Matilda Brown
speaker
55 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Matilda Brown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We see the very first coinage issued with liberalitas, you know, military distribution reverses struck in her name. So when Julia Maesa comes in and she says, I'm going to give you guys money, I think that it probably makes a lot of sense to people that she really will pay up. They're used to the women in this family giving the military lots of money.
So she comes in and she says, I have these two grandsons, and they have both been enrolled in the Temple of Elagabal. And from what we hear, the Third Gallic Legion, which is stationed near Emesa,
at Raphaneia are really big fans of the cult of Elagabal and they love to come to the temple and watch the ceremonies and they think that the beautiful young Elagabalus the head priest is really doing a fantastic job and she says oh well by the way he also is the illegitimate son of Caracalla and I'm going to give you a hell of a lot of cash if you put him on the throne and so it works
And on the 15th, the evening of the 15th of May, 218, Maesa and Elagabalus's mother, Maesa's older daughter, Julia Soamius, and her younger daughter, Julia Mamea, and Julia Mamea's son, Severus Alexander, all get snuck in. into the fortress of the Third Gallic Legion at Raffanea.
And then the next morning on the 16th, they bring Elagabalus up onto the ramparts and they say, here he is, the son of Caracalla. He is the legitimate emperor of Rome. And things kick off immediately.
No. We have... No. We have his father's gravestone. That was set up by Julius Tuamius. We know that he had a sibling at some point from that gravestone, though we have no record of the sibling in the literary evidence. However, we do have provincial coinage that has Elagabalus on one side, his face. Provincial coinage struck in the east.
And then the face of Plautilla, Caracalla's executed and exiled wife on the other side. So clearly people are really running with this in the Eastern Empire and it seems to be working. You know, he very much is accepted by a lot of these Eastern legions. It takes a little while. It takes a couple of months. But Macrinus' forces respond pretty quickly.
And his Praetorian prefect, Julianus, who's the one who, you know, throwback, sent the letter to Macrinus saying, by the way, there has been a prophecy that you are going to become emperor. We throw back to the beginning of this episode. He immediately marches on Elagabalus' forces. And things with the Second Parthian Legion, I believe, again, throwback to that legion.
Yes, it's been brought east. Things go very poorly. There is an immediate coup outside of Raffanea. His soldiers say, we are going to join the Third Gallic Legion. We're joining Team Elagabalus. And they execute him and they behead him. And they send to Macrinus in Apamea, his head wrapped up with his ring, and they deliver it to him at a dinner.
Yeah, pretty grim stuff. I think it's also, this is the point where as soon as Macrinus learns about El Gabalus' coup, that he declares his son, the young Diadumenianus, to be Augustus. And he also sends a letter to the Senate where he officially declares war on the usurper and his mother and grandmother. And that comes from Dio, who we think would have
heard this letter read out in the senate so that's a pretty incredible moment here where we have the emperor of rome declaring war on a woman and child yeah that's the political faction that he's up against it's quite something it feels like this is the big test room isn't it it's all or nothing i feel a bit sorry for his son who's basically being told yeah you're now
Yes, this is one of my favorite moments of Roman history. We have, you know, Elagabalus' forces who are about to give up. They're really lagging and Elagabalus is there and he's trying to cheer them on. And what actually succeeds in getting them to put up a fight and ultimately defeat Macrinus and bring Elagabalus to the throne is the presence of Julia Maesa and Julia Soamius on the battlefield.
Oh, fantastic. And they step out of a chariot, and with their cries and lamentations, according to Cassius Dio, they manage to kind of rally all of these soldiers and get them back in the game. And that is how Elagabalus ultimately wins.
I kind of feel bad for the guy. The Severins were not a terribly, for lack of a better word, nice family. And he seems like he really just kind of wanted to do right by the Roman Empire. And it seems like he kind of was doing right by the Roman Empire during his brief reign.
I think he terribly underestimated the later Severan women and made a massive mistake in underestimating what these women could do and the importance of the Severan bloodline coming through these women. But Perhaps he deserves more attention than he really got, because maybe if we had kept Macrinus, we wouldn't have seen the third century crisis. I don't know, Alex, what do you think?
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