Part 25

During this war, Severus had gained over Albinus. The latter, a man without any sort of talent, was also an African, but made pretensions to being sprung from the Postumii: Severus, however, in a letter which has been preserved by Spartianus, taxes him with having merely assumed this name, saying that he was not even of Italian extraction. This commander was indeed a most insignificant person, and Severus very easily overreached him by offering him the dignity of Cæsar: he let himself be won over by this gross deception, and he flattered himself with the hope that Severus, although he had children of his own, would bequeath him the empire after his death. When Pescennius had fallen, Severus changed his tone; and an attempt to murder him, either actually made or only intended, moved him to declare war against Albinus. Britain, Gaul, and Spain, must have been united under Albinus, who went over to Gaul: Severus, after having narrowly escaped defeat, with the utmost difficulty gained a victory near Lyons, where Albinus was mortally wounded, and soon afterwards breathed his last. This victory, Severus followed up with the greatest cruelty. The rashness of the senators with regard to Albinus is quite extraordinary: they must have believed in the chances of his success, and they had now to pay dearly for it. In Spain and Gaul also, the men of rank who had let themselves be gained over by Albinus, were punished with death. After this slaughter, Severus’ reign was not only glorious and brilliant, but also mild and gentle.

The German tribes had somehow or other been kept quiet since the time of Marcus; but with the Parthians there was twice war. Once the emperor led his army against Adiabene, the country east of the Tigris, and Arabia, which, like Osroëne, Media, and others, were distinct vassal kingdoms under Persian supremacy: this campaign, Severus conducted without being at war with the Parthians themselves. The second time, however, he directly attacked the Parthians; and then was the flourishing city of Ctesiphon, which the Parthians had built over against Seleucia to humble it, taken and sacked by Severus: it is strange that he did not make this country a province. He made peace, and gave back Babylon; but kept Adiabene, and more especially Mesopotamia, subject to his supremacy: under Marcus the Euphrates had been the boundary river. The Roman emperors had always to wage war, owing to the very immensity of the empire which otherwise would have sunk into utter effeminacy. He had afterwards another war besides in Britain, and it is surprising that he should have thought it necessary to bring such vast forces of imperial Rome against the weak Caledonian barbarians on the Scottish border. In this war, he took with him his two sons, the elder of whom, Caracalla, was at that time twenty-two years old, while Geta was several years younger: the former was with him as his colleague, the other as Cæsar (he is the first who is mentioned on inscriptions with the title of _nobilissimus_). Before his death, he also raised both of them to be _Augusti_, and made them heirs of the empire.

Severus had by his own power caused himself to be adopted as the son of M. Aurelius, without meaning thereby to deceive any one, except perhaps the lowest of the people; it being merely a fiction by which he wanted to designate himself as the lawful possessor of the empire, calling himself _M. Antonini filius, T. Pii nepos_, and so on as high up as Nerva: he therefore gave his eldest son, M. Bassianus, the name of M. Antoninus. This name, or _Divus Antoninus, Imperator noster Antoninus, Antoninus Magnus_, is in the Pandects always to be understood of this Caracalla. That last appellation is in fact so generally bestowed on him only by the moderns: in the _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_ it is met with only once, and that in the form Caracallus, which is a popular nickname: I am very loth to use it. Both of the young princes were the sons of Julia Domna, a Syrian woman whom Severus is said to have married because she was recommended to him by the astrologers, as her horoscope pointed out that she was destined to be a princess.[54] Julia was a remarkable person: she was a woman of great cleverness, but of very lax morals. She has, however, atoned for her faults by her misfortunes.

It is a great pity, that we know so little about the measures of Severus. That he made great changes, especially in the administration of Italy, is quite evident. It must have been he who placed _correctores_ over each of the regions; or it may be, one _corrector_ over several united regions. Probably they had the jurisdiction in their own districts. What was the nature of the jurisdiction in Italy after the _Lex Julia_, is shrouded in the greatest darkness: something, however, must have been done to get rid of the inconveniences which had arisen. The whole of this matter is still to be investigated: inscriptions and laws might indeed throw some light on it. Yet what were the functions of these _correctores_ on the whole, is difficult to make out. Even as early as under the emperors who came immediately before Hadrian, traces are met with of commissions by virtue of which the jurisdiction of Italy was given by districts to people of rank. The _Præfectus Urbi_ had even since Hadrian’s days (though not before) a district of a hundred Italian miles round Rome: this is, however, as yet, but a conjecture of mine. Hadrian appointed consulars to them in due form. Antoninus Pius also kept them up for some time: afterwards, they were again abolished. From the reign of Severus, we regularly meet with the _correctores_ in Italy.

M. ANTONINUS CARACALLA. MACRINUS. ELAGABALUS. ALEXANDER SEVERUS.

After the death of Septimius Severus (211), M. Bassianus, as he is called after his maternal grandfather,—or M. Antoninus as he is called in consequence of the fiction of his adoption; or Caracalla, as he is called by the moderns; had together with his brother, Geta, taken upon himself the government; the younger, however, being subordinate to the elder. Neither of them was noble-hearted or praiseworthy; yet Geta excites the greater interest of the two, because of his having become the victim: still, it is not at all clear that he was better than the other. It is hardly possible to form an opinion of him. The hostility between the two brothers broke out soon after the death of their father: their feelings towards each other became very bad, which was chiefly owing to the malice of the elder one, and they were already about to divide the empire. But as this would have been to the disadvantage of the younger, who was to have had a far smaller empire in the East; their mother made a last attempt to bring about a reconciliation between them, but in vain. Caracalla seemed to listen to her proposals; but this was only a stratagem to entice his brother into a place where he could murder him. In the apartments of the mother, the reconciliation was to have been brought about: Geta was stabbed in her arms. By this murder, the minds of men, which even then had begun to be quite Asiatic in feeling,—inconceivably so indeed,—were not much affected. Even the mother, although Geta had been her darling son, did not, after what had happened, change in her behaviour to her elder one; but she seemed to look upon Geta’s death as an unavoidable dispensation of fate.

In the year 212, Caracalla gave himself up to the most wanton cruelties and extortions: these last were still more systematic than those of Commodus, who practised them in Rome only, whereas Caracalla carried them on at the same time in the provinces. It is a very just remark of Gibbon’s, that the tyranny of the Roman emperors weighed most heavily on Rome, and was less felt in the rest of Italy, and least of all in the provinces, which were sometimes worse off under the good emperors than under the bad ones. Caracalla, however, unfortunately for the provinces, travelled through them, and there his savage rage was yet greater than at Rome itself; he brought with him fell bloodshed into those hapless countries,—into Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt,—and drove the inhabitants to despair: the only thing that he cared for, was to satisfy his soldiers. The prætorians had been re-established by Severus, but on quite a different footing. Whereas formerly they had been a sort of janissaries, only that they did not leave Rome, it being even doubtful whether they ever accompanied the emperors in their wars; Severus now formed an entirely new guard, of three or four times the strength of the old one, as many indeed as thirty or forty thousand men; these he picked out from the legions, and he gave them double pay and higher rank. Under Severus and Caracalla they were no longer left behind in Rome, but they accompanied the emperors on their journeys and expeditions: thus Caracalla took them with him to the East. The most dreadful of Caracalla’s deeds was the massacre at Alexandria, where he enticed the inhabitants to come out of their city; made them feel quite secure; and then ordered his soldiers to slaughter them all. The people of Alexandria had provoked him, as they had done almost all the emperors, even the best of them: Alexandria and Antioch were the seats of wit, which spoke out in the theatres, or was placarded in pasquinades. They had now lashed the Roman tyrant for the murder of Geta, and this he never forgave.

Caracalla granted the right of citizenship to all the subjects of the Roman empire; that is to say, the _peregrinitas_ was abolished throughout the whole of it: thus the _vicesima hereditatum_, which had until then been raised from Roman citizens, was made general, and he moreover raised it into a _decima_. Yet the _Latini_ still remained after this; only there was no more _peregrinitas_ for communities: in the case of freedmen, however, a different law might apply. Caracalla raised the taxes to an intolerable height, merely that he might have the means of winning the hearts of the soldiers: Severus had already said that the emperor who was sure of the army had nothing to fear.

Like Commodus, Caracalla had a taste for gladiatorial arts; but he was small in size, and not so handsome as Commodus. He had a silly kind of fondness for Alexander the Great; and if we may judge from the busts, it must be acknowledged that there was some likeness between them: the province of Macedon was, therefore, the only one to which he did any good. He formed a phalanx of Macedonians, and also assumed the name of Magnus: in the law books, he is often spoken of as Magnus Antoninus. Led by this feeling, he also went like Alexander to the East, to overthrow the Parthian empire; and he had his Macedonian phalanx with him. Everywhere he showed a very strong leaning towards anything that was Greek, a taste which may have been very much owing to the fact of his having a Syrian mother. The war against the Parthians he brought on, without having real cause for it. According to Herodian, he was guilty of an act of monstrous treachery: he invited Artabanus to a conference, and then tried to surprise him, and murdered a number of Parthians. These accounts, however, are all of them very doubtful in their details. Severus had already taken possession of Osroëne, where the reigning dynasty had been established for three hundred years: in the legend, an Abgarus betakes himself to our Saviour, beseeching him for his aid in a sickness. The king Abgarus at this time, was a vassal of the Parthians: Caracalla expelled him, and converted Osroëne into a Roman province. Whilst he was engaged here in preparations for a war against the Parthians themselves, he was murdered, in the year 217, at the instigation of the _præfectus prætorio_ M. Macrinus, who had found his own life to be threatened. The soldiers, however, heard of the death of their emperor with indignation, and Macrinus had to try every means to deceive them as to his share in it; whereupon he was proclaimed emperor.

Dio’s and Herodian’s accounts of Macrinus, which are in his favour, may be much better relied upon than the nonsense of the _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_. Yet if Macrinus wished to be a praiseworthy prince, his character as such depended upon his getting the mastery over his soldiers: for their lawlessness had frightfully increased under Caracalla, as he let them do what they listed without punishing them. Macrinus, therefore, began to reform them, introducing discipline, and trying by degrees to lessen the concessions of Caracalla; and thus he either disbanded whole legions as veterans, and enlisted new ones on fairer conditions, or, which seems to me more likely, he merely filled up the old ones by new recruits. By this, however, he made himself hateful to them. They would not put up with it; and hence arose a rebellion. Hereupon young Avitus came forth. They might, however, have found another leader, Maximin perhaps, if Avitus had not presented himself.

Julia Domna had, after the death of her son, been condemned to seclusion by Macrinus, and she had herself put an end to her own life. Her sister Mæsa also had been banished. The latter had two daughters, both of them married in Syria: the names of the husbands were Roman, but the children were thorough Syrians, or Syrian-Greeks. The husband of Soæmis, the elder sister, was Sextus Varius Marcellus: this name, and the high offices which he held, lead to the conclusion that he was a Roman. The husband of the younger sister, Mamæa, was called Gessius Macrianus. Soæmis had a son and several daughters; Mamæa, a son and a daughter. The son of Soæmis was Avitus, afterwards M. Aurelius Antoninus, generally known by us as Elagabalus (corruptly Heliogabalus, as the name has nothing whatever to do with ἥλιος): he also bore the name of Bassianus, as people at that time often dropped their names, and as often took new ones. This Elagabalus was now seventeen years of age at most, quite a Syrian, and priest to the god Elagabalus at Emesa, where some aerolites which had fallen in the neighbourhood were worshipped. This young man, Mæsa and his own mother Soæmis declared to have been the offspring of an adulterous intercourse with Caracalla. Mæsa collected her immense riches at Emesa, and taking advantage of the discontent of the soldiers began to bribe them. Very many of them espoused her cause. Macrinus at first held this defection to be of no consequence; but quite contrary to all expectation, the fondness of the soldiers for Caracalla was transferred to Elagabalus, from whom besides they looked for a new donation. Had Macrinus now acted at once, he might yet have had the best of it; for in the decisive battle, the prætorians displayed greater bravery than was thought to be in them. But he gave himself up too soon for lost; and he fled from the fight with his son Antoninus Diadumenianus to Asia Minor, where he was overtaken and beheaded by the order of the young tyrant (218).

The name of Elagabalus is branded in history: even Caligula and Nero, when compared with him, appear in a favourable light. Caligula was not a beast like him; Nero undoubtedly had talents; but there is nothing whatever to redeem the vices of Elagabalus. The infamy of his reign is appalling. His extortions, which were spent on the gratification of the maddest fancies, were beyond everything; and yet the Roman world might have deemed itself happy, if he had only extorted. There were fewer actual cruelties; but he was ready for any wickedness: his only real passion, and one which ruled him, was zeal for the glorification of his idol Elagabalus, whom, as the god of the Sun, he wanted to place instead of Jupiter Capitolinus on the throne of the gods in Rome, and whom he exclusively worshipped. Even the soldiers were so disgusted with him, as to execrate him; and they would have murdered him as early as in 221, had he not, by the advice of his grandmother Mæsa, adopted as Cæsar his cousin Alexianus, who was afterwards called Alexander Severus.

This Alexander, if Lampridius is correct, was now no longer a child, being seventeen years old: according to Herodian, he was but thirteen or fourteen. He was the very reverse of his cousin: for his was a noble soul, like that of Marcus, the only difference being that of a fine Asiatic disposition when compared with an European one. He was a thorough Asiatic: being born in Phœnicia, he had first to learn Latin at Rome; so that he was always looked upon there as a _Græculus_, as one who was not a Latin. It is impossible to have a better will and a more beautiful mind than this young man had: the innocence which beamed forth from his countenance, gained him even the hearts of the soldiers, who, rough as they were, seemed to have a sincere regard for him. When Elagabalus now tried to get rid of him, and at the same time sought his life, a rebellion arose, owing to a report having been spread of Alexander’s death; and even when the mistake had been cleared up, the riot was put down only with difficulty. But as Elagabalus, conscious of his own worthlessness, could not disguise from himself that Alexander was far more liked than he was, he took steps in right earnest, to destroy his cousin; whereupon the rebellion broke out afresh with irresistible fury, and Elagabalus was killed (222). His dead body was flung into the river, and his memory cursed.

The reign of Alexander Severus lasted thirteen years, until 235. It is one which we are in danger of representing in too fair a light, as it seems that several authors have written a sort of Cyropædia on him. His personal amiability and kindness, his zeal to do his duty, cannot be called into doubt: his model was Marcus. But as Marcus was weak towards Faustina, so Alexander was still weaker towards his mother. We read, on the one hand, that he lightened the taxes; but on the other, _exempla avaritiæ_ are told of Mamæa. Now, although this _avaritia_ may perhaps have consisted in her hoarding treasure and jewels after the manner of the East, the reproaches against her, and the complaints of his weakness for her, were loud and general.

In the reign of Hadrian, we already meet with a council of state; and though in the days of Septimius Severus it seems to have again fallen into oblivion, we now see it completely organized as a regular branch of the government, a standing board which had the management of every matter of importance: its chief minister was the great Domitius Ulpianus. This man was perhaps a kinsman of the emperor’s, as he was of Tyrian origin, and he may thus have risen: he was not, however, born in Tyre, as I have shown in another place.[55] A Syrian could not have written as he did, nor have made himself such a master of the science of Roman law. He might however have been indeed related to the imperial family, and yet have now been living at Rome for a long time.

Alexander’s rule, and his endeavours for the general good, were thwarted by insurmountable obstacles, owing to the power of the soldiers. These he had to bring under control: but they were mutineers like the janissaries; and this was now the case with the whole army, and no longer with the prætorians alone. If we may believe some scattered anecdotes, Alexander with all his gentleness displayed great firmness on many occasions; yet he tried in vain to protect Ulpian. Papinian had been murdered by Caracalla; Ulpian was slain by the soldiers before the eyes of the emperor, who could hardly succeed in bringing Epagathus, the ringleader of the mutiny, to punishment.