 the arguably wilder eccentricities of Commodus's final years with all the games and all the the wannabe Hercules type vibes that were coming out of Commodus's regime then.
19:03 Speaker 04 That regime of Pertinax, however, crashes within like two or three months. It's only, I think, 80, 87 days, I think, no, 86 days, I beg your pardon, before he is assassinated by his Praetorian Guard. And 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. And now that's in Rome. 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.
19:48 Speaker 04 They acclaim him emperor and as he's not alone, there are a couple of other regional governors who are also proclaimed emperor at this point. We have Claudius 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 and Dion 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's rank and popularity with pretty much everybody, but it's also, I think, it's also an indicator of just how much military force Severus has behind him on that frontier, being able to persuade not
20:31 Speaker 04 only his own legions but a couple of neighbouring 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. That would be the most likely outcome of events if Julianus had been able to take custody of them.
20:47 Tristan Hughes? But he doesn't. And so what happens? So Severus, is he victorious?
20:51 Speaker 04 Severus is absolutely victorious over Didius Julianus in an extraordinarily short period. As I say, he marches from Pononia, 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. Then Severus has a successful march into the capital itself. Now, it's interesting here that Dion and Herodian offer us slightly different takes on that. In one telling, we have Severus marching in full armour, his army behind him, a very unsubtle image of imperial power projected. But in another telling, he stops at the gates almost and then changes out of his armour into a toga and comes in in
21:33 Speaker 04 a very civil mode of introduction to the Roman capital. The reality is though the army's behind him, in either case, doesn't really matter what he's wearing, there is very little ambiguity about who or where the real power resides. 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.
21:59 Tristan Hughes? Those are other rivals who want the throne, aren't they? The other claimants, yes.
22:01 Speaker 04 That's correct. So he goes against Piscinius Niger in 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.
22:16 Speaker 04 And it's at that point that Caracalla becomes really important to our story.
22:21 Tristan Hughes? That's a very nice kind of teaser as to what we're going on to next, Alex, which is of course the roles of Caracalla and Geta under Severus when he's emperor. Yes, how does this affect? Seems Caracalla mainly as he's the elder one, but only just, as you mentioned, he's only a few months older than Geta. But how does Severus becoming emperor and consolidating his rule and defeating these challenges? How does this all affect the likes of Caracalla and Geta?
22:46 Speaker 04 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 final 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. 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 on to that of Marcus Rilius
23:29 Speaker 04 and Commodus, so that he has lines of legitimacy, it seems, going every direction. His rule is unassailable on terms of legitimacy. 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 Claudius 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. 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.
24:15 Tristan Hughes? And he's only, he's less than 10 years older this time, Caracalla. So he is just being used by his dad?
24:20 Speaker 04 Yep, he's not even 10. 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.
24:31 Speaker 04 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, 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 Caracalla 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. And this is the largest single Roman land battle in history, if we believe Dio's numbers.
25:13 Tristan Hughes? And to think that Caracalla has a role in that, although it's not of his choice. It was quite interesting at this time, Alex. I mean, Geta, is he just very much in the background because he is the younger of the two sons? And I know generally the sources don't really focus on the time when they're children. So at this time, do we not really hear of Geta at all? And it is only just Caracalla because how he's basically used as a pawn in Severus's games to consolidate his new control over the empire and establishing a dynasty?
25:41 Speaker 04 That's right. I mean, partly, we just don't hear about Geta tremendously much. And that, it seems, is a literary choice on the part of the authors, I think, in order to accentuate or emphasize maybe the role of Caracalla within the imperial succession, et cetera, at least initially. Now, 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. And when eventually after the civil war against Claudius Albinus is concluded, Severus goes and wages another war against Parthia, basically, I think, to recoup some booty and some material
26:24 Speaker 04 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. 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 day as imperator. 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 century. So Caracalla has made Augustus at that point, and it's only then that Geta has brought in and given anything, and he's made Caesar at that point. So although there's only 11 months separating the brothers,
27:08 Speaker 04 Caracalla is far more senior in the line of succession than Geta is at this point.
27:13 Tristan Hughes? It's interesting what you highlighted there. So it'll be Parthius, that's kind of Mesopotamia, that's the Iraq area today.
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30:10 Tristan Hughes? You've also mentioned, so Caesar is heir apparent, the title Caesar. Caesar's not a name, it's kind of the title is at that time. And Augustus, is that basically the position of emperor? But Severus is also emperor. So are they going back to kind of co-emperor ruling, father and son?
30:25 Speaker 04 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. And you're right, when Caracalla has 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. 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
31:09 Speaker 04 this idea of an Antonine link between his family and that of Marcus Aurelius.
31:14 Tristan Hughes? It's so interesting how you see time and time again with Roman emperors or Hellenistic generals. For me, the great interest is after Alexander the Great's death, is how they time those big announcements, those propaganda announcements with either a big military victory or an anniversary or something like that. And Severus, he is the master of that, it's sounding, Alex, and I'm guessing that will continue.
31:35 Speaker 04 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. 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 in Geta. In the late 190s into the early 200s, we have Caracalla in Geta appear on coins, appear in statuary, and they are presented as young Antonine children. They have this kind of cherubic kind of facial feature going on.
32:18 Speaker 04 They have this lovely, soft, fluffy hairstyle 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. And as much as well, Caracalla is definitely given more constitutional authority nominally. I mean, he's a child. How much is he actually doing? 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. 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.
33:03 Tristan Hughes? And I guess this idea of peace, isn't it, after this rough time of, you know, a decade of turmoil and hostility and civil war, which once again you see again and again in the Roman Empire and the late Roman Republic. I mean, let's go on then, Alex, to the 200s and Severus' reign as it goes on. I mean, what do we know about Caracalla and Geta as Severus' reign goes on over those next 10 years or so?
33:26 Speaker 04 Now, it's interesting in that we have further evidence that Severus wants to use them in this idea of a vast programme of family unity being promoted. The two boys feature very prominently, for example, in the secular games of AD 204, where we have, I mean, this is a large cultural set of games that has gone on from really the earliest phase of the imperial era. And 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.
34:09 Speaker 04 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 signs that they're intensely competitive with one another. Although much of this will only come out in our sources when the sources get on to the mid first, 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 Di was telling, that Plotianus, a prefect
34:50 Speaker 04 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 boys' competition in check. And 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. There is no external force that the boys are both focused on rather than on each other.
35:18 Tristan Hughes? So the dam is breached, isn't it? And then that really goes to the fore. I mean, is that rivalry, is that hostility, is it emphasised through different factions? Are they at the top of different factions in the court? I mean, what do we know about how this rivalry starts getting out of hand as we get towards the two tens?
35:32 Speaker 04 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.
35:44 Tristan Hughes? Spoiled teenagers as well, I guess, as well, aren't they? Yeah.
35:47 Speaker 04 Absolutely. Well, this is it. They are teens. And I think that's something that even scholars sometimes overlook, the fact that they are probably just quite natural teenagers, 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 Dio, for example, where we have them at the chariot races. If one boy, one teen, one prince chooses one faction, the other 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. Dio tells us, for example, of
36:29 Speaker 04 one occasion where the two boys themselves were engaged in chariot racing, 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.
36:57 Tristan Hughes? So it's not confined to the palace. There will be, you know, everyday Romans in the streets. There'll be rumours galore. They'll be talking about the teenage boy emperors. And I guess, well, the teenage boys enrolled for that rule in future. But, you know, they'll be talking to each other. There'll be big rumours. There'll be slander, thinking, can you believe it that we've got these annoying teenagers who hate each other, potentially going to be the one who succeeds the emperor in time?
37:23 Speaker 04 I'm a bit of a film buff and this image of Caracalla 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 Ramses and the Moses characters basically destroy an ornamental city in their chariots. That's very much the image I got from this. 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. So this is becoming a much more public embarrassment for Severus that he has to do something about. And 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
38:07 Speaker 04 and claims that there's some trouble on the frontier. He takes an expeditionary force of about 50,000 men. I mean, this is a ridiculously large force 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.
38:31 Tristan Hughes? That is so interesting because normally with that big campaign of Severus to Britain, as you say, with more than 50,000 troops, you think of it, oh, he's wanting to show that he can, he's done part here in the east and now he wants to show that he can conquer the whole of Britain. But as with all of these things, it's normally so much more complicated than just one reason as to why an emperor or this big figure is doing this massive action. And I'd never realised that another reason for it could have been that he's just fed up of his two young teenage sons, you know, being decadent, being spoilt brats, and he wants to teach them, and maybe in his eyes as a military man, discipline on the harsh frontier of Britain.
39:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, I tend to obviously think that the British campaign has a little bit more complexity to it than the likes of Diya wants to tell us. 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.
39:31 Tristan Hughes? Well, how do they fare? Talk to us about Caracalla and Geta in Britain for those years.
39:36 Speaker 04 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. He seems to go on campaign with his father in the year 28209. 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.
40:18 Speaker 04 So he's very much the military one of the pair. 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 Iberacum 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. 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 it, 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. In 209, however, Severus makes the decision that the time has come and that Geta will
41:02 Speaker 04 also be elevated to the rank of Augustus.
41:04 Tristan Hughes? So you've got three now. Wow.
41:05 Speaker 04 So in 209, we have a tripartite principate. And for me, that is one of the core moments for understanding this pair of brothers. 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 for the best part of a decade. I also try to think about it from the perspective of Caracalla. I can only imagine that had been really a jarring moment. 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
41:49 Speaker 04 he's fought hammer and tongs with for the best part of a decade. This is a very interesting constitutional move. I'm still not sure I understand Severus's logic, to be honest, but it does change the dynamic within the Severan imperial household.
42:04 Tristan Hughes? Shall we also quickly mention the role of their mother, Julia Domna? Does she have quite an overarching presence on the two, even when they're in Britain, even at this stage? Because we talked about Severus's influence, which is, you know, always there in the sources as the emperor. But obviously, I'm presuming their mother also has a big influence too.
42:20 Speaker 04 Well, she absolutely does. 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. Now, that said, Julia's role in our literary reconstructions of the period is fascinating because it shifts 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 characterises all of her decisions. In Herodian, we get what I tend to think is probably the most likely relationship between Caracalla and Geta and their mother,
43:05 Speaker 04 that Julia Domna is the voice of reason. She is the, she's the rational one within the household and is always trying to bring her wayward sons together. 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. 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 analyse it.
43:40 Tristan Hughes? Yeah, it's almost like North and South Korea in a weird kind of way with that demilitarised zone being-
43:44 Speaker 04 Yeah, a channel, yeah, a channel as a DMZ. It's an extraordinary proposition. Probably isn't historically, there's no real reality to it probably, but it's a very good vehicle for Herodian to, to show what kind of character Julia is. Because Julia 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 in two. 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. 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.
44:28 Speaker 04 She's given the qualities of Pia Felix, so pious and Felix lucky or happy. And she is 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. So we've got the image of Julia 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. Now, 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.
45:13 Speaker 04 That's in the life of Caracalla. Now, in the life of Geta, we get the sense that 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. But my advice to you and your listeners is basically if you want to establish anything about Julia and the sons, avoid the Historia Augusta, stick with Herodian, because you're getting nothing of, you're getting nothing of real value out of the HE at this point.
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47:33 Tristan Hughes? Well, now let's move on to the climax of the story of Karakala and Getta. So let's go from the death of Severus. So 211 York. Alex, talk us through the death and what then happens with Karakala and Getta.
47:49 Speaker 04 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 Karakal and Geta. But they're still stuck there, and it looks like they're going to be stuck there for a while. And in February 211, the situation changes only with the death of Severus on the frontier. In that moment, we see almost like a light switch. The two boys, now forced to share power together but alone, without the influence of their father, seem to make
48:31 Speaker 04 every effort to conclude the British campaign within a matter of days, if, you know, 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. They're in one big train, though, and this is, 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. 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.
49:16 Speaker 04 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. 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, they have huge bodyguards start to grow up around them. 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, the imperial coinage and inscription of this period is Concordia Augustorum, so the harmony of the emperors, which, I mean, anybody who knew
50:01 Speaker 04 these two surely must have seen this as an utter fallacy. Now, Dio, who loves a good old men or potent, gives us a sign that this situation, this rivalry, that, 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 meet, or trying to meet with the priests of Concord to sacrifice in the emperor's honour. 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.
50:42 Tristan Hughes? Well, I mean, just before that, Alex, I mean, because we've got Gladiators 2, there is that image, isn't there? They're in the Colosseum and they're sitting together, they're laughing like maniacally, they're being portrayed like megalomaniac. Mania is the way to portray it. We don't know of anything like that in that year of them participating together, sitting in the royal box together overlooking Gladiator 2 games or anything like that. We don't see them together for those kind of things.
51:05 Speaker 04 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 in 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 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 this belief.
51:41 Tristan Hughes? All right then, come on then, you said that it gets to a head. So what is this? It goes cold water and hot.
51:48 Speaker 04 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.
51:56 Tristan Hughes? Wow.
51:57 Speaker 04 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. 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 realise, I think, that they're not going to be able to get round each other's huge bodyguards at this point. So Dio at least tells us that Caracalla petitions his mother, Julia Domna, to call a meeting between the two boys,
52:41 Speaker 04 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. So Caracalla 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 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.
53:21 Tristan Hughes? So he does it personally. He doesn't get his bodyguard to do it. He does it personally. He kills his brother right there.
53:25 Speaker 04 So says Herodian.
53:26 Tristan Hughes? Oh, wow.
53:27 Speaker 04 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, ten centurions, presumably picked from within the Praetorian Guard, burst into the room. And this is an even more harrowing scene, I think, if it can be, than Caracalla murdering Geta by hand, because in Dio's telling, at the sight of the centurions bursting in armed and dangerous, obviously, Geta runs to Julia Domna, clings to her, and pleads for his life. And nobody pays attention. The centurions launch themselves at Geta whilst he is in his mother's arms and assassinate him right there. And Dio tells us that Julia, in trying to shield Geta, also receives a wound to her
54:11 Speaker 04 arm in the midst of this. So 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. 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, which, you know,
54:53 Speaker 04 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.
55:01 Tristan Hughes? Wow. And that is another case of ancient fratricide, which makes it even more horrible. But as you already highlighted- Alex, they didn't seem the the most amiable of characters to start with, but at the same time, it still comes to horrific conclusion. We will continue the story of Caracalla and his soul reign in the next episode, and then the figure who comes after Caracalla, who's also in Gladiator two, the figure of Macrinus. But last thing, to kind of wrap up the story of Geta, Alex, what does Caracalla do in the aftermath of murdering Geta? Because naturally at this time, there are lots of statues, as you've mentioned earlier, that Severus has ordered, which shows that Concordia, Caracalla with Geta, all this beautiful artwork
55:43 Tristan Hughes? depicting the two in harmony. What does he do with all that now that he has brutally killed Geta and get us out of the picture?
55:50 Speaker 04 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, domnatio memoriae. And this is an, 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. 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
56:30 Speaker 04 presentation of that condemned figure was eligible for destruction or vandalism. And Caracalla is renowned to have engaged in the most violent, the most extensive, the most villain example of domnatio 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. 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 chiselled off the coins. His inscription
57:14 Speaker 04 around Rome is completely wiped out. 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 chiselled 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. 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 component in Caracalla's new rationale for his regime. He can't claim to be one of the family indivisible anymore.
57:59 Speaker 04 He has to change the narrative. 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 Domnatio memoria, extreme as it is, is politically consistent.
58:11 Tristan Hughes? It really is, and it's such an extraordinary end to Geta's story, as you say. And my mind also goes, I've got a picture on it on my other screen as I finish that panel showing Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta. And you just see where Geta's face is. It's just, it's just brown. It's just been covered over completely. And that was one of many.
58:30 Speaker 04 That is probably one of my favorite 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. 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, it's a conspicuous rubbing out of the face. And I think I'm right. I've said this before, I think in other places. 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.
59:13 Speaker 04 And as a final marker of Caracalla's wrath, he doesn't deify Geta. 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, from becoming a god in his own right. So even then, it's petty and it's cruel.
59:41 Tristan Hughes? What a story, Alex. This has been absolutely fantastic. You'll be back very soon to continue the story and then to get to the figure of Macrinus with our good friend and your colleague, Matilda McDonald Brown. But until then, Alex, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.
59:57 Speaker 04 Thank you for having me. It's been great.
1:00:02 Tristan Hughes? Well, there you go. There was Dr Alex Emery talking you through the horrific story of Caracalla and Geta climaxing in Caracalla's murder of his younger brother in his mother's arms. It is a gruesome story, but the story is not over yet because Alex will be back in a few days' time to continue the story of Caracalla ruling alone, but then focusing in with another special guest on what happened afterwards, after the downfall of Caracalla, when he too was murdered and his throne was taken by another, a figure who also features in the new Gladiator 2 movie, Macrinus, played by Denzel Washington. That is coming in a few days' time. In the meantime, thank you for listening to
1:00:47 Tristan Hughes? this episode of The Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow me. I am on Instagram and TikTok. Simply search @AncientsTristan, you will find me. You can also listen to us and all of History Hits Podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. And as a special gift, you can also get 50% off your first few months when you use code ANCIENTS at checkout.
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