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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Appearances
Crasses meets his gold-plated finish near Karai. And it's on the way back from that visit that he stops to empty his bladder and his guards, or at least an officer within the guard, descends upon him and stabs him brutally. And yeah, like Matilda, I just love this idea of these two letters coming across. It's highly dramatic. It's very...
dio in as much as the whole thing is kicked off by this portent or this prophecy. There's no real insight into the nitty-gritty of what's going on. Actually, it's all down in our literary sources to this prophecy. that Macrinus will seize power and his son will be named an emperor as well.
It would be interesting to know exactly what was really going on in the military camp around that point, but one way or another, Macrinus feels vulnerable and it seems that he doesn't waste any time to take action, lest the letter from Antioch get to the front and reach Caracalla's eyes before he can do anything.
Yeah, it does seem, no matter who you read, that there seems to be a brief interregnum because Macrinus can't step forward and say, right, chaps, we did a good job here. It's my turn now. There's no way that that would be acceptable, even with just the army surrounding them. So Macrinus, I think Matilda's right to say that's probably what he does. He makes this great show.
Oh my goodness, there's been a murder and the assassin is hunted down by some of Caracalla's loyal bodyguards and is killed. So in a way that helps Macrinus because there are no loose ends to implicate him at that point in the murder, even if later on the kind of story creeps out that he's been implicated in some way.
And so it seemed that there are at least a couple of days between the murder of Caracalla and the accession of Macrinus where the army, those who are around from the imperial court, are more or less compelled to put somebody on the imperial throne. The army is hundreds of miles into enemy territory at this point.
The Parthian king seems to be raising forces to counter the Roman army in this region. An army and empire without a commander at this point is unthinkable. And so Macrinus, as one of the most senior magistrates of the court, is apparently installed at this point. And this in itself is a remarkable chain of events because, as I said earlier, Macrinus is an equestrian. That does not happen.
Macrinus is the first man of equestrian status to achieve the purple. This is a real watershed moment for who gets to be in charge of the Roman Empire.
Oh, it's undoubtedly a difficult position. And it's ironic, though, you say that he would be worried about news getting to Rome. It seems that Rome is probably the safest environment that he could have been in. Certainly Dio and Herodian a little bit less. They say it's questionable why he didn't just disband the army immediately upon ending the Parthian campaign, which we'll get onto in a moment.
and just hightail it back to Rome. Why he dallied in the east and why he himself ended up in Antioch for a while, it seems that he himself wasn't sure how to respond to the kind of myriad problems and myriad little situations that he was facing as emperor and that would ultimately cost him his life. In the immediate sense, he does send letters to the senate in Rome and
It's interesting the way he tries to seize the initiative but also pander to the Senate as well. In his first letter, he apparently just claims a bunch of imperial titles. This is where his imperial nomenclature changes and he adds Severus to his naming tradition.
The Senate are a little bit confused by how presumptuous this new de facto emperor is being, I think, by claiming all of these imperial titles. But at the same time, they're just tremendously happy that somebody has gotten rid of Caracalla. And so in the very short term, they're just kind of happy to let things roll and let him be the emperor.
Now, his second letter follows after he concludes the parting campaign. he initially tries to negotiate with the Parthian king, because the Parthian king's bearing down on the Roman army at this point. The Parthian king's having none of it. He wants Rome out of the Mesopotamian region.
He wants them to rebuild all of the forts that they've destroyed at their own cost and basically to apologize to everyone on their way out. So, you know, rebuild the wall, I suppose you could use a modern political parlance. Now, Macrinus refuses. I mean, he's in no position to accede to that kind of demand.
And indeed, it would have been political suicide with the army around him to be seen, I think, to surrender everything. So he has to fight, initially at least, and that doesn't go very well. The Roman army is defeated in the field at Nisibis, and he has to come to another negotiated conclusion. Now, In historical terms, he doesn't give away as much as the Parthian king seems to have wanted.
So it's not a completely dishonorable peace. And yet, in his communication, he's trying to big this up, that he has secured peace with honour. And this is where the threads start to unravel, because not everybody accepts this narrative. And certainly the army, while they may have been frustrated by Caracalla's campaign, this slightly ignominious end to their campaigning does him no favours either.
And so I think it's very easy to see with hindsight how Macrinus, his regime, comes unfurled within the space of months. But it would be a mistake to class him as inactive. I think he gets an unfair rap. I think he is dealing with a very difficult and unprecedented situation.
He's having to set a new political narrative in motion at the same time as having to inherit a campaign of his predecessor, which is less than stellar. And I think this whole move about keeping the sovereign women alive...
Yes, sure, we know it's a strategic tactical error, but if he is trying to paint himself as this Severan continuator, as a way of kind of glossing over his equestrian heritage, it seems to me at least a sensible move. I mean, I would hate to sort of put myself into McCrinish's shoes, but... I think it's coherent as a set of policy.
So I think there's a reason why he doesn't retreat to Rome immediately. But I think, ironically, that may have been the one course of action that could have saved his regime long term.
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