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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He's initially named as Caesar, and that is the extent of his formal acclamations that get agreed by the Senate. Macrinus will later name Diogenes and his son as a co-Augustus in the kind of frantic last few weeks of his regime, but the Senate barely even hear about this by the time he's assassinated.
Yeah, it's kind of gruesome stuff. I mean, just to go back a second, I'm a little bit more cynical on the whole Elagabalus as the son of Caracalla thing. I think everybody knew this was complete hokum, but we're being offered so much cash that it was an easy conceit to accept.
And also, I think it was probably a very thinly veiled statement by this quote-unquote Severan cause that they have more bloodline claim to being the Severans than Macrinus with his new Severan name coming out of nowhere. And yeah, events at Raphinae, I think, kind of show that the ground is ripe for the Severans to stage this counter-revolution.
It's interesting that Macrinus, I think it's in Herodian's telling of this episode, sure, Julianus has been sent with detachments to try and secure the third legion. Macrinus is at Apamea because that is the legionary fortress site of the second Parthica when it is in the east. So he is actively trying to court that legion at the point where Julianus is murdered.
And Herodian tells us that Macrinus gives this long speech and offers a bunch of money and a ton of honours and the troops at Apamea take the money, accept the honours and then one of them pulls Julianus' head out the basket to show Macrinus and Macrinus is just penniless, defeated, and that's it. Has to go back to Antioch, empty-handed, but at least with his head.
Oh yeah, there's a big battle, all right. The big battle takes place just outside Antioch, actually. The sources disagree a little bit on the location of the battle. Some want to see it situated further east. But it seems that in all of Macrinus' attempts to secure a power base, he really doesn't have a tremendously large force around him.
It's mainly comprised of his loyal Praetorians and some other local people. formations that he has brought with him to fight this battle and all of the defected forces that are now team Elagabalus are on top of him and a large battle ensues and doesn't the account of the battle shifts and changes between our sources and one telling Macrinus' forces just don't put up a fight.
They're steamrollered by the Elagabalan forces. But, and I think this is where Matilda can offer insights, there is another telling where Macrinus' forces actually put up some kind of stiff resistance and Elagabalus' forces, all of these cheats and defectors, on the verge of breaking and retreating.
It seems like both of them, Macrinus and Diogenes, actually survive the conflict itself and they make to flee. They are caught in different locations. It seems that Macrinus is caught in Bithynia, so that modern Turkish coastline. That's quite far.
It seems like he's trying to make for a port to actually get out of Dodge and maybe even go towards Rome. Maybe he's realized at this point that he has to get to the capital in order to raise any kind of significant resistance. And I think it's Herodian's telling, although it might be Dao,
maybe do actually because it's kind of supernatural he gets in the boat and the boat starts to make progress and then a contrary wind comes and forces that boat back into port and Macrinus is captured thereafter and his captors don't really know what to do with him at first but it seems like on the road back to Antioch
They make the decision just to assassinate him and he is killed or beheaded en route. Now, he sent his son, I think, at some point in that escape, he's actually sent his son, so the sources tell us, towards the Parthian border.
He sent his son to fall on the good graces of the Parthian king after their negotiated settlement, which suggests that maybe, if there's any truth to it, maybe the settlement was a little bit more substantial than our sources want to accept. But in any event, it's a futile effort. His baggage train or whatever, his cortege is caught and he is murdered in the middle of that escape route as well.
In terms of his His immediate political legacy, it's almost non-existent, is condemned. He is a road hump, it seems, or a bump in the road, rather, in the otherwise uninterrupted Severan story. His legacy is condemned by the new Severan regime, and that's really pretty much the end of it. As you say, it is so short, he's not really had enough time to lay down any more significant roots or
create any kind of significant legacy. And certainly, while the senators seem to have been happy enough to accept him in the short term, equestrian as he was, Dyer's account is just characterized start to finish by a rank snobbery as a senator against this absolute upstart. Now, Herodian's account is interesting because it's written slightly later.
It's written probably in the 240s, maybe even into the 250s AD, at which point Who gets to be a Roman emperor is slightly different. So we find a little bit more emphasis in Macrinus' identity and Macrinus' apparent attempts to explain that identity in Herodian's account. But that's probably because Herodian was writing under the emperor Philip the Arab, who himself was of equestrian origin.
descent and had risen to imperial power through military strength and through a coup that way. So that's quite an interesting way that Macrinus' identity is squared away by one writer owing to history repeating a little bit later down the line. Only a couple of decades, mind you, but still the divergence in the sources there is quite obvious. Dio of his time arch senatorial.
Even though he's glad Caracalla's dead, he just cannot swallow this lower class person. Again, still obscenely wealthy, holding the imperial throne.
Oh, that's a bold statement. I think we're kind of heading that direction, maybe regardless, but it is a really interesting counterfactual. I tend to agree with Matilda. I think Macrinus deserves a lot more attention. I think he... is completely overwhelmed by the circumstances that he inherits. I think that's really the defining feature of him.
Now, I'm somebody who would like to go back and revisit his rise to power, though, because this whole prophecy declaring that he will be an emperor seems a very neat way to explain it in narrative terms and to kind of almost... give him a blank slate or a green light towards this. I would like to know whether he was a little bit more calculating, you know, the protege of Plotianus at one point.
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