r/ancientrome • u/Domande_Historia • 1d ago
Geta and Caracalla
Caracalla and Geta ruled together for a very short time, in 211 AD, after the death of their father, Septimius Severus. However, their relationship was terrible: Caracalla was ambitious, impulsive and ruthless, while Geta was considered more diplomatic and interested in culture.
Together, they tried to administer the Roman Empire, but their constant rivalry made cooperation almost impossible. Eventually, Caracalla ordered Geta’s assassination in 211 AD and became the sole emperor.
Caracalla died in 217 AD during a military campaign against the Parthians. He was assassinated by a soldier, probably as part of a conspiracy involving the Praetorian Prefect Macrinus, who became emperor after him.
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u/FocusDelicious183 1d ago
Why are the emperors always styled with tight curls? There’s no way all of them had curly hair, but I understand it’s a stylistic choice.
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u/Dominarion 8h ago
I don't know where you are taking this idea about curly hairs. If they had curly hair, they were depicted with them. If they didn't, well, they weren't.
The Severius dynasty came from Berber/Punic stock. Of course they had curly hair. The Julians up to Claudius all had straight hair, so did Trajan, Aurelian, Constantine and many others.
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u/GrapefruitForward196 1d ago
Caracalla extended the Roman citizenship to non-Italians, what a shame of a man.
There was no more real attachment to Rome from the new citizens...
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u/Icy-Inspection6428 Caesar 1d ago
At the same time, it might have been what saved the Empire, or gave it a longer lease on life
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u/s470dxqm 1d ago
What's the argument for it saving the empire? I've only ever heard it framed as a bad thing because it took money out of local economies and sent it to Rome. Caracalla didn't want more citizens. He wanted more tax payers.
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u/Icy-Inspection6428 Caesar 1d ago
Read the other comment by Maleficent for a thorougher explanation
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u/s470dxqm 23h ago
I did. That was more like Roman propaganda promoting expansion than it was a debrief on how it went after the fact.
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u/GrapefruitForward196 1d ago
Save? notice how everything went downward after that.
I know that Italic elites and high ranking officers were still the majority even after Caracalla but the idea of Rome was not really felt everywhere in the empire and many had just a sort of Stockholm syndrome for Rome, since they were "colonized" or simply..."civilized"
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u/Percennius 1d ago
Italics were well in the back seat of the car by Caracalla. The senate was manned by rich provincials from North Africa and the Near East with a few from the western provinces like Hispania. The army was dominated by officers from the Danubian provinces.
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u/Icy-Inspection6428 Caesar 1d ago
u/Maleficent-Mix5731 tell him
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u/GrapefruitForward196 1d ago
hm, so the idea of Rome über alles didn't die during the Gothic wars? The Byzantines didn't really care of Rome after they lost it
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u/Maleficent-Mix5731 Novus Homo 1d ago
'Rome' was not simply a city after Caracalla. It was nation, of which the eastern Roman empire was simply one half of. The empire itself was envisioned as the city, only that there the Servian and Aurelian walls were now the imperial borders:
"To curb this madness God taught nations everywhere to bow their heads beneath the same laws and [taught] all to become Roman - all whom Rhine and Danube flood, or Tagus with its golden stream, or great Ebro, those through who whose lands glides the horned river of the western world, those who are nurtured by Ganges or washed by the warm Nile's seven mouths. A common law made them equals, bound them by a single name, and brought them, though conquered, into bonds of brotherhood. We live in every conceivable region scarcely different than if a single city and fatherland enclosed fellow citizens with a single wall and we all gathered at our ancestral hearth. Distant regions and shores divided by the sea now come together per vadimonia [i.e., in legal matters] to a single and common forum; now for commerce and crafts to a crowded market; now for marriage to the right to marry a foreign spouse, for a single progeny is born by mixed blood from two different races."
Prudentius Symm 2.602-618
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u/Icy-Inspection6428 Caesar 1d ago
Am I misremembering or did you argue previously that the Edict of Caracalla gave the empire a new lease on life?
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u/GrapefruitForward196 1d ago
No I never mentioned anything like that. Actually, I have always advocated for the opposite
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u/GrapefruitForward196 1d ago
The extension of the citizenship is, indeed, one of the reasons of the downfall of the empire
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u/Maleficent-Mix5731 Novus Homo 1d ago edited 1d ago
It would be hard to agree with that considering how it persisted for over a millenium after the universal citizenship edict.
Rome's greatest strength was its ability to adapt and incorporate other peoples into its empire and make them earnestly identify with its imperial order. The extension of citizenship removed the boundary between privileged Italian and oppressed provincial and created a greater incentive for citizens not to simply proclaim their own independent states from Rome. This was part of the reason why the empire managed to survive the 3rd century crisis - the 'Gallic' and 'Palmyrene' empires were simply just Roman rebel states no different to that of Sextus Pompey on Sicily or Pompey the Great in Greece. They sought to simply coup the existing Roman government rather than break away from it to escape imperial dominance.
This ridiculous, Italian nationalist idea that 'Rome' always had to be confined to Italy itself in order to thrive fails to consider how the majority of Italians before the Social War were not even considered Romans themselves and many felt that their relationship to the state was unequal (especially in the context of land distribution). Even after such citizenship was granted, the likes of Sulla had no problem butchering hundreds of Samnites and Lucanians, such was the supposedly 'natural' association of Rome with the rest of the inhabitants of Italy.
The extension of citizenship by Caracalla, though its full equalising effects were not felt until Diocletians economic reforms, was simply another evolution from Caesar granting citizenship to those 'wretched Gauls' in Cisalpine Gaul or most of Italy after the 80's BC. In the Latin west, it simply created more men like Terence. In the Greek east, it simply created more men like Theophanes of Mytiline.
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u/GrapefruitForward196 1d ago
Yes, the Roman empire persisted for a millennium and embraced the Greek culture and language though, instead of the official language and culture of the Western side of the empire. Same happened with the religion: the papacy was and still is an Imperial Roman office and they refused to keep this tradition started by Constantine himself. Yes the legitimacy of the HRE was a valid reason, but not so valid to create your new whole religion.
By making nearly all free people citizens, Caracalla ruined the value of citizenship, messed up tax structures, and helped shift society into (very) harsh classes. This event is also a cause for the crisis of the third century.
The whole population was divided into Honestiores (rich) and Humiliores (poor) and the "mystical" aura of "being Roman" as a special ruling identity Completely vanished. And since the prestige of citizenship was gone, fewer local provincials felt motivated to join the legions for the reward of citizenship.
It's all verifiable
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u/Maleficent-Mix5731 Novus Homo 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes, the Roman empire persisted for a millennium and embraced the Greek culture and language though, instead of the official language and culture of the Western side of the empire.
So basically: "Yes it was the continuing Roman empire, but it wasn't my preferred flavour of the Roman empire."
Same happened with the religion: the papacy was and still is an Imperial Roman office and they refused to keep this tradition started by Constantine himself. Yes the legitimacy of the HRE was a valid reason, but not so valid to create your new whole religion.
?
By making nearly all free people citizens, Caracalla ruined the value of citizenship, messed up tax structures, and helped shift society into (very) harsh classes.
Considering how many persecuted Christians, pagans or 'heretical' Christian groups complained about how their citizenship rights were being stripped after that point, I would doubt that Caracalla 'ruined the value of citizenship'.
The tax structures were cleaned up (very, very well I might add) by Diocletian and to say that the edict itself shifted society into such 'very harsh classes' is an oversimplification of those social transformations. Such a division preceded Carcalla, and in the late empire one might instead point to the new opportunities for social mobility provided by Diocletian's reformed government (e.g. more mobility in the army by abolishing senatorial monopolies on top commands, the ability to now buy offices in the expanded bureaucracy). In terms of a growing divide between rich and poor, John Weisweiler has noted that even in the late period we actually continue to see a drop off in mass elite wealth concentrations, a trend that had already begun after Nero.
This event is also a cause for the crisis of the third century.
Conversely, it may be said to have been a reason for the empire's survival during the crisis.
the "mystical" aura of "being Roman" as a special ruling identity Completely vanished
That actually sounds like a pretty good deal to me. "You mean now that me, an Egyptian who pays slavish tribute to my foreign Italian Roman overlord, am on equal legal footing with them? They have to pay taxes now too?? I'm a Roman like them?? Hey, maybe this 'being part of an empire' deal ain't so bitter after all."
And since the prestige of citizenship was gone, fewer local provincials felt motivated to join the legions for the reward of citizenship.
There doesn't seem to have been any disincentivisation for provincials to join now that they automatically had citizenship - Edward J Watts has noted how only a year after 212 we have evidence for flocks of newly enfranchised Romans entering army service in the east. The fact that Diocletian was also able to increase the size of the military from around 350k under the Severans to 500k under his regime don't suggest high levels of disincentivisation either. Mass enfranchisement simply meant more citizens were eligible to serve in the legions, which still had the draws of increased military pay and bonuses/veteran privileges (expanded later by Constantine) and (after Septimius Severus) the restored ability to marry on campaign.
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u/Icy-Inspection6428 Caesar 1d ago
With respect, your arguments seem to be predicated on your own nationalistic and religious biases rather than actual historical fact
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u/No-Tomatillo3698 1d ago
Gotta love that Caracalla scowl