CHAPTER SIX

CIVIL WAR AND THE SEVERAN-EMESAN DYNASTY A.D. 193ñ235

The murder of Commodus on New Yearís Eve, 193, brought to a conclusion the ìgolden ageî of the Roman Empire, though in fact it had ceased to glitter more than two decades before. What followed was a disgraceful display of greed, power lust and vanity that lasted six months.

The first of the new emperors, Pertinax, was a man of good intentions who was murdered by corrupt men whose special interests he threatened. This was followed by the lowliest event in Roman history, the selling of the throne to the highest bidder, a man named Didius Julianus, who had little to recommend himself to the office. Indeed, even the money he had promised (for he was exceptionally wealthy) failed to materialize.

When Didius Julianus bought the throne, appeals went out to frontier generals to liberate Rome and restore its dignity. Three men responded ó one in Britain, one in Syria and another in Pannonia. The latter, Septimius Severus, marched on Rome quickly, ousted Didius Julianus and replaced the corrupt praetorian guards with his own loyal Illyrian soldiers. He made quick enemies of senators, who prayed for their deliverance by the other two frontier generals, Clodius Albinus and Pescennius Niger.

Septimius Severus was equally capable as a politician and a soldier: he bought off one of his adversaries while he defeated the other. Then, when he was in a better position, he provoked his last opponent, Clodius Albinus, into a war that Severus won in a pitched battle in Gaul. After a costly and degrading civil war of slightly more than four years, the Empire was at peace, and a new ruling house, the Severan-Emesan dynasty, had been established.

This chapter is divided into two sections. The first, following this brief introduction, concerns the Civil War of 193ñ197, and the second, following another introduction, chronicles the dynasty founded by the North African emperor Septimius Severus and his Syrian wife, Julia Domna.

THE CIVIL WAR OF A.D. 193ñ197

PERTINAX A.D. 193

HUSBAND OF TITIANA

FATHER OF PERTINAX JUNIOR

Publius Helvius Pertinax, A.D. 126ñ193. Pertinax was a self-made man whose father, a freedman, had been a timber merchant. It would appear that he rose from his humble origins to the highest offices in the Empire through talent and dedication alone. His brief principate represented an opportunity for deliverance from the injustices of Commodus, but its quick failure only served to demonstrate how deeply ingrained corruption had become.

Though he is portrayed as a man of unimpeachable morality, Pertinax could not have been a complete stranger to corruption in the military and government, for he held the two highest posts in Rome when Commodus was at his most wicked. Indeed, it is better, perhaps, to believe he viewed his principate as a golden opportunity to become a benevolent dictator, and to restore the integrity that was then a thing of the past. But others were unwilling to live up to the high standards Pertinax applied to his own conduct, and it was naive that he should have expected to reform a corrupt nation overnight.

There can be little doubt that Pertinax was privy to the coup by which he gained the throne. To secure their positions, the conspirators spread rumors that Commodus had died of natural causes and that Pertinax had already been acclaimed Augustus. For this reason we may rightfully suspect Pertinax was hailed emperor on the evening of December 31, 192, rather than on New Years Day 193. Pertinax embraced his fellow senators, whom he viewed as brothers who also had survived the tyranny of Commodus.

Pertinax began his career as a teacher, after which he embarked on a career in the military. In that capacity he served honorably in Parthia, Britain and Noricum. As a general under Commodus, he had suppressed two revolts in Africa in 190. He had also served as consul for the first time in 175, and as governor of Moesia Inferior, Dacia, Syria, Britain and Africa. At the time of Commodusí murder, he not only was serving out his second consulship, but also was the prefect of Rome.

Important tasks faced Pertinax, for the treasury was virtually empty and the systems of government were entirely corrupted. He immediately engaged in fiscal and legal reforms that by all accounts were sensible and equitable, and given enough time he might have restored the Empire to the glory it enjoyed under Marcus Aurelius and his predecessors. But his noble intentions alarmed those who had become accustomed to the benefits derived from their posts in the government and the army. Most of Pertinaxís reforms were aimed at cutting out corruption that benefited the few, and better distributing the wealth of Rome to the common man. Simply put: Pertinax was changing too much too quickly, and at the expense of the people who could do him the greatest harm.

Two coups were hastily attempted. The first occurred on January 3, only two or three days after Pertinax had been hailed emperor, and the second in early March. Among those who led a plot against him was the consul Sosius Falco. Although the evidence against Falco was damning, Pertinax pled for the manís life, insisting his reign would not be stained with the blood of a senator.

The truest threat against Pertinax came from the praetorian guards, who felt slighted at the murder of Commodus and in not having a hand in the selection of his successor. On March 28 the praetorians revolted and stormed the palace, murdering the 66-year-old Pertinax after he had reigned only 86 days. They placed his decapitated head on a lance and paraded it in triumph before the citizens, who, it seems, understood their grave misfortune. The senate ó realizing the seriousness of its loss ó consecrated Pertinax, and Septimius Severus not only expelled the praetorians, but also adopted Pertinaxís name along with that of the Antonines.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Only Pertinax and Antoninus Pius depicted Ops, the personification of wealth, on their coinage. A denarius of considerable rarity features his most interesting reverse type: Menti LavdaNdae, which loosely translates as ìpraiseworthy good sense.î The majority of Pertinaxís coins were struck at Rome, although he did strike denarii of distinctive style at Alexandria. His portraiture is often magnificent, with his rare consecration coinage offering a particularly virile image.

TITIANA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 193

WIFE OF PERTINAX

MOTHER OF PERTINAX JUNIOR

Flavia Titiana, lifespan unknown. Little is known of the origins and fate of Titiana, the wife of the emperor Pertinax, except that she bore her husband a homonymous son who was accorded the rank of Caesar in 193, and a daughter whose name is not known.

In addition to the grief Titiana suffered from the disgraceful murder and desecration of her husband, she had still more to endure. Her own father, Titus Flavius Sulpicianus, immediately proceeded to the camp of the praetorians in hopes of persuading them to hail him emperor in place of his murdered son-in-law. Sulpicianus had been suffect consul under Marcus Aurelius and proconsul of Asia under Commodus, and he no doubt considered himself fit for the job.

What began as a shameful exercise in flattery and bribery turned into a public auction in which Sulpicianus went head-to-head with Didius Julianus, who in the end offered the larger sum and was hailed emperor.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Most Alexandrian tetradrachms bearing on their obverse the bust of Titiana, and on their reverse the figure of Nike advancing, which have appeared in the marketplace in the last few decades are known counterfeits struck around the turn of the century (though the type itself is known and confirmed as genuine). Also suspect are bronzes of 27mm and 24mm listed by Dattari, which may be genuine but which require confirmation. Perhaps the only genuine issue that portrays Titiana is the dual-portrait piece now in the British Museum.

PERTINAX JUNIOR

CAESAR, A.D. 193

SON OF PERTINAX AND TITIANA

Publius Helvius Pertinax (Junior), d. A.D. 211/2. Bearing the same name as his father, Pertinax Junior was perhaps 5 to 10 years old when his father was hailed emperor. The Historia Augusta reports that the senate proclaimed the boy Caesar, but that his incorruptible father refused the offer, suggesting his son should be raised to that rank only when he had earned it.

Unlike his father, Pertinax Junior was not murdered by the praetorians; he survived nearly another 20 years. Septimius Severus was unbending in his devotion to the memory of Pertinax, and subsequently placed Pertinax Junior in charge of the sacerdotal (priestly) college. The young man also became a close friend of the emperorís youngest son, Geta. However, the latter association proved to be his undoing, for when Caracalla murdered Geta in 211 he initiated a general massacre of Getaís partisans, which included Pertinax Junior. Although the figure is probably exaggerated, the historian Cassius Dio tells us that perhaps 20,000 were killed in the fratricidal purge, ranging from the lowliest slave to men of high station.

Among those who fell with Pertinax Junior were Pompeianus (a grandson of Marcus Aurelius), Papinian (one of his fatherís distinguished colleagues, and the praetorian prefect), and Cornuficia (a granddaughter of Antoninus Pius and daughter of Marcus Aurelius). Though it is hardly a valid excuse for Caracallaís generally savage actions, it is perhaps understandable that the emperor perceived Pertinax Junior as a threat. Not only had he been a supporter of Geta, but he was also the son of Pertinax, a former emperor who was much beloved by the Romans.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Coins depicting Pertinax Junior were struck only at Alexandria. They occur in two issues: one dedicated exclusively to the young prince (of which fewer than six specimens are known), and one bearing both his portrait and that of his mother (which is believed unique).

DIDIUS JULIANUS A.D. 193

HUSBAND OF MANLIA SCANTILLA

FATHER OF DIDIA CLARA

Marcus Didius Severus Julianus, c. A.D. 133/5ñ193. After the praetorian guards murdered Pertinax on March 28, 193, the capital was in chaos but the soldiers were in command. An immediate appeal was made by Flavius Sulpicianus, the father-in-law of Pertinax, that he should be made emperor. But Sulpicianus found competition from a senator named Didius Julianus, who was also one of the wealthiest men in Rome.

Julianus was born in Milan and raised in the household of Domitia Lucilla, the mother of Marcus Aurelius. He subsequently had an impressive career, governing several provinces and serving as consul with Pertinax almost a decade before. Caught up in the moment, Julianus began to bid against Sulpicianus for the chance to be hailed emperor. The bidding war continued until Julianus pledged the sum of 25,000 sestertii per guard, an offer that even Sulpicianus could not exceed. Before the day had ended, one emperor had been murdered and another had bought his throne.

Drunk with power and blinded by greed, the praetorians conducted Julianus in tight formation to the senate house, where the terrified senators had little choice but to hail him emperor. Even greater than the senateís fear was the rage of the people, who immediately sent deputations to frontier commanders, requesting that they march on Rome and deliver them from the tyranny of Didius Julianus and the praetorian guards. Since the leading generals of the day had all been comrades-in-arms with Pertinax, they were eager to avenge his murder and no doubt saw this as an ideal opportunity to seize the title of Augustus.

This was a rare opportunity, and three generals responded: Clodius Albinus, Septimius Severus and Pescennius Niger. Albinus and Niger were far from Rome, which gave the upper hand to Septimius Severus, who commanded three legions in nearby Pannonia. Severus rallied his men, promised a generous bonus, and marched on Rome at a furious pace. Events were moving at such an alarming rate that Julianus realized he was doomed. Though he resorted to every act of desperation (including sending assassins after Severus, and even offering to share power with him), it was to no avail, for Severus and his legions were nearing Rome.

To avoid bloodshed, Severus promised immunity to the whole of the praetorian guard if they turned over the few men who killed Pertinax. Fearful of the battle-hardened frontier legions, and still without the payment promised by Julianus, the praetorians agreed to Severusí terms and informed the senate of their change of heart. The senate promptly deified Pertinax, condemned Julianus, and declared Septimius Severus emperor. On the 1st or 2nd of June (opinions vary) Didius Julianus was captured and beheaded in the manner of a common criminal, thus bringing to a conclusion his brief and shameful reign.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: The name Severus, which only appears on some of Julianusí coin inscriptions, was probably added after some coins had already been struck without it. It has been suggested that the name was initially excluded in an oversight (for Severus was one of Julianusí names), or that it was added later to demonstrate the sincerity of Julianusí offer to share his throne with Septimius Severus, who was then advancing on Rome.

MANLIA SCANTILLA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 193

WIFE OF DIDIUS JULIANUS

MOTHER OF DIDIA CLARA

Manlia Scantilla, lifespan unknown. On the day the senate was forced to hail her husband Didius Julianus emperor, it also bestowed the rank of Augusta on Manlia Scantilla and Didia Clara, the new emperorís wife and daughter. Of the virtues Manlia Scantilla may have possessed, beauty, it seems, was not one of them. Indeed, the 19th Century historian S.W. Stevenson goes so far as to describe her as ìthe most deformed of women.î She remains almost a complete mystery, and of her fate subsequent to being stripped of her title of Augusta, we have no details and can only conclude that she died in obscurity sometime thereafter.

DIDIA CLARA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 193

DAUGHTER OF DIDIUS JULIANUS AND MANLIA SCANTILLA

Didia Clara, born c. A.D. 153.In stark contrast to her mother, the daughter of Didius Julianus was a woman of considerable beauty. Indeed, the same historian who maligned her motherís countenance suggests Didia Clara was no less than ìthe most beautiful of the young women of her age.î

Didia Clara was married to a cousin named Cornelius Repentinus, who was destined to be one of three men who held the job of prefect of Rome during the tumultuous 13-week period that followed the murder of Commodus. The office had originally been occupied by Pertinax, who upon being hailed emperor vacated it and appointed his father-in-law, Flavius Sulpicianus, to the post. Following Pertinaxís murder, Didius Julianus ousted Sulpicianus (who had been Julianusí competitor at the ìauctionî held by the praetorian guards) and appointed his own son-in-law, Repentinus, in his place.

In addition to being hailed Augusta, having a father as emperor and a husband as city prefect, Didia Clara was also named beneficiary of her fatherís estate. But all of her fortune turned sour in a single day, either June 1 or 2 of 193, when her father was beheaded, she was stripped of her imperial title, and her inheritance was confiscated by the new emperor, Septimius Severus.

PESCENNIUS NIGER A.D. 193ñ194

Gaius Pescennius Niger Iustus, c. A.D. 135/140ñ194. Of the three frontier generals who answered Romeís call for liberation from Didius Julianus, Pescennius Niger was the most legitimate candidate. Indeed, when a group of outraged citizens gathered in the Circus Maximus to draft a plea, it was to Niger that they sent their request.

Unfortunately for Niger, the command he had gained through the patronage of Narcissus (the athlete who strangled Commodus) was in Syria, and thus news did not reach him fast enough to react before Septimius Severus, who commanded legions in Pannonia, was able to march on Rome and depose Didius Julianus. While glad to be rid of Didius Julianus, the senators disliked Septimius Severus, and we are told they prayed for Nigerís success even though they were forced to declare him a public enemy.

Niger hailed from an equestrian Italian family from Aquinum, a small city about half way between Rome and Pompeii. He rose to high office through a successful if unexceptional career in the army. He found his greatest achievements under Commodus, for whom he fought the Dacians, served as consul in 190 or 191, and as governor of Syria beginning in 191.

By all accounts he was a knowledgeable man with a great deal of integrity, but who was also ferocious, lustful and a strict disciplinarian. Though Niger had originally been hailed in opposition to Julianus, his new rival unquestionably was Septimius Severus. After Severus had consolidated his power in Rome and neutralized Clodius Albinus in the West by giving him the empty title of Caesar, he marched east in the summer of 193 to confront Niger.

Niger had consolidated his own authority in the East, and with nine legions under his banner marched toward the Bosporus to meet the armies of Severus. However, Severusí Illyrian soldiers easily routed the Syrian legions in successive engagements in Thrace (except at Byzantium), Cyzicus and Nicaea. By this time, perhaps February of 194, Egypt and some cities in Syria had switched allegiance to Severus.

The most important battle, however, occurred at Issus, in south-eastern Cilicia, where Alexander the Great had routed the Perisan king Darius some 500 years before. This was a critical defeat, and according to one source cost the lives of 20,000 of Nigerís men. Now a fugitive, Niger fled south to his capital of Antioch, from which he apparently planned to flee to the Parthians for safety. However, Severusí general, Anullinus, captured and executed him, and sent his severed head to the delighted Severus.

The chronology of these events is inconsistently reported, and a summary is worth presenting. The time frame for Nigerís being hailed emperor spans the period from late April to June 1 of 193; his defeat at Issus is variously reported as having occurred sometime in March, April or May of 194. Nigerís subsequent fate is even more vague, as he may have been overtaken before reaching Antioch, captured soon after reaching the city, or he may have endured a siege of several months. Thus, his death occurred sometime between March and October of 194.

Severus remained in the East for a while, punishing the cities in Syria that had supported Niger to the end and dividing that region into two provinces, Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. Subsequently, he led a campaign against the Parthian vassals who had supported Nigerís claim to the throne. In the process, Severus annexed most of Osroene and parts of northern Mesopotamia, for which he was hailed Parthicus Arabicus and Parthicus Adiabenicus.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Like Otho some 125 years before, Pescennius Niger struck no Latin bronzes, only Latin silver and gold, and provincial coinages. Nigerís Latin coinage (primarily from Antioch, although some from Alexandria and Caesarea in Cappadocia) is rife with misspellings, reverted letters and other technical imperfections. His portraits vary considerably in their treatment, and the planchets of his denarii are often irregular in shape. Because of their debased metal, the denarii typically have porous surfaces.

CLODIUS ALBINUS A.D. 195ñ197

CAESAR: A.D. 193ñ195 (UNDER SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS)

AUGUSTUS: A.D. 195ñ197 (AGAINST SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS)

Decimus Clodius Septimius Albinus, c. A.D., 140/150ñ197. Born into a distinguished family from Hadrumetum, about 75 miles south of Carthage, Clodius Albinus was a tall and portly man who pursued a career in the army. Although a North African like Septimius Severus, he was from a family of senatorial rank, and grew up in the lap of luxury. Little is known of his personality, except that he had a melancholy outlook and a foul sense of humor, but was brave in battle and harsh in his discipline.

He served admirably under Marcus Aurelius, who made him governor of Bithynia in 175, and later under Commodus, for whom he fought the Dacians and held many posts. He served as consul in 187, as governor of Lower Germany in 189, and finally as governor of Britain in 191. When the rapid succession of Commodus, Pertinax and Didius Julianus occurred early in 193, Albinus was one of three frontier generals to answer Romeís call for liberation. However, before Albinus made a concerted effort on his own account, his neutrality was purchased by Septimius Severus, who gave him the empty title of Caesar, designated him as his heir, and even had him add the name Septimius to his own. With Albinus placated and Rome secured, Severus devoted much of 193 and 194 to defeating Pescennius Niger in the East. Now only Severus and Albinus remained in positions of authority.

Upon Severusí triumphant return to Rome, his relationship with Albinus (with whom he shared the consulship that year) began to sour. The level of hostility reached a new height in 195, when Severus named his own sons, Caracalla and Geta, as his successors, and forced the senate to declare Albinus a public enemy. The news could hardly have come as a shock to Albinus, who moved into Gaul and was immediately hailed emperor by his own soldiers at Lugdunum in the fall of 195 (or early in 196, as other accounts would have it).

While Severus was busy passing laws in Rome, Albinus gained control or the allegiance of Spain and the Rhineland, though the Rhine legions withheld their loyalty. His original army of some 40,000 men quickly grew in size. It was not until January of 197 that Severus marched from Rome to meet his western foe. The two Roman armies met on February 19, 197, near Lugdunum. The historian Cassius Dio (who is prone to exaggeration) tells us each general commanded 150,000 men.

The battle was one of the largest in Roman history, and though Severus initially was thrown from his horse, a quick cavalry action permitted his escape and the battle continued. Eventually, Severusí Illyrian legions defeated the soldiers of Albinus, who is said to have fled the battle and committed suicide.

Severus is reported to have ridden his horse over the corpse of Albinus, which he decapitated so he could display the rebelís head in Rome. This may be an invention by pro-senatorial historians, but if it was true, it no doubt had a great effect in terrifying the senate. As a final insult to his adversaryís memory, Severus is said to have executed Albinusí wife and children, and cast all of their corpses into the icy waters of the Rhone.

The legacy of Albinus is a difficult one to decipher, as he is usually depicted as the innocent victim of Severusí evil designs. One can only marvel at his naivete in accepting Severusí hollow gesture of shared authority, and read on in shock as he failed to march on Rome during Severusí year-long absence in Syria. No doubt Albinus would have been warmly received by his friends in the senate who feared the day Severus returned from the East.

Alternatively, he may have doubted the strength of his position, and did not challenge Severus out of fear of certain failure. More likely, though, Albinus was probably awaiting the right moment to strike. Perhaps he believed it was a wiser policy to let Severus march all the way to Syria and exhaust his own legions fighting Niger. Indeed, had circumstances been slightly different, Severus would have been defeated by Niger, in which case Albinus would have been able to occupy Rome unopposed.

Clearly, it seems Albinus made an error in timing, for he did not go on the offensive until after Severus had returned to Rome and declared him a public enemy, at which point he had no choice but to engage in a costly civil war.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Clodius Albinusí coinage falls into two distinct categories: the early issues struck at Rome while he was Caesar under Septimius Severus, and the much scarcer coinage he struck at the capital of Lugdunum after he was proclaimed Augustus against Severus. The styles are completely different and the coinages can be distinguished with the greatest of ease, even when the inscriptions are indistinct.

SEVERAN-EMESAN DYNASTY A.D. 193ñ235

The 42 years between the acclamation of Septimius Severus in 193 and the murder of Severus Alexander in 235 is usually described as that of the ìSeveran Dynasty.î Though this is an appropriate enough label, it is perhaps too simplistic, for the dynasty was composed of both North African (Severan) and Syrian (Emesan) members. Indeed, it was the Syrian side of the family that restored the dynasty after it was overthrown by the usurper Macrinus in 217.

Founding the dynasty was the North African general Septimius Severus and his Syrian-born wife, Julia Domna. Severus and his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, ruled the Empire for the first 24 years, from 193 to 217. The dynasty was restored by the family of Domnaís sister, Julia Maesa, whose two grandsons, Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, collectively ruled nearly 17 years, from 218 to 235.

Although Rome had first been ruled by a foreign-born emperor almost a century earlier, when the Spaniard Trajan ascended the throne in 98, these were foreigners of a more exotic bent. The Punic and Syrian rulers contributed greatly to the introduction of foreign customs and religions in Rome. The Severans introduced the worship of numerous North African, Punic and Egyptian deities, whereas the Emesans imported the worship of the sun-god Heliogabal. Even the usurper Macrinus, who temporarily interrupted the dynasty, was a mere knight of Moorish extractions. Indeed, no true Roman occupied the throne during this period of history.

These eastern and Punic religions were to have profound effects, not only during the period of this dynasty, but also in the succeeding years. Most important, perhaps, was solar worship, which became popular with soldiers, especially in the form of Mithraism. Solar worship eventually served as the conduit by which Constantine the Great was able to adopt Christianity early in the 4th Century.

The fanaticism of eastern religion was quite different from the quiet, reverent form of worship to which the Romans were accustomed. Their form of paganism relied more on ritual and formula than actual belief, so the bizarre rituals introduced by Elagabalus (218ñ222) as the chief priest of the sun-cult of Heliogabal were quite a spectacle to the Romans. Elagabalus combined his exotic rituals with a desecration of Roman institution by marrying a Vestal Virgin. Few could have imagined that the Imperial government would get that far out of hand, and it comes as no surprise that he was murdered.

The Severan-Emesan dynasty came to an end in 235, when the rather docile emperor Severus Alexander, still only 26 years old, was murdered near the Rhine. Executing him were mutinous soldiers who wanted someone who would courageously lead them into the forests of Germany, not someone who would instead negotiate peace with offerings of gold. His murder heralded a new era in Roman history in which warfare on the three fronts ó the Rhine, the Danube and the Euphrates ó was rampant, and no Imperial continuity was achieved until the formation of the Tetrarchy some 50 years later.

SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS A.D. 193ñ211

AUGUSTUS: A.D. 193ñ211

(A.D. 193ñ198: SOLE REIGN; 195ñ198 CARACALLA AS CAESAR)

(A.D. 198ñ209: WITH CARACALLA; GETA AS CAESAR)

(A.D. 209ñ211: WITH CARACALLA AND GETA)

HUSBAND OF JULIA DOMNA

FATHER OF CARACALLA AND GETA

UNCLE OF JULIA SOAEMIAS AND JULIA MAMAEA

GREAT-UNCLE OF ELAGABALUS AND SEVERUS ALEXANDER

BROTHER-IN-LAW OF JULIA MAESA

FATHER-IN-LAW OF PLAUTILLA

Lucius Septimius Severus, A.D. 145/6ñ211 An intensely superstitious man, Septimius Severus hailed from a privileged and thoroughly Romanized family from the North African metropolis of Leptis Magna. He was a short, powerful man perfectly suited to the rigors of war, and ambitious enough to aspire to the throne.

On his fatherís side he was descended from the Septimii, who were of Punic origin, and on his motherís side from the Fulvii, who were of Italian descent. One of his grandfathers was the leading man in Leptis Magna during the principate of Trajan (98ñ117). Two of his family members were in the senate when he was born, and through this, Severus and his brother, Publius Septimius Severus, were themselves able to attain senatorial rank from the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161ñ180).

Severus and his brother pursued careers in the army, and Severus himself governed Gallia Lugdunensis from 185 to 187. During this time he married as his second wife, Julia Domna, a daughter of the chief priest of the Emesan sun-cult of Heliogabal. Together they had two sons, Caracalla in 188 and Geta in 189.

In 190 Severus held the consulship in Rome, and in the following year was appointed governor of Pannonia Superior. In that capacity he had command of three legions. He did not act upon the murder of Commodus on New Yearís Eve of 192, but only 12 days after the praetorian guardsmen subsequently murdered the emperor Pertinax, Severus was hailed emperor by his soldiers at Carnuntum on April 9, 193 (the Historia Augusta gives the date as April 13, but this has been disproven by the ìDura Calendarî).

He assumed the name of the slain Pertinax, and marched on Rome to claim the throne, which had been purchased by a wealthy senator named Didius Julianus at an informal auction held by the praetorian guardsmen on March 28. Not only did Severus earn the support of his three Pannonian legions, but he also gained approval from the remaining legions stationed on the Rhine and Danubian fronts, giving him 16 legions in all.

Severus had three opponents to his claim: Didius Julianus, then the emperor in Rome; Clodius Albinus, the governor of Britain; and Pescennius Niger, the governor of Syria. Despite all this opposition, Severus was in the best position, for he had the support of many legions, and was closer to Rome than either Albinus or Niger. Furthermore, Julianus had little more than the fickle praetorian guards to defend him.

Severus marched on Rome at so rapid a pace that all in Rome realized Julianus was doomed. Julianusí attempts to assassinate Severus failed, as did his subsequent offers to share his authority. In hopes of avoiding a massacre in Rome, Severus promised immunity to all the praetorian guardsmen if they would turn over the men who murdered Pertinax. The praetorians agreed to the terms, and the senate deified Pertinax, condemned Julianus and hailed Septimius Severus emperor in his place. On either the 1st or 2nd of June, 193, Julianus was captured and executed.

The senate soon came to despise Severus, and the now-humiliated praetorian could hardly have benefited from his presence. But both feared his frontier legions, and so had no choice but to support his claim to the throne. Meanwhile, the senate and the people vested much hope in Albinus and Niger, both of whom had been proclaimed emperor by their troops.

One of Severusí first actions was to trick the praetorian guards into assembling, unarmed, for an address. Once they were all present, his Illyrian soldiers rushed in, deposed them, and replaced them. In addition to replacing the treacherous praetorians with his loyal Illyrians, Severus also doubled the size of the praetorian cohorts from 500 to 1,000 men. Pay was increased from 300 denarii to 500 denarii, and other subsidies were added. Though in reality these overtures barely kept pace with the reduction of the purity of the denarius (now at about 50 percent silver), Severus created a large, loyal army that could safeguard Rome while he conducted his upcoming campaign against Niger. His inherent distrust of senators and Italians was well served by their replacement with his Illyrian troops, savage and offensive though they seemed to the local population.

After he had consolidated his power in Rome, Severus bought peace with Albinus and the British legions by investing him with the rank of Caesar. This was a shallow, diversionary tactic that Albinus accepted, for he must have considered the combined legions of the Rhine and Danube too much to overcome at present. Now secure in the West, Severus turned his attention to Niger in the East, and led an army toward Asia in the summer of 193.

Niger, with nine legions under his command, marched to the Bosporus to confront Severus, only to be routed in successive engagements in Thrace, and at Cyzicus and Nicaea. By approximately February of 194, word had spread throughout Nigerís Empire that Severus had gained the upper hand, and Egypt and some cities in Syria switched their allegiance to Severus. The critical defeat, however, occurred in the spring of 194 at Issus, in southeastern Cilicia, where perhaps 20,000 of Nigerís men perished. Niger fled to Antioch in the South, where he then hoped to flee to the Parthian vassals who were his allies. However, he was captured and executed sometime between March and October of 194.

Severus remained in the East, exacting revenge on the cities in Syria and the Parthian vassals who had supported Niger. During these campaigns, Severus was hailed Parthicus A rabicus and Parthicus Adiabenicus for having annexed most of Osroene and northern Mesopotamia. Severus then returned to Rome, more certain than ever that the astrologer he had consulted before he married Julia Domna was correct ó that whomever she married would become a king.

Upon returning to Europe, Severus declared himself to be the son of Marcus Aurelius, and made clear his intentions toward Albinus when, in December of 195, he raised his own son, Caracalla, to the rank of Caesar. Thus, in one fell swoop, Albinus was replaced both as Caesar and as Severusí heir to the throne. Furthermore, Severus forced the senate to declare Albinus a public enemy. In response, Albinus moved into Gaul and was hailed emperor at Lugdunum in the fall of 195 or early in 196.

After about a year of preparations, the opposing Augusti met near Lugdunum on February 19, 197. In what was undoubtedly one of the largest battles in Roman history, Severus emerged victorious, causing Albinus to flee the battlefield and commit suicide.

With Severus now in supreme command, the senate braced itself for what it knew would be a difficult relationship with the emperor. Severus now took his family with him on his conquest of Parthia. The war was a great success, and when his legions occupied the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon on January 28, 198, they were ruthless. In addition to stripping the great city of all its portable wealth, they killed all the men and enslaved some 100,000 women and children.

Severus consequently hailed his 9-year-old son, Geta, Caesar, and raised his 10-year-old son Caracalla from Caesar to Augustus. Two attempts to take the city of Hatra failed, and the Imperial family traveled to Egypt. They remained there nearly a year, during which a visit to the tomb of Alexander the Great must have made a strong impression on young Caracalla, who later in his life became obsessed with the Greek kingís legacy. Late in 200 the family departed Egypt.

Severus and his eldest son Caracalla assumed the consulship at Antioch on January 1, after which the royal family returned to Rome, arriving before the end of 202. Not long after their arrival, Caracalla was forced into a hateful marriage with Plautilla, the daughter of prefect Plautianus. The ceremony was magnificent, but if there was anyone Caracalla hated more than his new bride, it was her father, Plautianus. Even Domna objected to the union, but Severus paid no heed. Severus had made Plautianus, a possible kinsman from his home town of Leptis Magna, praetorian prefect in 197. The two were inseparable and he accompanied the emperor on all of his early campaigns. Plautianus was given authority over taxation and the grain supply, as well as other important functions of government. As a result, Plautianus became exceptionally wealthy, and by the time he convinced Severus to agree to the wedding, he was virtual co-ruler with Severus.

As might be expected, the great wealth and power achieved by Plautianus caused him to suffer from an inflated ego, and he may even have plotted to overthrow Severus and Caracalla. Plautianus was famous for erecting statues of himself not just in Rome, but throughout the Empire. In 205, all of the prefectís good fortune came to an end, when Severusí brother, Lucius Septimius Geta, offered damning words about Plautianus while he was on his own deathbed.

Caracalla was eager to strike while the iron was hot, and managed to coerce statements from praetorian guardsmen confirming the suspicion that Plautianus was plotting against Severus and Caracalla. Even Severus could not deny the combined impact of the opinions of his wife and eldest son, his deceased brother and a loyal praetorian guard. Severus called Plautianus to the palace on January 22, 205, where he did not contradict an order given by Caracalla to a nearby guard to execute Plautianus. Caracalla promptly divorced and banished Plautilla, and because Plautianus was subjected to damnatio memoriae, his statues were torn down and his inscriptions were erased.

Though this was a tragic event for Severus, to first discover that his closest ally was unfaithful and then to have him executed, it was a moment of triumph and relief for Caracalla and Domna. The populace in general rejoiced, for Plautianus had behaved arrogantly.

Before the downfall of Plautianus, Severus and his family made an expedition to North Africa, visiting his home town of Leptis Magna from late in 202 to some time in 203. While in the region, Severus led a campaign against the desert tribes beyond Tripolitana ó something he may have wanted to do since childhood. Over the years, Severus lavished Leptis Magna with a great many building projects, much of which remain today to make that city one of the most impressive Roman ruins in existence.

In 203 the Severans returned to Italy, and in 205, Severus made his two sons share the consulship, hoping they would learn how to cooperate; instead, it served only to fuel their rivalry. The Imperial family spent the three years from 205 to 208 partly in Rome and in Campania. Severus and Domna were in for a difficult period as parents, for not only were Caracalla and Geta well into their teens, but both Plautianus and Severusí brother were now deceased, and so there were fewer in the household to prevent the siblings from clashing.

Severus gave his sons one last opportunity at sharing the consulship in 208, but again they proved to be unable to work together. At witís end, Severus decided that a frontier military campaign would do his sons good, and so he organized just such an offensive against the Caledonians in the north of Britain.

The family arrived at Eburacum (mod. York) in the north of England in 209, and in the beginning, Severus had both of his sons fight on the front. This gave Severus the opportunity to raise his youngest son, Geta, to the rank of Augustus. Domna now occupied a unique niche in history, for she was simultaneously the wife of one emperor and the mother of two others.

During the remainder of the war, Severus became increasingly ill, and left Geta behind with his mother at camp headquarters while Caracalla led the campaign. Father and eldest son often quarreled and, to the many soldiers who witnessed the event, it even appeared as though Severus was about to be stabbed in the back by Caracalla. Warning shouts from the soldiers, we are told, foiled Caracallaís attempt. As Herodian reveals: ìHe regarded his father, who was suffering from a drawn-out illness and taking a long time to die, as a troublesome nuisance and tried to persuade his doctors and attendants to do him some mischief while they tended to the old man, so as to get rid of him sooner.î However, Severus, in his mid-60s, survived that altercation and died a natural death on February 4, 211, at Eburacum. To his sons he gave a simple piece of advice: ìAgree with each other, give money to the soldiers, and scorn all other men.î

Peace was made with the Caledonians and the offensive abandoned so they could conduct Severusí body back to Rome. Caracalla was now the senior Augustus, but he shared authority with his brother and, to a certain degree, with Domna. Once the family arrived in Rome, they celebrated Severusí funeral and consecration, and placed his ashes in the Mausoleum of Hadrian.

Though they paid him honor in public, his sons ignored Severusí deathbed advice to settle their differences. Instead, within 10 months Geta had been murdered by Caracalla, who for the remainder of his life was haunted by dreams in which he was pursued by his deceased father and brother, brandishing their swords.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: The silver coinage was significantly debased during Severusí reign. Though the denarius had regained some of its integrity during the brief reigns of Pertinax (at about 87 percent pure), it returned fast to approximately the 75 percent purity to which it had fallen during the reign of Commodus. During Severusí war with Pescennius Niger, the silver content of the denarius dropped precipitously to about 65 percent, and by the end of his reign had fallen to about 56 percent. His eldest son, Caracalla, let it fall to about 50 percent, where on average it stayed until the reign of Gordian III (238ñ244).

The coinage of the Severan-Emesan dynasty through 211 was truly the coinage of Septimius Severus, for the coins issued in the names of his sons (and to the degree possible, his wife) followed suit. The early period, through about 202, offers interesting dynastic issues showing the portraits of two or more family members. Sometimes their busts occur individually on opposite sides of the coin; at other times they are jugate, confronted, or facing. However, the most creative period in terms of reverse types was c. 201 to 206. Some of Severusí ìbetterî reverse types include: temple and sacrifice scenes for the Saecular Games, the four seasons at play, a ship in the Circus Maximus surrounded by exotic animals, Dea Caelestis riding a lion bounding over gushing water, the arch of Septimius Severus and the Stadium of Domitian.

JULIA DOMNA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 193ñ217

WIFE OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS

MOTHER OF CARACALLA AND GETA

SISTER OF JULIA MAESA

AUNT OF JULIA SOAEMIAS AND JULIA MAMAEA

GREAT-AUNT OF ELAGABALUS AND SEVERUS ALEXANDER

MOTHER-IN-LAW OF PLAUTILLA

Julia Domna, c. A.D. 170ñ217. Of all the members of the Severan-Emesan dynasty, the one who probably deserves the highest accolades is Julia Domna, the empress who served her Empire, her family and her army with great dedication in spite of all the sinister events unfolding around her.

Perhaps her greatest contribution to Rome was her staunch opposition to the division of the Empire between her two sons. Had Caracalla and Geta been allowed to carve up the Empire between east and west, a horrific civil war could have resulted. Alternatively, the plan might have worked, and the division between East and West that was achieved by the emperors Valentinian I and Valens in 364 could have been effected much earlier.

Julia Domna was born in Syria, and was the only sister of Julia Maesa, both of whom were daughters of Julius Bassianus, the high priest of the Emesan cult of the sun-god Heliogabal. Theirs was one of the most prominent families in Syria, and one which became enormously wealthy through their leadership of the religious cult. While Domna was destined to help establish the Severan-Emesan dynasty in 193, Maesa was responsible for its resurrection in 218, after the downfall of Macrinus.

Though of Syrian origin, Domna traveled to the western Mediterranean as a young woman. It would seem that her hand in marriage was desirable, for her horoscope foretold that whomever she married would become king. Her choice was Lucius Septimius Severus, a man of North African extraction who already had been married once and was then governor of Gallia Lugdunensis. She married Severus in 187 and promptly gave birth to two sons, Caracalla in 188 and Geta in 189.

Domna was hailed Augusta in 193 when her husband was hailed emperor by the senate in Rome. She continued to feed her penchant for travel by accompanying her husband on most of his military campaigns. It was not since the era of Faustina Junior that an empress had traveled so widely with the army, so in 195 she was honored as Mother of the Camp (Mater Castrorum), a title that she retained over the next 22 years.

In addition to serving her family and Empire, Domna was a patron of the arts and literature. Her beauty was complimented by her intelligence and broad intellectual interests, which earned her the nickname ìthe philosopher.î She kept company with the literati of her day, including the physician Galen, the lawyer Ulpian and the philosopher Philostratus, whose Life of Apollonius she seems to have inspired. Later in her life, she gained a reputation for adultery, and is even accused by the authors of the Historia Augusta of plotting against her husband.

Her two greatest sources of grief, no doubt, were the intense rivalry between her two sons and the dangerous authority of Plautianus, her husbandís praetorian prefect. Plautianus was possibly a kinsman of Severus, and at the very least hailed from the same city. In total disregard for the contempt all his family members held for Plautianus, Severus gave him ever greater responsibilities. The hatred between Domna and the prefect was well known, as each felt free to berate the other in public.

When, in 202, Plautianus arranged for his daughter, Plautilla, to marry Domnaís eldest son, Caracalla, it must have come as the shock of a lifetime. If anything, the event demonstrates that the true authority was wielded by Severus and Plautianus, for the vehement objections of Domna and Caracalla fell upon deaf ears. Geta, who intensely disliked his brother, no doubt supported the endeavor, for his brother was bound to suffer as a consequence.

It came as a great relief to Domna when, in January of 205, she learned that Plautianus had been executed on Caracallaís orders. Sitting in the room with Domna when the news arrived was her daughter-in-law, Plautilla, who reacted with terror rather than joy, for her fate was also sealed in the bargain. Caracalla promptly divorced her and banished her to the barren island of Lipari.

After Plautianusí death, Domna attempted to strengthen family ties and defuse the rivalry between her sons. But they were now in their teens and were becoming more difficult to control with each passing day. Even moving to rural Campania did not help matters. The joint-consulships the boys held in 205 and 208 only gave them more topics upon which to disagree.

Severus believed the only true solution was to give them a taste of frontier warfare so that their aggressions might be put to more productive use and so that they would be exposed to a harsher lifestyle. Early in the campaign, Geta was raised to Augustus, the same rank Caracalla and Severus held, and Domna was thus hailed Mater Augustorum. Domna remained at Eburacum (mod. York) with Geta while the offensive was led by Caracalla and Severus.

The campaign came to a grinding halt in February 211 when Severus died. Peace was made and the family returned to Rome to celebrate Severusí funeral and consecration. The senate hailed Domna Mater Senatus and Mater Patriae (ìmother of the senate and of the fatherlandî), titles unparalleled in Imperial history. In taking such titles, Domna was, perhaps, drawing a comparison between herself and the great mother-goddess Magna Mater (Cybele). However, grandiose titles did not help her defuse the competition between her sons, who had set up a barrier to divide the palace in Rome, and furthermore, intended to divide the Empire between themselves.

Domna knew this would result in a civil war and, at the very least, would diminish her authority over Imperial affairs. Thus, in her objection to the idea, she posed the observation: ìYou may divide the Empire, but you cannot divide your mother.î Through methods that are not entirely clear, she was able to derail the idea before it gained acceptance.

But Domna would now have to deal with a tragedy far greater than the death of her husband or the marriage of Caracalla to Plautilla. Late in December of 211, Domna was tricked by Caracalla into inviting Geta to a private meeting, at which the three were to settle their differences through negotiation. Shortly after Geta arrived, however, Caracallaís guards burst into the room and murdered him, by some accounts while he lay in Domnaís arms, begging her to save his life. It was a traumatic event and it is a great testament to Domna that she was able to overcome it and remain productive to both the Empire and to Caracalla.

Though she seems not to have accompanied Caracalla on his Germanic campaign, she did go to the East with him as he embarked on his Alexander-inspired conquest of Parthia. She remained in Antioch to monitor Imperial correspondences and oversee a great many other things. Being back in her native Syria and being in a position of great power (she even had her own praetorian guards) all appealed to Domna.

But her new-found happiness was shattered when she learned of Caracallaís murder in April 217. Indeed, realizing that she had no direct family left and that she would lose her authority and prestige, Domna contemplated suicide. But a message from Macrinus, who was attempting to distance himself from the murder of Caracalla, informed her that she was still Augusta, and so she chose to live on.

She remained in Syria, but being an essentially powerless Augusta did not appeal to her and she seems to have devoted her energies to stirring up a revolt against Macrinus, who seems to have consequently banished her to Rome. After bearing her sonís ashes back to Rome and perhaps suffering the effects of cancer, Domna starved herself to death.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: The coinage of Julia Domna, though struck over a long period, is relatively uneventful in terms of its reverse types. The most noteworthy type that is truly her own is that commemorating, in 213, the dedication of the Temple of Vesta, which had burned in 191. She does, however, appear on a number of interesting dynastic issues commissioned by Septimius Severus. The most famous is that which depicts Severus on the obverse, and on the reverse Domnaís facing head between the confronted heads of her two sons. Her issues belonging to the lifetime of Severus bear the obverse inscriptions Ivlia Domna Avg or Ivlia Avgvsta, whereas those struck during the period after his death are inscribed Ivlia PIA Felix Avg.

ANTONINUS (CALLED ëCARACALLAí) A.D. 198ñ217

CAESAR: A.D.

(UNDER SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS)

AUGUSTUS: A.D. 198ñ217

(A.D. 198ñ209: WITH SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS)

(A.D. 209ñ211: WITH SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND GETA)

(A.D. 211: WITH GETA)

(A.D. 211ñ217: SOLE REIGN)

SON OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND JULIA DOMNA

BROTHER OF GETA

HUSBAND OF PLAUTILLA

NEPHEW OF JULIA MAESA

COUSIN OF JULIA SOAEMIAS AND JULIA MAMAEA

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (earlier Lucius (Julius or Septimius) Bassianus, nicknamed Caracallus, commonly called Caracalla), A.D. 188ñ217. Born April 4, 188, at Lugdunum while his father was governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, Caracalla was a docile, affable youth who changed with the passage of time. As he matured into his teens, his rivalry with his brother, Geta, intensified, and after he murdered his sibling late in 211, his mental and physical illnesses became quite serious, eventually causing his decline and murder.

Caracalla was hailed Caesar and princeps iuventutis at Viminacium in December 195 (often erroneously cited as 196), shortly after his father had defeated Pescennius Niger and settled affairs in Asia Minor. At this time he was also re-named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, for his father was now claiming to be the son of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161ñ180). Severusí main purpose in all this was to establish ties to the golden age of Rome and to make clear to Clodius Albinus that he was establishing his own dynasty ó into which Albinus no longer figured. In 197 he became Pontifex and Destinatus Imperator.

After Clodius Albinus had been defeated in February of 197, Severus once again turned his attention to the East, taking his family with him on a conquest of Parthia. The offensive was a great success, and upon taking the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon on January 28, 198, the 10-year-old Caracalla was raised from Caesar to Augustus, while his 9-year-old brother, Geta, was hailed Caesar.

The family remained in Syria in 199, as Septimius failed on two occasions to capture the city of Hatra. Then they traveled to Egypt, entering that country before the year was out and remaining in Egypt for almost a full year, after which Caracalla aided his father, and on January 1, 202, Caracalla shared the consulship with his father in Antioch.

In that same year, his father celebrated his decennalia with lavish games, and Caracalla was forced into a hateful marriage with Plautilla, the daughter of the corrupt and arrogant praetorian prefect Plautianus. If anything positive could be said about the marriage, it was that the dowry was immense and the ceremony was as grand as Rome had ever seen.

However, Caracalla despised his new bride as much as he did his avaricious and treacherous father-in-law. Indeed, Caracalla and Plautilla may justifiably be compared with Drusus and Livilla, in the same way Severus and Plautianus equate to Tiberius and Sejanus. It was a re-run of palace politics that almost exactly duplicated the situation that existed about 175 years earlier. The situation was not a productive arrangement to anyone but Plautianus, who was profiting immensely from the trust and responsibility Severus had given him. Caracalla grew more hateful of his lot in life with each passing moment. By January 205, only a few days after he had been elected consul for a second time (this time sharing the honor with his brother), Caracalla arranged the murder of Plautianus, and subsequently divorced and banished his unwanted bride.

Caracalla spent the next three years in cosmopolitan Rome and rural Campania with his family, and it was during this period that his social excesses and his sibling rivalry grew to intolerable proportions. Caracalla and Geta were both in their teens now, and their father did not approve of the direction in which their energies were being spent, so he invented the need to personally take charge of a campaign against the Caledonians in what is modern Scotland.

After the two young heirs had shared the consulship again in 208, Severus prepared for the campaign that would be his last. In 208 the family departed Italy and arrived at Eburacum (mod. York), which served as a base for the campaign. Throughout most of the war, Geta and Julia Domna remained there, while Caracalla and Septimius led the legions.

Septimius was ill at the time, and so Caracalla assumed overall responsibility for the campaign. This led to some disagreements, and he became quarrelsome toward his father. At one point, the bickering became so heated that we are told Caracalla appeared ready to stab Severus in the back in full view of the army. However, a sword was not necessary to slay his father, for on February 4, 211, the emperor died of natural causes.

Caracalla made a peace with the Caledonians which was not entirely unfavorable to the Romans, but did require that the border be withdrawn to Hadrianís Wall. The three remaining family members returned to Rome bearing Septimiusí corpse. Along the way the hatred and mistrust that had long been evident between the siblings grew to new proportions. Indeed, each was so concerned about being poisoned by the other that they did not dine or lodge together.

Their return to the capital began with a celebration of their fatherís funeral and consecration, but soon turned into a fratricidal war within the palace, which had to be physically divided to prevent their murdering one another. Their mother, Julia Domna, was at her witís end, and it was only her strong objection that prevented the brothers from dividing the Empire between themselves along geographical lines, Geta in the East and Caracalla in the West.

With Geta gaining numerous and important allies to his cause, the brinksmanship being practiced by the brothers lasted only about 10 months from the day their father died. After an earlier plan to poison Geta was exposed, Caracalla convinced Domna to invite Geta to meet with him late in December, perhaps on the 26th. Together, he said, the three of them could work out their differences and put everything right again. But the laurel branch turned out to be a sword; Caracalla had his guards burst into the meeting room and slay Geta shortly after he had arrived.

All in Rome were shocked and many outraged, though few could have considered it a surprise. Caracalla hastened to the praetorian camp where he pled his case with the guardsmen, insisting he had killed Geta while defending his own life. The story was not convincing enough, so he offered a bonus of 2,500 denarii per man to gain loyalty and support. He furthermore increased the payments-in-kind made throughout the ranks of the army, and increased the salary of the legionnaire from 500 to as much as 750 denarii per year. Though he offered no money or payment-in-kind, Caracalla was able to convince the senate to support him as well.

The murder was bad enough, but what followed was difficult to accept, for Caracalla ordered a general massacre of Getaís partisans, and some 20,000 are said to have perished. Among those killed were the former Caesar, Pertinax Junior; Caracallaís former wife, Plautilla (who was in exile on the island of Lipari); and many others, from the lowliest friend or athlete to praetorian prefects and senators.

At last, Caracalla was sole emperor of Rome. The many promises he had made, however, were costly, and there was an urgent need to raise revenue. To this effect, Caracalla doubled the inheritance tax on estates, and in 212 he introduced a law, the Constitutio Antoniniana, which granted citizenship to virtually all free men in the Empire. This greatly increased his base of taxation, principally that on inherited estates and slaves. Hidden within this law was also a hint of Caracallaís infatuation with Alexander the Great, who likewise tried to integrate all the people he conquered.

In 213 the young emperor assumed his fourth and final consulship, but departed Rome early in the year to wage war against the Alemanni, a confederation of Germanic people who are first mentioned by ancient sources during this campaign. It is at this time that the emperor began to wear the caracallus (the hooded cloak from which his nickname, ìCaracalla,î is derived) and the wig of golden hair arranged in the German fashion.

Caracalla claimed a military victory, but he won more through subsidies, the regular payment of which kept the Germans pacified for another two decades. For all of this, he won the title Germanicus Maximus from the senate. In the following year, Caracalla defeated the Danubian Carpi and reorganized a number of provinces as he made preparations to conquer the non-Roman east.

Conquering Persia, be it under Parthian or Sasanian control, was a goal common to many emperors, and a disproportionate number of them died in their attempts. For Caracalla, however, this ideal took on a dimension far greater than simply adding to the holdings of Rome, for it also fed upon his desire to replicate the legendary accomplishments of Alexander the Great.

In 214 Caracalla attended the Pythian games at Philoppopolis, Thrace, where he was hailed ìAlexanderî (with the title appearing on the commemorative coins struck for the games). Indeed, that Caracalla envisioned himself as Alexander novus is not surprising, for Alexander was about 22 years old when he crossed the Hellespont and launched his Persian invasion. At the similar age of 26, Caracalla held an identical position ó leader of the most powerful Empire in the Mediterranean world. Both men thought in terms that were larger than life, and both were driven by an insatiable (and perhaps slightly insane) desire to conquer the East.

Later in 214, Caracalla recruited a phalanx of 16,000 men, whom he had outfitted in the same fashion as would have been Alexanderís soldiers nearly 550 years before. He recruited soldiers from Sparta, supposedly added elephants to his arsenal, and even chose commanders who had the same names as Alexanderís own subordinates.

Caracalla next followed in Alexanderís footsteps, visiting Troy and honoring it as did Alexander before him. The now-deranged emperor staged military exercises there to honor the heroes of the Trojan War. He himself played Achilles, and one of his closest friends, Festus, played the role of Patroclus. However, to fulfill the Homeric drama, it was necessary for the otherwise healthy Festus to die, which he did with immaculate timing. A grand funeral was held for this fallen (poisoned) comrade, anointing the upcoming war.

In addition to obvious mental illness, Caracalla was also suffering from physical ailments. One of his visits while in the East was to Pergamum, where he sought a cure at the shrine of Aesculapius. (He had previously visited a shrine of the Celtic healing god Apollo Grannus in Germany, and later sought relief at the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria.) In 214, the emperor wintered in Nicomedia, where he remained until early April of 215. He then embarked for Antioch, arriving there in May, 215 with eight legions and establishing his headquarters. His mother, Domna, remained there, coordinating many aspects of the campaign and monitoring the Imperial correspondence.

The emperor first campaigned unsuccessfully in Armenia, and then went to Alexandria, arriving in December of 215. Not surprisingly, he visited Alexanderís tomb and sought cures for his illnesses while he wintered in that city of half a million people. During his stay, a great tragedy occurred that resulted in the slaughter of tens of thousands of unarmed Alexandrian citizens. What prompted the slaughter is not certainly known, but it may have been jeers directed at him for his impersonations of Alexander, his murder of Geta or the unfounded insinuation that he was having an affair with his mother. Regardless of the cause, Caracalla lured many of those who jeered him into a confined area (on false pretenses, just as he had done with Geta) and had them butchered to the man. The slaughter continued for several days in all quarters of the city, as his soldiers raped, robbed and murdered without cause, restraint or discretion. Caracalla and his soldiers remained in Alexandria until March or April of 216, when they departed for Antioch.

Caracalla could now focus on his much anticipated Parthian campaign. He began by humbly requesting to marry the daughter of the Parthian king, Artabanus. This overture was rejected, perhaps wisely. Enraged, Caracalla crossed the Euphrates and invaded Media. He spent the winter of 216 at Edessa, where he imprisoned the king of the Osroene, Abgar, whom he also had lured to his court through trickery.

This was an ideal point in time for invading Parthia, since the kingdom had been divided between rival siblings, Artabanus IV and Vologases VI. Since the two Parthian brothers could not get along, they had divided their kingdom at some point after the death of their father, Vologases V. This sibling rivalry offers an uncanny historical parallel to the situation that had just been resolved in Rome. In any case, the dispute of the Parthian brothers was eventually resolved by the vassal king of Persis, Artashir, who overthrew the Parthians within a decade of Caracallaís war.

Although the Parthians had been unprepared for Caracallaís earlier invasions, the kingdom was now ready to oppose his aggressions. However, while en route to Mesopotamia, the 29-year-old emperor was murdered near Carrhae on April 8, 217, as he stopped by the side of the road to relieve himself. Responsible for the coup was Caracallaís praetorian prefect and successor on the throne, Macrinus, who may have feared for his own life based on some correspondence he had read. Delivering the fatal sword thrust was a soldier named Martialis, who held a grudge against the emperor.

Caracallaís body was cremated and his ashes sent to his mother, Julia Domna, who was then residing in Antioch. Widowed and deprived of both of her sons, Domna was ordered by Macrinus (who had been hailed emperor) to accompany Caracallaís ashes back to Rome, where she later starved herself to death. Caracalla was deified Divus Antoninus Magnus either early in September (perhaps on the 1st) of 217 under Macrinus, or in 218 under Elagabalus.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: The early coinage of Caracalla, from c. 196 to 211, followed patterns established by his father. There are many interesting ìdynasticî issues bearing two or more portraits, and a considerable number of interesting reverse types. During this period, Caracallaís portrait demonstrates his maturation from a small boy to a young man of 23; however, his most interesting coinage begins in 212, after he had murdered Geta. The portrait is now fully bearded and develops over the next five years into a baroque image, often with a menacing scowl.

In 215 (or toward the end of 214), Caracalla introduced the double-denarius, an entirely new coin that is usually mistakenly called an antoninianus, after Caracallaís given name. It was an inflationary coin: though presumably tariffed at two denarii (for it was ëradiateí), it only weighed as much as 1ñ1/2 denarii. Caracalla took another inflationary measure in 215, when he reduced the weight of his aureus by 10 percent. These were only part of his overall plan to increase revenue to pay for his massive army.

Other interesting types were struck to celebrate Severusí victories in Britain, and the rebuilding of the Circus Maximus in 213. Regrettably, the emperorís greatest architectural achievement, the Thermae Antoninianae (Baths of Caracalla), is not commemorated or depicted on coinage. Caracallaís commemorative coinage, inscribed DIVO Antonino Magno, was struck by Elagabalus or Macrinus, presumably at the same time as the issues that honor his mother, Julia Domna.

PLAUTILLA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 202ñ205

WIFE OF CARACALLA

DAUGHTER-IN-LAW OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND JULIA DOMNA

SISTER-IN-LAW OF GETA

Publia Fulvia Plautilla, d. A.D. 211/2. As the daughter of Gaius Fulvius Plautianus, a man who came from the same town as Septimius Severus and may have been his relative, Plautilla became a tool in her fatherís rise to power. Indeed, it was her father who, in 202, convinced Severus to allow Plautilla to marry the emperorís eldest son, Caracalla, even though neither bride nor groom desired the match.

The marriage was accompanied by great festivities, for Plautilla had been allotted an extraordinarily large dowry. Descriptions of the quality and quantity of items, and the splendor of the procession make it hard to imagine that a grander event had ever taken place. Upon being wed to Caracalla, Plautilla was hailed Augusta, a title that she held with her uninviting mother-in-law, Julia Domna, for three years.

Caracalla and Plautilla never got along, and their marriage was one of political necessity rather than love. They despised each other so greatly that they refused even to dine together. However, the stories of her loose sexual conduct are probably unfounded, and may be chalked up to Severan propaganda.

Plautianus had been made praetorian prefect in 197 and accompanied the emperor on all of his early campaigns. He was given ever-increasing authority over governmental functions, including the most important ones ó taxation and the grain supply. Through these high offices, he became exceptionally wealthy and by the early 200s had become the virtual co-ruler of Septimius Severus. In addition to having his daughter marry the heir-apparent, Plautianus even held the consulship in 203.

During his rise to power, however, Plautianus had become too avaricious, and perhaps even planned to overthrow his benefactor. Whether or not the latter is true, he had alienated the emperorís wife, brother and eldest son (his own son-in-law, Caracalla), and in so doing had made some powerful enemies. With Severus, he seems only to have had one important quarrel, which resulted from his erecting statues of himself all over the Empire. More often than not, Plautianusí own statues were larger than those of the Imperial family; at other times he would include his own statues among those of the Severans.

A deathbed testimonial by Severusí brother, Publius Septimius Geta, however, brought the matter of Plautianusí loyalty to a head. Caracalla, who was wholly unsatisfied with his marriage to the prefectís daughter and so deeply resented the manís authority, furthered matters by coercing statements from some praetorian guardsmen that Plautianus had asked them to murder Severus and Caracalla. Retribution was swift. Plautianus was called into the palace on January 22, 205, where on Caracallaís orders he was murdered by a guard as the two Augusti stood by watching.

Considering the way Plautianus gained and abused his power, alienated members of the Imperial family and perhaps even plotted against the emperor, it comes as no surprise that historians have drawn a parallel between him and Tiberiusí more notorious prefect, Sejanus. It comes as no surprise that Plautianus was subjected to damnatio memoriae.

For Caracalla, the death of Plautianus was a welcome event. Not only did he remove the man whom he considered his main rival to the succession, but he also was able to divorce Plautilla. In this task Caracalla wasted no time and immediately banished her and her brother Plautius to Lipari, a volcanic island north of Sicily. Plautilla and her brother were put to death late in 211 or early in 212, after Caracalla murdered his brother Geta.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: This empressí coinage began in 202 with issues celebrating her marriage to Caracalla, and continued until her divorce three years later. One of Plautillaís otherwise pedestrian coin types, inscribed Pietas AVGG (SC) and showing Pietas holding a scepter and child, suggests the Imperial couple had a child.

GETA A.D. 209ñ211

CAESAR: A.D. 198ñ209

(UNDER SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND CARACALLA)

AUGUSTUS: A.D. 209ñ211

(A.D. 109ñ211: WITH SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND CARACALLA)

(A.D. 211: WITH CARACALLA)

SON OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND JULIA DOMNA

BROTHER OF CARACALLA

BROTHER-IN-LAW OF PLAUTILLA

NEPHEW OF JULIA MAESA

COUSIN OF JULIA SOAEMIAS AND JULIA MAMAEA

Publius Septimius Geta (earlier Lucius Septimius Geta), A.D. 189ñ211. The short life of Geta is not remembered for any particular achievement, for he had little opportunity to accomplish anything positive. Instead, his energies were devoted to a destructive and competitive relationship with his elder brother, Caracalla. So intense was this fratricidal war that when their plan to divide the Empire between themselves was foiled by their mother, they determined that murder was the only viable alternative.

It is hard to explain why Caracalla, who was less than a year older than his brother, was promoted so rapidly while Geta was essentially left behind. Since we have no reason to doubt that the rivalry between the siblings was any less intense than the ancient authors have led us to believe, it may be that this was born of the inequality of the authority they were given by their father: Getaís bitterness for being denied, and Caracalla s, envy of any honor, no matter how small, that his brother received.

Geta was born at Milan in March of 189, and physically resembled his father. He never married, though no doubt there was ample opportunity. He was originally named Lucius after his father, but later, in 205, he assumed the name Publius after his uncle, who died that year.

As a boy, Geta traveled far and wide with his family. In 197 he traveled to the East, accompanied by his mother and brother, joining their father, who was preparing to launch a campaign against Parthia. The war was a success, and when the Romans captured the capital city of Ctesiphon on January 28, 198, Geta was hailed Caesar and princeps iuventutis. His brother, who had held the title of Caesar since December 195, was raised to the rank of Augustus. Thereafter, through 202, the family traveled throughout Asia and the Balkans, after which they visited their fatherís native province in North Africa from 203 to 204.

Upon returning to Rome, the boysí uncle died, and Caracalla arranged the murder of Plautianus. With these two members of the court now deceased, there was less of a buffer between the quarrelsome siblings. Considering that they were sharing the consulship of 205, their duties provided ample opportunity for them to disagree and take opposing views on all sorts of matters.

Both Caracalla and Geta were now in their teens, and began to indulge in the pleasures of life offered in cosmopolitan Rome and rural Campania. Dio Cassius relates: ìThey outraged women and abused boys, they embezzled money, and made gladiators and charioteers their favorite companions Ö if the one attached himself to a certain faction, the other would be sure to choose the opposite side.î He continues his commentary, telling of how Caracalla broke one of his legs after falling from his chariot in a fierce race with Geta.

The brothers were again joint consuls in 208, after which their parents decided enough was enough. In the following year, 209, the family departed for Britain, where Septimius Severus had decided to wage war personally against the Caledonians. It was not necessary for the emperor himself to lead this campaign, but he believed it would be good experience for his sons, who at this stage of their lives were in dire need of discipline and diversion from the attractions of palace life.

Upon arriving, Geta participated in some of the battles, and was raised from Caesar to Augustus. Geta adopted the praenomen Imperator as a result, but in 210 abandoned it in favor of Britannicus. Throughout the rest of the campaign, Geta remained at the base camp of Eburacum (mod. York) with his mother, while Caracalla and Severus battled ever-further north on the Caledonian front.

On February 4, 211, Septimius Severus died at Eburacum, and Caracalla arranged peace with the Caledonians so the family could return to Rome with their fatherís corpse. Septimiusí deathbed advice to his sons was, in essence, to get along with each other, pay heed to the soldiers, and to pay no heed to anyone else. On the journey home, Caracalla and Geta did not stay in the same locations or dine together, out of fear of being poisoned. Their joint reign lasted barely more than 10 months.

When they arrived at Rome the family celebrated Severusí consecration and funeral. Ignoring their fatherís advice on being civil to each other, the siblings physically divided the palace to prevent conflicts. They next determined that the best solution to their fighting was to divide the Empire, much as they had the palace: Geta would take Asia and Egypt, and Caracalla would take Europe and the rest of North Africa. But Domna prevented the plan, saying, ìYou may divide the Empire, but you cannot divide your mother.î

Although Geta may have been the more likable of the two, he no doubt realized he was in a life-or-death struggle with his brother, and so he gathered a large following of partisans who were prepared to support his cause. While Caracalla had the marginal support of the praetorian guard, Geta sought alliances among the literati and the senate. The growing popularity of Geta must have alarmed Caracalla, who decided to act before being acted upon. He first planned to murder Geta at the Saturnalian festival held on December 17 of 211, but word of his plot leaked in advance, and Geta only redoubled his security. Caracalla then approached his mother, asking that she invite both him and Geta to a private meeting at which they could settle their differences. Ever hopeful, Domna agreed, and the meeting was set for late December, perhaps on the 26th.

Caracalla had set his trap, and Geta, who had not yet reached his 23rd birthday, was murdered by guards who burst into the room on Cara-callaís orders. The story of his being butchered by Caracalla while in his motherís arms may well be true, but it does have a melodramatic twist that invites skepticism.

To safeguard himself, Caracalla went to the praetorian camp, where he claimed he had narrowly escaped Getaís attempt to murder him, and that he had resorted to killing his brother only in self defense. Though they probably did not believe Caracalla, the bribe and the pay raise he offered helped them muster the resolve to support his cause. Without the cash incentive, Caracalla pleaded the same case with the senate.

Getaís many supporters were now leaderless, and Caracalla ordered their slaughter to a man. We are told the victims numbered 20,000 and included everyone from casual friends and charioteers to governors, praetorian prefects and senators. The murders occurred in every sort of location, public or private. Though Geta was also subjected to damnatio memoriae, the authors of the Historia Augusta tell us his funeral was surprisingly elaborate.

Caracallaís behavior toward Geta is often viewed as evidence of his particular brand of evil, and his victim is likewise depicted as an innocent victim of a butcher. Clearly, neither extreme is truthful, and either of the young men was ready and willing to murder the other. In the end, perhaps Geta was the lesser of the two evils, but Dio Cassius tells us he was mean, stingy, brusque and gluttonous. Other histories, perhaps less reliable, such as that of Victor and the Historia Augusta, depict him as a mild-mannered youth who was courteous and mindful of his fatherís opinions.

The slaughter of so many of Getaís partisans, though a reprehensible act, no doubt was necessary if Caracalla was to survive the ordeal, as many powerful men and women were among those slaughtered. Had they not been eliminated, it would only have been a matter of time before they would have undermined Caracallaís regime or would have successfully attempted his murder.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTE: The death of Geta has traditionally been assigned to February of 212, but is better placed in December of 211, perhaps even on the 26th day. The date of 211 is now generally accepted by the academic community. The confusion derives from piecing together information from different ancient sources. The generally reliable Dio Cassius provides the age of Geta (230 months and 9 days), but offers no actual birth date, whereas the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta suggests Geta was born in May of 189. When combined, these two pieces of information yield a date of death for Geta in February of 212.

However, other more reliable sources are available for determining Getaís date of birth. One of the Lives (or Passions) of the Martyrs dateable to 203 records that a particular Christian martyr died on the birthday of Geta, and another document (later in date, but probably accurate) indicates that that martyr died on March 7. This is confirmed by an additional Church source.

Thus, we must ìback dateî Getaís birth and murder by about three months. Supporting this view is what we are told of Caracallaís failed plan to murder Geta at the festival of the Saturnalia (held December 17). The numismatic evidence also supports this conclusion, for coins of Geta inscribed TR P IV are of great rarity, with only a handful known. Thus, if the renewal was on the traditional date of December 10, or was to occur on New Years Day (in which case some coins were struck in anticipation), their rarity is understandable, assuming he died in December. However, if he had lived through February, their rarity would be difficult to explain.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Much like his brother, Caracalla, the physical maturation of Geta is plainly shown on his coinage, which was struck during the last 13 years of his life. His earliest coins depict him as a 9-year-old boy, and his latest as a fully bearded 22-year-old. His portrait also figures into the many combinations of the ìfamilyî issues of the Severans meant to demonstrate the promise of the dynasty. Other important types celebrate his two consulships and his participation in the victories gained in Britain.

Though Getaís coins are quite common, a great many of them were melted or destroyed as part of the damnatio memoriae that followed his death. Evidence of this can best be observed on medallic bronzes from the provincial city of Stratonicea in Caria, upon which the name and portrait of Geta has been frequently ìerasedî with a chisel.

MACRINUS A.D. 217ñ218

AUGUSTUS: A.D. 217ñ218

(A.D. 217ñ218: SOLE REIGN)

(A.D. 218: WITH DIADUMENIAN)

FATHER OF DIADUMENIAN

Marcus Opellius Severus Macrinus (earlier Marcus Opellius Macrinus), c. A.D. 164/5ñ218. Born at Caesarea in Mauretania, Macrinus began his career as a lawyer and eventually rose to become one of two praetorian prefects under Caracalla. As such, he was involved in the murder of his benefactor, and three days after Caracallaís murder at Carrhae (in Mesopotamia) on April 8, 217, was hailed emperor in his place ó assuring the soldiers that their beloved emperor had died a natural death.

Macrinus, who ruled only for about 14 months, was the first emperor not of senatorial rank ( he was only a knight), and was also the first to hail from Mauretania. One of his first official acts was to add the name Severus to his own, and that of Antoninus to his sonís, in hopes that it would demonstrate his ties to the previous dynasties. Despite Caracallaís unpopularity among the people, he had been extremely popular with the soldiers.

Macrinus took command of the war Caracalla had begun with the Parthians, but soon tired of the effort and sued for peace, offering the enemy large sums of money in exchange. This did not please the soldiers, and his questionable appointments of officials in Rome did little to ingratiate the senate and the general public. Even though Macrinus was very much in command, he was an easy target for a coup.

Just such a coup was raised by the remnants of the Severan-Emesan dynasty, the members of which had returned to Syria on Macrinusí orders after the murder of Caracalla. Leading the revolt were Julia Maesa (the sister of the former Augusta, Julia Domna), and one of her two daughters, Julia Soaemias. Together, they proposed Soaemiasí 14-year-old son, Elagabalus, then the chief priest of their solar religious cult, as the candidate to replace Macrinus.

Macrinus was residing at Antioch with his soldiers when the revolt of Elagabalus arose on May 16, 218, at Emesa, the home of his familyís hereditary priesthood. Macrinus sent his prefect, Ulpius Julianus, at the head of an army with orders to crush the rebellion at Emesa. In the meantime, Macrinus proceeded to nearby Apamaea, where he raised his son to the rank of Augustus and gave the praetorians a generous bonus.

Julianusí army was of divided opinion. Some of his loyal men began to enter the city after battering down gates, but they were ordered to withdraw for the evening. In the intervening hours, the camp was infiltrated by men from the Emesan army who spread the necessary rumors to undermine what little loyalty remained, and when the battle began in the morning the Antiochene soldiers soon turned against their officers, murdering them to a man, and defecting to the Emesan cause.

The severed head of Julianus (rather than that of Elagabalus, for which Macrinus had hoped) was delivered to the emperor at Apamaea. Macrinus apprised the senate in Rome of the happenings, and it offered support to Macrinus, for at the very least he did not represent two women and a teen-aged sun priest.

The two armies eventually clashed on June 8 about 20 miles outside Antioch, at the tiny village of Immae. Macrinus led his forces and Elagabalusí tutor, Gannys (a man of negligible military experience, if any), led the Emesan legions with Elagabalus, his mother and grandmother there to rally the men. The battle was hard-fought in the midday sun, and Macrinus himself fled to Antioch just as the tide of battle turned against him. His loyal praetorians were won over by Elagabalus, who promised them their jobs and their lives if they would defect. Since Macrinus had already fled, the offer seemed reasonable, and they accepted.

Thus, the victory belonged to the revolutionary army raised by the Syrian women. The 54-year-old Macrinus made good his own escape in disguise, and entrusted Diadumenian to loyal men who were to deliver him to Parthia. Macrinus made it all the way to Calchedon and only a contrary wind prevented him from crossing the Bosporus to European soil. But instead, he was captured and dragged back across Asia Minor. Since a self-inflicted injury prevented his being delivered to Antioch, the soldiers escorting him executed Macrinus some 75 miles from the Syrian border ó but not before news reached him of the execution of his beloved son.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Macrinusí coinage has two especially interesting aspects. The first concerns his portrait, which is sometimes shown with a long beard, and at other times with a cropped beard. Until not long ago some scholars believed this indicated the coins were struck at different mints, but it has been proven that all were struck at Rome. The second aspect of note are his coins with the inscription COS II. The confusion, as scholars can best determine, arose when the mint workers in Rome assumed Macrinus would consider the consulate that began on January 1, 218, to be his second (for he had already been in office for about eight months). However, that was contrary to Macrinusí wishes, and the orders must have reached Rome after the COS II coins had already begun to be struck. There was no official COS II because Macrinus did not reign into 219. So the fictional second consulship appears only on some coins struck in the early part of 218. Both of these aspects are discussed in detail by Curtis Clay in The Roman Coinage of Macrinus and Diadumenian (1979 Numismatische Zeitschrift, pp. 21ñ40).

DIADUMENIAN A.D. 218

CAESAR: A.D. 217ñ218 (UNDER MACRINUS)

AUGUSTUS: A.D. 218 (WITH MACRINUS)

SON OF MACRINUS

Marcus Opellius Antoninus Diadumenianus (earlier Marcus Opellius Diadumenianus), A.D. 208ñ218. Little is known of Diadumenian, though we have a good idea of his appearance, not only from his coin portraits, but also from the Historia Augusta, in which he is described as ìÖ beautiful beyond all others, somewhat tall of stature, with golden hair, black eyes and an aquiline nose; his chin was wholly lovely in its modeling, his mouth designed for a kiss, and he was by nature strong and by training graceful.î

Diadumenian was 8 years old when in April of 217 he was hailed Caesar and given the name Antoninus (after the slain emperor Caracalla) by the soldiers at Zeugma while he being escorted from Antioch to join his father in Mesopotamia.

In faraway Rome, the boyís ninth birthday was celebrated with chariot races on September 14, 217. It was during these celebrations, we are told, that the Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater) was struck by lightning, the weapon of Jupiter, who happened to be the very god to whom the Romans were praying for delivery from the unworthy reign of Macrinus. The damage was so severe that it was not sufficiently repaired until early in the reign of Severus Alexander (222ñ235).

Despite his natural gifts and the great authority his father had attained, fate was not favorable to Diadumenian. When the armies of Elagabalus revolted at Emesa on May 16, Macrinus traveled to the praetorian fortress at Apamaea, where he raised his son (who apparently was there in residence) to the rank of Augustus. As an added incentive, we are told, he offered the praetorians a bonus of 20,000 sestertii each, paying one-fourth of the bounty on the spot and restoring certain other of their privileges.

Such measures restored the armyís loyalty, but did not result in final victory, as the armies of Macrinus were defeated outside Antioch by those of Elagabalus on June 8, 218. After reigning as Caesar for 13 months, and as Augustus for less than one, Diadumenianís taste of supreme power came to an end. After the battle, Macrinus fled north toward the Bosporus, and entrusted Diadumenian to loyal men who were to deliver him to the Parthians for safe keeping. However, the boy was captured en route at Zeugma and executed sometime later in June.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Though rarer than the coins of his father, many coins were struck for Diadumenian while Caesar. His Imperial coinage as Augustus ó seemingly limited to denarii ó is extremely rare, and until relatively recently was known by only one example. It is suggested by Curtis Clay (The Roman Coinage of Macrinus and Diadumenian, in the 1979 Numismatische Zeitschrift), that a large issue was struck, only to be melted down when news reached Rome of Macrinusí defeat. Some of Diadumenianís provincial coins, notably from Antioch, give Diadumenian the title Sebastos (Augustus).

JULIA MAESA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 218ñ224/5

SISTER OF JULIA DOMNA

SISTER-IN-LAW OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS

MOTHER OF JULIA SOAEMIAS AND JULIA MAMAEA

GRANDMOTHER OF ELAGABALUS AND SEVERUS ALEXANDER

AUNT OF CARACALLA AND GETA

Julia Maesa, d. A.D. 224/5. After the murder of Caracalla in 217, it must have seemed as though the Severan-Emesan dynasty had come to extinction. Had it not been for the wealth, prestige and desire of Julia Maesa, the sister of Julia Domna, that would have been the case. But after returning to her home in Emesa, Julia Maesa began to plot her familyís return, and achieved her goal in short order.

Maesa had moved to Rome in about 193, accompanying her sister, Domna. Though she was as shrewd as her sister, Maesa did not have so broad an intellectual interest, a facet of Domnaís personality that made her a more enduring figure in Roman history. Through her marriage to Julius Avitus, a wealthy and prominent Roman who governed Asia, Mesopotamia and Cyprus (and who had been consul in 209), Maesa gave birth to two daughters, Julia Soaemias and Julia Mamaea.

The Severan-Emesan dynasty thus divided along two family branches. The first to rule was the one founded by Julia Domna and Septimius Severus, who had two sons, Caracalla and Geta. The second was founded by Domnaís sister, Julia Maesa, whose two grandsons, Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, represented the ìrenewedî dynasty beginning in 218. All told, the family produced five emperors and four empresses, not including the five women who married into the family and also were hailed Augusta.

Though Maesa was an important adviser and ally of her sister while she was empress, Maesa would not wield true power until after her nephew Caracalla had been murdered and her sister had died. Following these events, the new emperor, Macrinus, ordered Maesa and her family to return to Emesa, though at the same time he forced Julia Domna to remain in Rome, where she starved herself to death.

Upon returning to their home city, Maesa arranged for her eldest grandson, Elagabalus, to take over duties as chief priest of the sun-cult of the god Heliogabal. She soon discovered that the Roman soldiers stationed in their city were fond of the young priest, and from this observation were sewn the seeds of revolt. Maesa began to spread the rumor that her grandson was the illegitimate son of Caracalla, the recently slain emperor who commanded the loyalty of soldiers even after his death.

The revolt quietly gained momentum until on May 16, 218, after celestial portents (a solar eclipse and a comet), the soldiers hailed the 14-year-old Elagabalus emperor in opposition to the unpopular Macrinus, who had assumed office only after participating in Caracallaís murder. The fact that Maesa was one of the wealthiest women in the Roman Empire did much to motivate the soldiers, who were all too anxious to receive a generous bribe.

Although advanced in age, Maesa took the leading role in rallying the troops and staging the coup. An initial effort by Macrinus to crush the rebellion failed, ending with the soldiers defecting to the cause of the Emesan forces. On June 8, 218, the two armies met at Immae, about 20 miles outside Antioch, for a pitched battle to determine the outcome of the rebellion.

The battle was difficult and many soldiers (all of whom were Roman) died. If we believe the ancient sources, Maesa and her daughter, Julia Soaemias, and the future emperor Elagabalus were all present at the battle, riding in golden chariots. Though their soldiers began to retreat early in the battle when Macrinusí soldiers gained the upper hand, the three leaders apparently were able to convince them to renew the fight. However, the account is glorified and reads like fiction, which it most likely is.

In any case, the armies loyal to Elagabalus emerged victorious. The boy was hailed emperor, and his mother and grandmother were both hailed Augusta. Though Macrinus and his son, Diadumenian, escaped after the battle, both were eventually captured and executed. A handful of minor revolts occurred throughout Asia and Egypt, but they apparently were quelled without much difficulty.

The royal Emesan family, composed of Maesa, her two daughters and two grandsons, made their way to Rome, wintering in Nicomedia en route and only arriving in Rome in July of 219. Once there, Maesa continued to wield power over her grandson, arranging his first marriage to the noblewoman Julia Paula. We are even told that she demanded and was given a seat in the senate, a governing body that excluded women.

Despite her political prowess and best efforts to restrain young Elagabalus, the boy turned out to be uncontrollable. The marriages Maesa arranged for him failed miserably, and did nothing to reduce the severity of his offenses to the Roman people. Julia Soaemias, the boyís mother, was not much suited for the rigors and responsibilities of the office of Augusta. Indeed, her own contemptible behavior no doubt served as an inspiration for her son to behave irresponsibly.

Maesa soon acknowledged that Elagabalus was a liability too great to bear, and that if the dynasty she was re-founding was to survive, another would have to take his place. The only choice that remained was her other grandson, Severus Alexander, whom she was able to have appointed Caesar in the summer of 221. This enraged Elagabalus, who tried to have his younger cousin assassinated, but failed each time.

In the end this jealousy proved to be the emperorís undoing; Alexander clearly had become the candidate of the army, which preferred the respectful boy to his ridiculous cousin. The praetorian guardsmen murdered the emperor and his mother in March 222 and in their place installed Severus Alexander as emperor, and the boyís mother, Julia Mamaea, as empress.

Though Maesa gained a more stable regime from this exchange, she lost much of her control, for Mamaea was both ambitious and talented. Maesa was slowly phased out of power as her daughter assumed greater responsibilities. After having rescued her own dynasty from certain collapse, Maesa died either in 224 or 225, and was consecrated by her reverent grandson, Severus Alexander.

JULIA SOAEMIAS

AUGUSTA, A.D. 218ñ222

MOTHER OF ELAGABALUS

DAUGHTER OF JULIA MAESA

MOTHER-IN-LAW OF JULIA PAULA, AQUILIA SEVERA AND ANNIA FAUSTINA

SISTER OF JULIA MAMAEA

NIECE OF JULIA DOMNA AND SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS

AUNT OF SEVERUS ALEXANDER

COUSIN OF CARACALLA AND GETA

Julia Soaemias Bassiana, d. A.D. 222. Of the four Syrian-born women who held the title Augusta in Rome, Julia Soaemias was the least capable. Like her profligate son Elagabalus, she preferred indulging herself in pleasure to taking on the responsibilities of her office.

Soaemias was the wife of Sextus Varius Marcellus, a man of high position and varied interests. In 204 she bore a son, the future emperor Elagabalus, who may well have been fathered by Marcellus, but considering Soaemiasí adulterous record, this can hardly be confirmed. Her husbandís duties required that he travel throughout the Empire with some frequency, and so Soaemias lived with a great deal of personal freedom.

Marcellus was an equestrian who embarked on a procuratorial career during the reign of Septimius Severus, for that emperorís wife, Julia Domna, was his wifeís aunt. Marcellus was procurator in Britain at the time of Septimius Severusí fateful expedition there (208ñ211), and after Geta was murdered in 211, Marcellus was made praetorian prefect and prefect of Rome by Caracalla. Thereafter he was elected to the senate, and served later as governor of Numidia, where he seems to have died sometime before 217.

Of the four Emesan women who held the title Augusta, Soaemias was by far the most voluptuous and most promiscuous, engaging in numerous extramarital affairs. In this respect she was the opposite of her sister, Julia Mamaea. While living in Rome during the heyday of Severan-Emesan rule, her loose conduct may have been a source of embarrassment for her aunt and uncle, Septimius Severus and Julia Domna.

With the murder of Caracalla on April 8, 217, the Severan-Emesan dynasty came to a temporary end with the acclamation of the commander Macrinus. No doubt fearing for their safety, Soaemias and her immediate family members returned to Emesa under orders of the new emperor. There they engineered the elevation of Elagabalus on May 16, 218, partly by convincing the soldiers that he had been sired by Caracalla, whose memory was dear to the common legionary.

After its victory over Macrinus was complete, the entourage of the revived Severan-Emesan dynasty made its way slowly to Rome, spending the winter of 218 luxuriously at Nicomedia. Even though Soaemias now had true responsibilities as empress, her legendary promiscuity continued. One of her more noteworthy affairs was with Gannys, the tutor of Elagabalus, who had commanded the army that was victorious over the legions of Macrinus on the outskirts of Antioch. There seems to have been some discussion of his marrying Soaemias, and being appointed Caesar. Though the marriage never occurred, young Elagabalus seems to have been in favor of the prospect initially, but the manís condemnation of Elagabalusí aberrant sexual practices caused problems. At some point the two men drew swords (Gannys supposedly in self defense) and Gannys was slain by the emperorís guards.

Soaemias proved to be as irresponsible as an empress as she was in private life, and her lack of restraint in her own conduct no doubt proved to be a source of encouragement for her sonís unusual behavior. Along with her son she was murdered on March 11, 222, by the praetorian guards, who had grown tired of his demands to remove Severus Alexander from power. Their beheaded, nude bodies were dragged through the streets like common criminals and tossed into the Tiber.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: A common reverse type of Julia Soaemias depicts Venus Caelestis, the Roman equivalent of Dea Caelestis, the Carthaginian (Punic) goddess to whom her son wed the god Heliogabal in a ceremony that paralleled the emperorís own marriage to Annia Faustina in the summer of 221.

ANTONINUS (CALLED ëELAGABALUSí) A.D. 218ñ222

SON OF JULIA SOAEMIAS

HUSBAND OF JULIA PAULA, AQUILIA SEVERA AND ANNIA FAUSTINA

GRANDSON OF JULIA MAESA

NEPHEW OF JULIA MAMAEA

COUSIN OF SEVERUS ALEXANDER

SECOND-COUSIN OF CARACALLA AND GETA (REPUTEDLY THE NATURAL SON OF CARACALLA)

GREAT-NEPHEW OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND JULIA DOMNA

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (earlier Varius Avitus Bassianus), A.D. 203/4ñ222. Perhaps the most bizarre of all Roman emperors was the one who was nicknamed Elagabalus, after the Syrian sun-god Heliogabal for when he had formerly been high priest. Considering the shocking nature of his activities ó religious, social and sexualit óó is not the brevity of his reign which causes such amazement, but rather that it lasted so long.

Historians have not been charitable to Elagabalus. Edward Gibbon in the 18th Century characterized him as an emperor who ìÖ abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury, and soon found disgust and satiety in the midst of his enjoyments.î Taking it a step further was the 19th Century historian, S.W. Stevenson, who called Elagabalus ìÖ the most cruel and infamous wretch that ever disgraced humanity and polluted a throne Öî

Born in 204, Elagabalus was the son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. His mother was a promiscuous and voluptuous woman, and his father (who died before he ascended the throne) was a man of immense wealth and authority who had been made praetorian prefect under Caracalla. His grandmother, Julia Maesa, was the sister of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus and mother of Caracalla and Geta.

Elagabalus and his family had been living in Rome when Caracalla was murdered in 217 and replaced by the prefect Macrinus ó an event that effectively ended the Severan-Emesan dynasty founded in 193 by Septimius Severus. The family of three women and two boys returned to Emesa under orders of Macrinus. There, Elagabalus, the older of the two boys, assumed the office of high priest in the cult of the sun-god Elagabalus.

Indeed, Elagabalus was executing his solemn but festive duties when his grandmother, Julia Maesa, and mother, Julia Soaemias, gained the support of the Roman armies stationed at Emesa and caused a revolt against the unpopular Macrinus on May 16, 218. As their candidate for emperor, they chose the 14-year-old priest of Heliogabal.

In the young priestís favor were two celestial events: an eclipse of the sun that occurred one day in April and, only a few days later, a comet that streaked across the sky. Both were interpreted as portents ó the first that the sun-god was displeased with Macrinusí reign, and the second, that a redeemer was at hand.

The propaganda war between Macrinus and Elagabalus to a large degree involved the slain emperor Caracalla. Macrinus had added Severus to his own name, and Antoninus (the name of Caracalla) to that of his son, Diadumenian, whereas Elagabalus was hailed as the illegitimate son and rightful heir to Caracalla. The armies faced a difficult decision, but the claims of Elagabalus seemed more probable, for he is said to have looked much like the former ruler.

Macrinus, who was at Antioch, responded by sending his prefect Ulpius Julianus to Emesa to restore order, while he traveled to the nearby fortress of Apamaea. There, he gave the praetorians a bonus and raised his own son from Caesar to Augustus. However, the soldiers whom Macrinus had sent to Emesa ended up revolting, slaughtering their own commanders and joining the cause of the young boy they presumed to be the son of Caracalla. Alarmed, the senate in Rome supported Macrinus, for they had tired of Severan rule long before and did not wish to see it return.

The two Roman armies clashed outside Antioch on June 8, 218, and in a hard-fought engagement, the armies of Emesa emerged victorious. Though both Macrinus and Diadumenian escaped ó the former to the north, the latter to the east ó both were overtaken and executed. Elagabalus was invested with the title of Augustus, while both his mother and grandmother were hailed Augusta.

Elagabalus and his family were now in power, and began a slow march toward Rome to take command. His principate was not met with universal acceptance, though. The citizens of Alexandria rioted, causing many deaths. Poorly planned revolts broke out among the Legio III Gallica, Legio IV Scythia and among the fleet stationed off the coast of Asia Minor. However, all were quelled, and the Imperial entourage was able to winter in Nicomedia. In the middle of May, 219, they resumed their journey ó with the sacred stone of Emesa in tow ó arriving in Rome in July.

Aside from his original victory over Macrinus and the few initial uprisings, Elagabalusí reign was uneventful in terms of military conflicts or provincial uprisings. Instead, everything of interest occurred in Rome. If we can believe even a portion of what the ancient historians have left us, Elagabalus did not miss a single opportunity to offend the Romans and their moral standards.

The ancient historians were extremely hostile toward his sexual practices, some of which (no doubt) must be taken with a grain of salt. He is accused of going in the night to taverns dressed in his transvestite fashion, where he ousted the prostitutes already there and monopolized the activities for the evening. Even in the Imperial palace he would stand nude in doorways, seducing passersby to his bed chamber. We are also told that he wished to have his genitals removed by surgery, and in exchange be given the anatomy of a female.

One thing that is clear about Elagabalus is that he preferred men to women. Indeed, there was only one ìspouseî he did not divorce, the charioteer Hierocles, a blond Greek slave from Caria. Not only did Elagabalus behave in every respect as ìwifeî to Hierocles, but we are told that he relished being beaten by him, and would contrive opportunities of being caught in adulterous situations so that he could be guaranteed a beating in consequence.

His religious rituals were as shocking to traditional Roman values as was his personal conduct. Dio Cassius relates: ìI will not describe the barbaric chants which Sardanapalus (the emperor), together with his mother and grandmother, chanted to Heliogabal (the god), or the secret sacrifices that he offered to him, slaying boys and using charms, in fact actually shutting up alive in the godís temple a lion, a monkey and a snake, and throwing in among them human genitals, and practicing other unholy rites, while he invariably wore innumerable amulets.î

Also troubling were his marriages, of which there were at least three, and perhaps more than five. His first, in the summer of 219, was to Julia Paula, an aristocratic lady who was the daughter of the praetorian prefect Julius Paulus, and the first of Elagabalusí several wives. Though magnificent games were held, the marriage lasted barely more than a year, and they divorced late in 220.

Immediately thereafter, Elagabalus took the almost inconceivable step of marrying Aquilia Severn, a Vestal Virgin. As a member of the most solemn and holy of Roman religious institutions, she had taken a vow of celibacy and was forbidden to marry. But Elagabalus was the chief priest and chose to break that rule. To avoid more trouble than already was raised, the wedding was a low-key affair in which the sun-god Heliogabal represented was also married to the Roman goddess Vesta.

Though the young emperor seems to have cared for Aquilia Severa (indeed, she may have been the only woman for whom he cared), the marriage failed in the summer of 221, perhaps at the insistence of his grandmother, Maesa, who arranged his subsequent marriage to her friend Annia Faustina, a much older (she was 35 to 45 years old) noblewoman descended from the house of Marcus Aurelius.

Elagabalus also repudiated the parallel marriage of the gods Heliogabal and Vesta, for he came to consider Vesta an unsuitable consort for his own god. Instead, he re-married the god Heliogabal to Venus Caelestis (Dea Caelestis), a lunar fertility goddess of Punic origin. Along with the new marriages, Maesa also engineered the assassination of Annia Faustinaís husband and raised Elagabalusí 13-year-old cousin, Severus Alexander, to the rank of Caesar on June 26, 221.

All of these changes failed to please the insatiable emperor, and within a few months (late in 221) he divorced Annia Faustina and returned immediately to Aquilia Severa. Maesaís effort to stabilize her wild grandsonís regime had failed. Elagabalus and Aquilia Severa were married for a second time, though the celestial marriage between Heliogabal to Venus Caelestis remained unbroken. Aquilia Severa remained Elagabalusí wife until his murder less than six months later.

Especially troubling to Elagabalus was the rivalry of his popular cousin, Severus Alexander. Elagabalusí own mother, Soaemias, did not get along with her sister, Julia Mamaea, the mother of Severus Alexander, and thus the rivalry took on an internal dimension as well. Quietly overseeing the whole affair was the boysí grandmother, Maesa, who must have favored the mild-mannered Severus Alexander as a desirable option to the inflammatory Elagabalus.

The nine months between when Severus Alexander was hailed Caesar and when Elagabalus was murdered were treacherous ones for Mamaea and Alexander. The popularity the young heir enjoyed with the soldiers did bode well for his future, but also caused Elagabalus to try (unsuccessfully) on several occasions to have him assassinated.

Early in 222, Mamaea and Maesa convinced the praetorian guardsmen to murder Elagabalus and Soaemias. The event occurred on March 11, 222, after Elagabalus demanded that his cousin be stripped of his title, and the praetorians did not obey his order. Instead, they murdered Elagabalus and his mother, Soaemias. Their mutilated, nude bodies were dragged through the streets of Rome and finally thrown into the Tiber like common criminals. Two days later, on March 13, 222, Alexander was hailed emperor in his cousinís place, and his own mother, Mamaea, was hailed Augusta in place of her slain sister, Soaemias.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: The portraits of Elagabalus evolve in a relatively short period from an idealized, youthful image to a rather sinister-looking individual with a ìhornî protruding from his forehead, just above the laurel wreath. His first interesting types celebrate his victory over Macrinus (VICTOR ANTON IN I AVG) and his relation, either as son or second-cousin, to Caracalla (DIVO ANTONINO MAGNO). Some authorities suggest the latter type was struck under his successor, Severus Alexander, for whom similar patrimonial claims had been made.

Several of his later reverse types allude to his particular religious bent (with inscriptions such as INVICTVS SACERDOS AVG, SACERD DEI SOLIS ELAGAB or SVMMVS SACERDOS AVG), but his most noteworthy type depicts the stone of Emesa (a conical meteorite), shaded below umbrellas, in a cart being drawn slowly by four horses. The stone is also featured alone, adorned with stars and an eagle, on extremely rare denarii, and is shown in temples or in carts on far more common provincial bronzes.

JULIA PAULA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 219ñ220

FIRST WIFE OF ELAGABALUS

DAUGHTER-IN-LAW OF JULIA SOAEMIAS

Julia Cornelia Paula, lifespan unknown. Hailing from one of the most aristocratic families in Rome, Julia Paula was the daughter of the praetorian prefect Julius Paulus, and the first of Elagabalusí several wives. The union was probably arranged by the shrewd Julia Maesa, and occurred in the summer of 219 shortly after the emperor arrived in Rome from Nicomedia in July.

Maesa no doubt viewed the marriage as a necessity for her 15-year-old Syrian grandson, who would thus be integrated into aristocratic Roman society. The age of Paula is unknown, with estimates ranging from that of a 12-year-old girl to a woman in her 30s.

The wedding ceremony was a grand event. Games and banquets were held, donatives were given to equestrians, senators and the army, and Julia Paula was hailed Augusta. At the games, the public witnessed the deaths of many gladiators, 51 tigers and an elephant. Despite the pomp and circumstance, the marriage was a quick failure and lasted barely more than a year. The couple was divorced late in 220, perhaps in September, with Elagabalus using the excuse that that Paula was somehow bodily unsuitable to be the wife of an emperor. Immediately thereafter, Elagabalus married Aquilia Severn.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: The fact that Julia Paulaís marriage occurred, or at least was being promoted before August 28, 219, is proven by an extremely rare issue of Alexandrian tetradrachms dated ìyear 2î of Elagabalusí reign. In addition to Alexandria, perhaps 30 provincial cities struck coins for the first wife of Elagabalus.

AQUILIA SEVERA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 220ñ221 & 221ñ222

VESTAL VIRGIN

SECOND AND FOURTH WIFE OF ELAGABALUS

Daughter-in-law of Julia Soaemias

Julia Aquilia Severa, lifespan unknown. If Elagabalusí first marriage was a disaster, his second was an atrocity. Elagabalus married Aquilia Severa late in 220, seemingly within weeks of his divorce of Julia Paula. In this case, the marriage was not merely a social event, but a religious ritual and an affront to Roman divine law and ancestral custom.

Aquilia Severa was a Vestal Virgin, and a representative of the most sacred religious order in Rome. As such she was forbidden to marry, and had taken a 30-year vow of chastity (during which the first decade was devoted to learning the rituals of her office, the next ten to executing those duties, and the final decade to teaching their replacements). To become a Vestal was a great sacrifice on behalf of Rome, and the citizens recognized it as such.

But this did not deter Elagabalus, who at this point in his reign was shedding the influence of his grandmother. Furthermore, the emperor was also the chief priest (pontifex maximus) of the state religion, and could do as he pleased within that realm. The true strength of the Roman religion was in the observance of custom and ritual rather than in blind faith. Thus, the violation of revered custom was especially troubling to Romans. Sensing this, no doubt, Maesa insisted that the ceremony be modest, without games or festivals.

There were several divine associations with the marriage, and these alone may have been all that was necessary for Elagabalus to choose a Vestal as his second bride. Indeed, not only did he have notions that a divine child would result from the marriage of a high-priest of the god Heliogabal and a priestess of Vesta, but he also held a parallel ceremony in which his god Heliogabal married Vesta.

Probably during the course of this marriage, Elagabalus removed sacred religious objects from shrines and temples throughout Rome, and relocated them in his own new temple (the Elagaballium) on the Palatine Hill. Among the many important objects he removed from the Vestal temple were the Palladium, the shield of Numa Pompilius, and the Vestal fire itself.

The marriages of Elagabalus and Aquilia Severa and of the god Heliogabal and Vesta were as short-lived as they were unorthodox. Presumably at the insistence of his grandmother, Maesa (who was seeking some ìdamage controlî in Elagabalusí faltering regime), the emperor divorced Aquilia Severa in the summer of 221, seemingly in June or July. He also repudiated the parallel marriage of the two gods, for regardless of his personal feelings toward his earthly bride, he came to consider Vesta an unsuitable companion for the god Heliogabal.

The marriage Maesa arranged in exchange was to the considerably more noble Annia Faustina. Along with this new marriage also came the raising of Elagabalusí young cousin, Severus Alexander, to the rank of Caesar, and a new celestial marriage in which the god Heliogabal was paired with Venus Caelestis (Dea Caelestis). But the earthly union failed within a few months, and the emperor divorced Annia Faustina in the later part of 221 so he could immediately return to Aquilia Severa, who seems to have been the only woman he desired. The couple were married for a second time, but this time around there was no celestial component, for Elagabalus did not see any good reason for his deity to divorce Venus Caelestis. Elagabalus and Aquilia Severa remained married until the emperor was murdered in 222.

ANNIA FAUSTINA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 221

THIRD WIFE OF ELAGABALUS

DAUGHTER-IN-LAW OF JULIA SOAEMIAS

Annia Aurelia Faustina, born c. A.D. 175 or c. 185. The shortest-wed of his three attested wives, and certainly the most noble, Annia Faustina represented a final, desperate measure by Elagabalusí grandmother to salvage the boy-emperorís faltering regime.

Of Annia Faustinaís parentage there are several possibilities but no certainty, except that she was a patrician descended from Marcus Aurelius on both sides of her family. The strong friendship she shared with Maesa is testified to by the very act of her marrying Elagabalus: she was already married, and was between 35 and 45 years old ó about twice the age of the teen-age Elagabalus.

Despite the difference of a generation, their apparent personal incompatibility and the fact that her husband, Pomponius Bassus, would have to be executed (on a seemingly trumped-up charge of treason), Annia Faustina was either ambitious enough or loyal enough to comply with Maesaís request.

Annia Faustina was married to Elagabalus in June or July of 221, and duly received the rank of Augusta, although she did not to adopt the name Julia as Elagabalusí previous wives had done. About the same time, the emperorís mild-mannered 13-year-old cousin, Severus Alexander, was raised to the rank of Caesar.

Not only might such a match have helped to restore some of the damage caused by the emperorís two earlier marriages, but it also rejuvenated the connection between the Severan-Emesans and the Antonines that Septimius Severus had gone to great lengths to falsify at the beginning of his principate nearly three decades before.

The wedding also had an exotic bent, for a parallel ceremony was held for the emperorís own deity, Heliogabal, whom he had divorced from Vesta (not considered a suitable consort for the Emesan sun-god in his opinion) when he separated from Aquilia Severa. This time, Elagabalus decided upon the Uranic goddess Dea Caelestis. This particular goddess was of Carthaginian (Punic) origin, and known to the Phoenicians as Astarte and to the Assyrians and Babylonians as Ishtar, but most commonly as Venus Caelestis or Juno Caelestis to the Romans. Symbolically, this worked on several levels, for not only was the god Heliogabal a solar deity and Dea Caelestis a lunar goddess, but the marriage also represented the union of the Syrian and the North African (Carthaginian, Punic) elements that comprised the Severan-Emesan dynasty. This was no mere coincidence, for Septimius Severus had established the worship of Dea Caelestis at Rome.

However, all of the obvious merits of this third earthly and second celestial marriage failed to have the stabilizing effect for which Maesa had hoped. It was only a few months before Elagabalus tired of Annia Faustina. The couple was divorced before the year 221 was out, and though the emperor maintained the celestial union of the god Heliogabal and Venus Caelestis, he immediately returned to his previous wife, the former Vestal Aquilia Severa.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: Although provincial coins of Annia Faustina are rare, they were struck at more than a dozen mints throughout Asia Minor and the Levant. The prolific mint of Alexandria employed some 15 different reverse types on her coinage. This demonstrates that a large coinage was planned for her, but that it was cut short by the brevity of her marriage.

JULIA MAMAEA

AUGUSTA, 222ñ235

MOTHER OF SEVERUS ALEXANDER

DAUGHTER OF JULIA MAESA

MOTHER-IN-LAW OF ORBIANA

SISTER OF JULIA SOAEMEIAS

NIECE OF JULIA DOMNA AND SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS

AUNT OF ELAGABALUS

COUSIN OF CARACALLA AND GETA

Julia Avita Mamaea, d. A.D. 235. The mother of the emperor Severus Alexander, Julia Mamaea was the last of the Severan-Emesan women to rule in Rome. From her second husband, the procurator Gessius Marcianus of Area Caesarea in Syria, she had two sons, one of whom was the future emperor. Regrettably for historians, most of that which is recorded about her in the Historia Augusta must be regarded as pure fiction.

Mamaeaís relations with the emperor Caracalla before his death in 217 were so frequent that it was not possible to disprove her claim that Severus Alexander was the illegitimate son of Caracalla. This was just as in the case of her sister, Julia Soaemias, and her own son, the emperor Elagabalus. However, unlike her promiscuous sister Soaemias (with whom she had a poor relationship), Mamaea was reserved in her sexual conduct, and so the possibility seems remote.

From 218 to 221, Mamaea could do little but stand aside and witness the foul conduct of her sister and nephew, who ranked among the most debauched of all emperors ó in many respects outdoing even Caligula. But her moment to grasp power came in June of 221, when affairs had become so treacherous that the family matriarch, Julia Maesa, arranged for Elagabalus to adopt his younger cousin Alexander as Caesar.

The next nine months were terrifying, for Elagabalus could see the writing on the wall and he showed no modesty in his desire to have his cousin assassinated. If this had taken place, Mamaea certainly would also have been murdered, so she had much to gain in her opposition to Elagabalus. Indeed, a lethal family feud had begun.

Eventually, early in 222, Mamaea and her mother, Maesa, conspired with the praetorian guardsmen to have Elagabalus and Soaemias murdered. Thus, having rid Rome of her despotic nephew and contemptible sister, Mamaea had cut a clear path of succession for herself, for she intended to rule Rome through her pliant son. Mamaea was hailed Augusta when her son became emperor on March 13, 222. She remained the dominant person in the political affairs in Rome for the 13 years her son reigned.

The transition of power was peaceful at first, even welcomed, but it became explosive late in 223 or early in 224 when Mamaeaís principal adviser, the lawyer and writer Ulpian (Domitius Ulpianus), seems to have caused the murder of the two praetorian prefects over whom he had authority. The enraged guardsmen were bent on revenge, and even though Ulpian took refuge with Mamaea and the emperor in the palace, the soldiers still slew him there after a bitter three-day struggle.

The composition of the ruling house changed further when in 224 or 225 Mamaeaís mother, Maesa, died. Her now-vacant title of Augusta was taken up by the noblewoman Orbiana, whom Mamaea arranged for her son to marry in 225. However, after less than two years Mamaea dissolved the marriage because it was eroding her own influence with her son, and because the father-in-law, Sallustius (who seems to have been raised to the rank of Caesar), was conspiring against her with the praetorian guards.

From that point on, Mamaea did not allow her son to remarry, and she remained the only Augusta in the Empire. As such, she claimed the boastful title ìMother of the emperor, of the camp, of the senate and of the nationî (Mater Augusti et castrorum et senatus et patriae) and, later still, ìMother of the whole human raceî (Mater universi generis humani). She gained a reputation for greed, and is said to have confiscated many properties and estates ó a practice of which we are told her son strongly disapproved, but could do little to prevent.

Mamaea was popular in some circles, and despised in others. She had much to overcome, for the extravagances of Elagabalus were not only fresh in the minds of the Romans, but were also inextricably linked to the dynasty itself. Her domination of Severus Alexander wore thin among the soldiers as her son grew older, and many of the soldiers and senators resented being ruled by a woman, preferring a stronger emperor. For these reasons, there was an air of revolution in the Empire from the mid-220s.

In the end, it was Mamaeaís strength of character and her sonís lack of resolve that brought the Severan-Emesan dynasty to an end after four almost uninterrupted decades. After having returned from a mediocre Persian campaign, mother and son began to lead a campaign across the Rhine against the Alemanni. But in February or March of 235, the soldiers revolted and murdered Mamaea as she clutched to her breast her 26-year-old son, who all the while was cursing her for having caused his grave misfortunes.

SEVERUS ALEXANDER A.D. 222ñ235

CAESAR: A.D. 221ñ222 (UNDER ELAGABALUS)

SON OF JULIA MAMAEA

HUSBAND OF ORBIANA

GRANDSON OF JULIA MAESA

NEPHEW OF JULIA SOAEMIAS

COUSIN OF ELAGABALUS

SECOND-COUSIN OF CARACALLA AND GETA

GREAT-NEPHEW OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND JULIA DOMNA

Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander (often called Alexander Severus; earlier Gessius Bassianus Alexianus), A.D. 208/9ñ235. The reign of Severus Alexander, like that of Gordian III that followed him by three years, seems out of place in the militant 3rd Century. Not only did he dislike warfare, but he was completely overshadowed in his regime by other people ó most notably his mother, Julia Mamaea. It could rightfully be said that the story of his principate is largely one of his domineering and ambitious mother.

Severus Alexander was born Gessius Bassianus Alexianus at Area Caesarea, Phoenicia, and in 218 accompanied his cousin, Elagabalus, to Rome after the latter had been hailed emperor by the eastern legions. He was a virtual unknown in Rome during most of his cousinís depraved principate, but came to the forefront when he was hailed Caesar on June 26, 221, at which point the 13-year-old Alexianus had his name changed to Alexander.

The next nine months were treacherous times, as Elagabalus was becoming ever more unstable in his behavior and increasingly jealous and suspicious of his young cousin. Popular superstition held that the spirit of Alexander the Great was making its way from the East about this time, and when it ìdisappearedî after crossing the Bosporus, it was speculated that it might reappear in Rome in the guise of young Severus Alexander. This and many other factors swelled the popularity of the young Caesar and severely damaged the faltering regime of his cousin, who tried on more than one occasion to have the boy assassinated but was unable to find anyone who would take on the task.

Finally, in March of 222, Elagabalus could take no more. He demanded that Severus Alexander be stripped of his title and the praetorian guards refused. Instead, they turned on Elagabalus and his equally debauched mother, Julia Soaemias, and murdered them. Two days later, on March 13, 222, young Alexander was hailed the new emperor of Rome.

Since Alexander was only 13 or perhaps 14 years old, power was squarely in the hands of his mother, Mamaea, and his grandmother, Julia Maesa. His mother quickly took the leading role, ostensibly sharing power with a council of 16 senators, among them the historian Dio Cassius. Much else returned to normal, including the level of morality in the palace and the nature of religious practice in the capital. The sacred stone of Emesa was returned to Syria and the temple built by Elagabalus was re-dedicated to Jupiter Ultor. Still, the facts that the Empire was essentially run by a woman and that the senate had taken on a stronger leadership role caused a general atmosphere of hostility among the praetorians, who felt slighted. With the passage of time the schism became greater, to the extent that Dio Cassius had to leave Rome during his second consulship (in 229), for his safety could not be assured.

Late in the year 225, Mamaea arranged a marriage for her 16-year-old son with Barbia Orbiana, a noblewoman whose father, Seius Sallustius Varius Macrinus, seems to have been invested with the rank of Caesar on the occasion. About this same time, Severus Alexanderís grandmother, Maesa, died.

Severus Alexanderís marriage did not produce children, but seems to have been compatible so much as to threaten Mamaeaís influence over her son. Furthermore, the new Caesar and father-in-law Sallustius was causing trouble with the already-disgruntled praetorian guards, perhaps trying to convince them to support his own desire to replace Severus Alexander, or at the very least to displace Mamaea.

Mamaea was unwilling to wait quietly as the praetorian guards took matters into their own hands. She dissolved her sonís marriage in 227, banished Orbiana, and charged Sallustius with high treason, for he had by then taken some revolutionary measures. Severus Alexander did not have the fortitude to prevent the banishment of his wife or the subsequent execution of his former father-in-law in 227 or 228.

In the meantime, the venerable Parthian kingdom was overthrown during the period of 223ñ230 by a more aggressive nation of people led by King Ardashir. Known as the Sasanians (after Ardashirís grandfather, Sasan), this nation claimed to revive in the East the Achaemenid rule, which had been displaced by the arrival of Alexander the Great more than 550 years before. In reality, the ethnic aspect of the ìrevivalî was not so clear-cut, but the Sasanians proved to be much more aggressive toward the Romans than had been the Parthian kings, who had witnessed the decline of their kingdom over the last few decades, being unable to prevent the Romans from sacking their own capital, Ctesiphon, three times. By contrast, the Sasanians were on the rise and showed every intent of expanding the current kingdom to the shores of the Aegean, as their distant ancestors had done.

In 230 news reached Rome that Ardashir had invaded Mesopotamia, had taken Nisibis and Carrhae, and was pushing into Syria. After negotiations failed to produce results, Alexander and his mother departed to the East at the head of an army to make a second diplomatic effort backed with a show of force. This attempt also failed, especially since the Romans were occupied with putting down a revolt by the Legio II Trajana within their own ranks.

The Romans launched a costly three-pronged offensive in 232, which resulted in heavy losses on both sides. Unfortunately for the Romans, it was not executed with enough conviction to achieve any real success. However, it forced a stalemate, allowed the Romans to recover Mesopotamia and stopped Ardashir from advancing further during what little remained of Alexanderís reign. The docile emperor, who had played a relatively nominal role in the whole affair, returned in the fall of 233 to Rome, where he was given a triumph and was hailed Persicus Maximus.

This mild success in the East and the consequent celebration in Rome represented only temporary jubilation, for trouble of a more serious nature erupted on the Rhine, where the Alemanni had invaded Roman territory. During the previous few years the European river-fronts had become dangerous, and not only would they prove to be the demise of Severus Alexander, but also a continual torment to the Romans over the next half century and beyond.

The legions that had been withdrawn from the Rhine and Danube fronts to fight the Sasanians were anxious to return and defend their homeland. After their brief stay in Rome, Severus Alexander and Mamaea headed their legions to the Rhine in 234, where the soldiers expressed a great desire to cross the river and take revenge against the Alemanni. To this effect, a pontoon bridge was constructed and the Romans went on the offensive. But after a quick Roman victory, Alexander, ever peaceful and cautious, attempted to buy peace until the rest of his legions had arrived from the East. Wise though this policy may have been, it only incensed his battle-hungry soldiers, who mutinied and gave their support to Julius Verus Maximinus (Maximinus I ìThraxî), an aggressive Thracian officer of monstrous proportions.

The 26-year-old emperor was murdered at Vicus Britannicus (a village not far from Mainz) in February or March 235, as he was being clutched by his mother ó an event that brought to an end the Severan-Emesan Dynasty. The young emperorís memory was at first condemned by an intimidated senate, but he was later consecrated after a revolt was mounted against Maximinus in 238.

The author(s) of the Historia Augusta portrays the reign of the gentle Severus Alexander as a return to an earlier age when the senate had just authority. As such, he is styled a noble, gentle, ideal prince. Though he does seem to have been docile and his mother and grandmother did establish an advisory committee of 16 senators, it is doubtful the jealous and autocratic Mamaea allowed them much actual authority.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: The first coinage struck in Severus Alexanderís name was during his nine-month tenure as Caesar under Elagabalus. Even though Severus Alexander abandoned the inflationary Antoninianus (double-denarius) introduced by Caracalla, his coinage was a far cry from that of the emperor Augustus nearly 250 years earlier: though his aureus was nearly comparable, his silver denarius had been reduced both in weight and purity, and thus contained only 40 percent of the silver content of an Augustan denarius. Despite the disproportionate suffering of the denarius, that coin retained its traditional exchange rates of 25 per aureus and one per 16 asses.

Three interesting architectural types were struck by Severus Alexander. The first celebrates the construction of the Nymphaeum, the second the re-dedication of Elagabalusí temple to Jupiter Ultor, and the third, on coins and medallions, commemorating the repair of the Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater), which had suffered a lightning strike in 217. Equally interesting, and certainly more enigmatic, was a ìreformî of c. 229 celebrated with dupondii inscribed Restitvtor Mon (Alexander standing) and Mon Restitvta (Moneta standing). The nature of this event is a mystery, though it may be a celebration of the effectiveness of Alexanderís decision in 222 to abandon the inflationary double-denarius.

ORBIANA

AUGUSTA, A.D. 225ñ227

WIFE OF SEVERUS ALEXANDER

DAUGHTER-IN-LAW OF JULIA MAMAEA

Gneaea Seia Herennia Sallustia Barbia Orbiana, lifespan unknown. Late in 225, more than three years into his reign and at about the same time his grandmother died, Severus Alexander married an ill-fated young woman named Orbiana. Severus Alexander was about 16 years old at the time of his marriage, which proved not only to be short-lived and childless, but also his last. Little is known of Orbiana, including her age.

Orbiana hailed from a distinguished family and was the daughter of Seius Sallustius Varius Macrinus, a nobleman of senatorial rank. We are told that Sallustius was given the rank of Caesar after his daughterís marriage had taken place, but it is impossible to establish truth in the matter. Certainly, no coins confirm this.

Orbiana was selected for marriage by the emperorís mother, Julia Mamaea. It would seem that the match was too well-made; Alexander and Orbiana got along well and perhaps even grew to love each other over the course of their brief marriage. To most mothers this would be a blessing, but the stakes in Imperial marriages were high, and to Mamaea, her sonís fondness for his wife proved to be an obstacle rather than an asset.

Mamaea soon realized that Orbiana had a strong will of her own. This was intolerable for Julia Mamaea; not only was there now a second Augusta in the Imperial household (something that Herodian tells us Mamaea greatly disliked), but the new Augusta would not be cowed by her mother-in-law. No doubt, Mamaeaís ability to control her obedient son was slowly being eroded by the intimacy he shared with Orbiana.

Adding fuel to the fire was the father-in-law, Sallustius, who could not have been blind to the machinations of Mamaea and seems to have stirred up trouble with the praetorian guards to further his own designs on the throne. When Mamaea dissolved her sonís marriage in 227, dire consequence followed for Orbiana and her father, who seem to have taken refuge in the camp of the praetorians.

Since this was a clear act of rebellion, Sallustius was executed on charges of high treason and Orbiana was banished to North Africa. It is impossible to say whether the ìplotî that set all of these acts into motion was real or was merely invented by Mamaea so she had a legitimate excuse to end the marriage. In any event, young Severus Alexander ó then about 18 years old ó could do little but stand aside as his domineering mother took matters into her own hands.

NUMISMATIC NOTE: The dearth of literary evidence on Orbiana caused early historians and numismatists to speculate as to her identification. In error, they determined that she was the wife of Trajan Decius (249ñ251), and only changed consensus with the discovery of double-headed coins of Severus Alexander and Orbiana.