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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Because when Severus dies, she is given a couple of really unusual titles by the Senate, which reflect this idea of her as the peace-bringer. She's given the qualities of Pia Felix, so pious and sort of Felix-lucky or happy, and she has made mater sanatus. So she's almost made a de facto guardian of the Senate in their interests to stop these two kids from tearing the empire apart.
So we've got the image of Juliet as the rational one. That is not really what we get in the Historia Augusta, of course. The Historia Augusta is not interested in something so mundane as that kind of image. The Historia Augusta tends to use Julia in order to attack Caracalla from whatever angle it chooses at that point.
In the Historia Augusta, we get an allegation that Caracalla and Julia are excessively close, and there's an allegation of an incestuous relationship between the pair. That's in the life of Caracalla. In the life of Geta, we get the sense that
Julia is not in fact Caracalla's biological mother and that Julia therefore is always championing Geta's cause and the reason for Geta's elevation is owing to Julia's intervention behind the scenes with Severus. Now that ties into the kind of wicked stepmother trope that Caracalla will face as well so there's a lot of literary baggage around here.
But my advice to you and your listeners is basically if you want to establish anything about Julia and the Suns, avoid the Historia Augusta. Stick with Herodian because you're getting nothing of real value out of the HE at this point.
Okay, so the British campaign was in its third year by this point and had not produced really any decisive outcome. Severus had claimed a quick victory and had given himself and his two sons the imperatorial title of Britannicus. This may well be another reason for the campaign as a whole just to get tea and medals for Caracall and Geta.
But they're still stuck there, and it looks like they're going to be stuck there for a while. And in February 2011, the situation changes only with the death of Severus on the frontier. In that moment, we see almost like a light switch.
The two boys, now forced to share power together but alone, without the influence of their father, seem to make every effort to conclude the British campaign within a matter of days, weeks if not days. They immediately call a treaty with the northern tribes, insofar as they're able. They may believe a small military force in northern Britain, but the pair of them then race back to the capital.
They're in one big train, though, and this is kind of an interesting point about this. It seems that they start to just completely separate from one another. They barely have any contact at all. They're also already on the way back to Rome. They're not even left Britain and they're trying to angle the courtiers towards their faction.
They're trying to get their people in the right places within the imperial court to support them over their brother, adversary, rival. I don't even know what we would label it at this point. And this continues when the boys get back to Rome. I mean, the funeral stuff for Severus, we've got his urn, it's back in Rome, that's all fine. The brothers seem to divide the imperial palace into two.
And this may be where Herodian gets his idea about wanting to divide the empire into the imperial palace, more or less as a partition wall put up in it, and the two boys never meet one another. They are intensely worried about each other, poisoning them. So they have huge bodyguards start to grow up around them.
Now, indeed, they continue to promote this idea of family harmony that Severus has tried to do for the last decade. One of the big themes in the imperial coinage and inscription of this period is Concordia Augustorum. So the harmony of the emperors, which, I mean, anybody who knew These two surely must have seen this as an utter fallacy.
Now, Dio, who loves a good old man or portent, gives us a sign that this situation, this rivalry, but this kind of cold war will only last for so long. He says that anybody who could see this knew that something terrible was bound to happen. And he offers us this sort of beautiful set piece of the Senate trying to meet with the priests of Concord to sacrifice in the Emperor's honour.
But the people who want to make the sacrifice get lost and can't meet each other and they're wandering around Rome and the palace trying to find one another and they can't do it. They can't make this harmony sacrifice work. So something bad is going to happen. And this is where it comes to head.
We're not told about any sort of big events or things where they try and appear together, but Dio tells us that in public appearances, they do try and maintain the conceit that is familial unity. So I would say in scenes like that in the Colosseum and Gladiator 2, yes, it wouldn't be uncommon, I would think, in this period for the two boys to be sat together as co-emperors, whether they are...
maniacally laughing genuinely with one another as gladiator 2 has it is another question i think that ultimately the the atmosphere within that royal box might be a little bit more icy cold than ridley scott would have us believe all right then come on then let's you said that it gets to a head so what is this it goes cold war turns hot it does and then some i mean if severus is dead in february 211 the whole situation comes to its violent conclusion before the end of december 211
So the boys have been living in Rome in this kind of partitioned life for a while, growing bodyguards, much suspicion, only barely holding on to the imperial conceit that they're together. Now, it seems that they're both trying to outmaneuver one another and to assassinate the other one, basically.
I mean, Dio tells us that Caracalla wants to do it from the moment Severus dies, but is held back or can't make it work. Herodian tells us that the pair of them are equally as bad as each other and are just continually plotting in an escalating fashion. Now matters come to a head when they realize, I think, that they're not going to be able to get around each other's huge bodyguards at this point.
So Dio at least tells us that Caracalla petitions his mother, Julia Domna, to call a meeting between the two boys at which the pair will arrive unarmed without all their bodyguards. And that seems to make sense. That is something that the Empress could and would have done. And it seems that the meeting is to arrange a reconciliation.
So Caracal and Geta both attend this meeting in Julia Domna's chambers, and we have different tellings of what happens next. In Herodian's telling, We have Caracalla simply losing the plot, going feral.
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