Dr. Alex Imrie
speaker
219 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Dr. Alex Imrie’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Thank you for having us. Fantastic to be here and to share a space with Matilda, who probably dating myself, I knew first when she was one of my students and now she has become an extraordinary scholar of the third century.
I'll just look for them until they're frowning at me over my answers. And hope to goodness that I keep myself right.
Yeah, that's a really good point. There is in some ways a bit of a blank slate that's just ripe for Hollywood to put in something where the evidence drops off for us. I mean, yeah, like you Tristan and Matilda, when I looked at Macrinus, when I've read about Macrinus, I would not immediately assume that he was going to be the subject of a Hollywood epic.
Certainly not cast by somebody as titanic as Denzel Washington, I should get right off the bat. I am already starstruck and yet struggling to kind of square away what I've read about Macrinus, short-lived that he is, with this major Hollywood star who's going to make him into this character I think that people will come away Well, maybe.
I think just from the trailer, I already am intrigued and kind of already predisposed to admire what he's doing with this character. So it will be interesting.
Okay, so, well, shall we start with Geta laying on the floor in the Imperial Palace, absolutely brutalized by his older brother or by a bunch of centurions that he ordered. After that, Caracalla runs to the guard and the army and tries to secure his regime with those constituencies very quickly, which he does relatively successfully.
Now, interestingly, the Historia Augusta gives us a little bit of a hint that there might have been some discord for Caracalla in as much as they have the second Legion Parthica that's based at Albanum. Close the doors on him because they swore allegiance to both brothers. And what is this he's coming to them with about? Sorry, where Albanum did you say? Yes. Where's that?
About 20 miles outside Rome, which is interesting in as much as it's called the Second Legion Parthica. You would think it was stationed in the east, but for all intents and purposes, and hugely oversimplifying it, it becomes something of a kind of mobile reserve, a mobile field army that the emperors can take with them. Usually on campaign in the east, it has to be said.
So Caracalla secures the support of the army. He has less success maybe securing the support of the Senate. He certainly gives a couple of speeches where he decries Geta as this villain and this enemy of the state and shores up his own regime. But it's quite clear that he is never going to enjoy life in the capital.
So about six months, no more than eight months maybe after the murder of Geta, he's already gone. He's already outside Rome and he is on a journey that will be predominantly military. He will do multiple campaigns and he will never return home from. Now,
Before we get onto that, I should say that there's one other point that he does while he's in Rome, which is, you know, I'm laboring because it's one of my major passions when I study it. Before he leaves Rome, he seems to enact an edict that we now know as the Constitutio Antoniniana or the Antonine Constitution.
In one move, in one edict, he gives the rights of Roman citizenship to nearly every free person living within the Roman realm. It's a constitutional watershed. And certainly, historically, scholars thought that citizenship was this kind of mechanical process. You're defeated by Rome, and then you're gradually brought into the body politic. It doesn't seem to be the case.
Modern studies have suggested that only around 33% of the empire's total population were enfranchised in 212 prior to the edict. So this is a remarkable move. And it's something that is quite avant-garde, it seems, for an emperor who's usually known as a bloodthirsty tyrant.
He seems to want to secure this huge loyalty base after the murder of Geta, and this is one of the ways he does it, just by making everybody citizens in one move.
Yeah, it is a watershed moment for how citizenship is perceived. Certainly. There have been a lot of arguments about what is the actual application of it. It could be just a kind of legal expedient to make everything a bit smoother. It could be a political expedient, as I've argued, to kind of make everybody accept the new narrative that Caracal is laying down, that Geta was this villain.
But whatever the rationale for it, It's a remarkable move, which is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Register, I think it is. So it has a very, very esteemed now afterlife, but it's introduced by this kind of murderous villain who spends the next five years on campaign on the northern frontier, and then eventually the eastern frontier, where he wages war on Parthia.
And if you're looking for the kind of the spark notes, the short version... He raises an army basically wherever he goes, through Germany, through Thrace, through Greece, into Asia Minor. The only other really important point that I would raise for listeners, if we're doing a very short version of Caracalla's reign here, is that he visits Alexandria, the city of Alexandria in Egypt.
Now, Caracalla, you may know, is a big Alexander the Great fanboy. Oh, he loves him, doesn't he?
Cannot get enough of Alexander. Claims that he's Alexander reborn, according to the senators, according to Dio. Although I question that to some extent. Anyway, he arrives in Alexandria. This is supposed to be the pinnacle of his imperial tour. I mean, he's going to the city of his idol. He's visiting the tomb of Alexander, and he's offering sacrifices to the god Serapis as well.
Now, he stays there for a few months. He arrives in the winter of 215, and he leaves in the early months of AD 216. The visit has gone incredibly sour at that point, though. There are sources, Dio Herodian, the Historia Augusta, they all agree that for some reason or another, there's a breakout of civil disobedience, rioting in the city, and Caracalla puts it down violently.
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