The Severus Dynasty : Caracalla & Geta

Caracalla

Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus Pius Augustus 211 – 217 AD

Born: 4th April 188 AD at Lyons
Date of Accession: 4th February 211 AD
Died: Murdered 8th April 217 AD near Carrhae, Mesopotamia

Geta

Imperator Caesar Publius Septimius Geta Augustus 211 AD

Born: 7th March 189 AD at Rome
Date of Accession: 4th February 211 AD
Died: Murdered December 211 AD at Rome

Governors of Britannia Inferior during reign(s):

Gaius Julius Marcus by 213 AD
Marcus Antonius Gordianus by 216 AD

Caracalla – as he became known – acceded jointly to the purple with his younger brother Geta upon the death of their father at York in February 211 AD.

During the Severan “adventure” in Britain Geta had held a bureaucratic position – possibly fulfilling the governor’s role in London, remote in the far south east -while Caracalla was generally kept under a closer leash with the Emperor on campaign in Scotland in 209 and at his temporary imperial capital at York (Eboracum) during 210 AD

Caracalla Geta

With Severus’s health failing and with the Maetae of southern Scotland – now supported by the Caledonians beyond - in open arms against whatever treaties or conditions Severus had placed upon them the previous year he had Caracalla dispatched in the winter of 210 AD on a punitive foray of retribution upon the tribes.

Herodian’s verdict of Caracalla’s performance that winter was scathing; Caracalla we are told paid greater attention to winning favour within the army while – allegedly – attempting to coerce his father doctors into hurrying along the old mans demise along rather than enforcing his fathers genocidal “Homeric” instruction to kill all they met above Hadrian’s wall; sparing not even the “unborn in the womb”.

Regardless, the old mans parting words of advice to the siblings – a pair who struggled under the pressure of an intense and hate filled rivalry – goes down as one of those memorable phrases from antiquity;

“Agree with each other, give money to the soldiers and scorn all other men”

The latter two points the pair heeded, but not the first. Matters were speedily brought to a conclusion with the tribes – apparently in their favour – and upon their return to Rome discussions were held regarding a division of the empire between them.
Geta did not last long in the air of intrigue that followed and he was murdered by his domineering brother in front of their mother some few months later. Geta is reckoned to have bowed out theatrically;

“Mother that’s didst bear me, mother that’s didst bear me, help! I am being murdered”

Caracalla – the name was coined from his use and adaptation of a Celtic hooded cloak – immediately followed this act of coup/ fratricide with a bloody purge of his dead brother’s faction.

It is estimated that some 20,000 perished in the bloodletting and the new emperors standing with the senate and much of society plummeted. He certainly cultivated favour within the army. In this he had to work hard; his brother had been popular with the army, considered more akin to his father in looks and manner than Caracalla - upon whom some doubt may possibly have rested on his legitimacy. His mother - Julia Domna - was reported to be famously unfaithful to Severus who in turn appears to have turned a blind eye to her affairs.

Julia Domna

It is considered possible that a lingering guilt over his brother’s murder may go some way to explain Caracalla’s rather unhinged behaviour. While on tour he visited Alexandria and there, under circumstances which are unclear he instructed a massacre of the inhabitants, the dead numbered in their thousands and earned Caracalla his place among the ranks of the “despot” Emperors.

In stark contrast in 212 AD Caracalla took the remarkable step of opening Roman citizenship to all free males across the empire – an innovative move aimed possibly primarily in broadening the tax burden but with fundamental repercussions in institutions like the army where traditional citizen/ non citizen soldier distinctions would now rapidly blur with great effect.

In campaign against the Parthians a few years later a group of plotters within the army (the jury is out as to whether Julia Domna was also involved) murdered Caracalla, the undignified deed being done with a sword thrust - while his escorts’ backs were turned - as he lowered his breaches in the field to empty his bowels.

Whatever his inglorious deeds elsewhere Caracalla is reckoned – either himself – or possibly through his governor of the newly inaugurated province of Britannia Inferior – to have substantially reconciled affairs in Scotland as a considerable span of time elapses before trouble here is recorded brewing.

Archaeology is inconclusive so far, however Roman installations in Scotland such as the mighty vexillation fortress at Carpow and the fort at Cramond – there were probably others – may have survived Caracalla’s departure, but if so not for long.

With a reconstructed frontier, the garrison of Britannia is considered to have patrolled widely from bases set slightly forward of the wall – Netherby, Bewcastle, High Rochester and Risingham for instance are known and the possibility exists as ever that more such posts still wait to be identified.

In common with Roman diplomatic/ military practice beyond the Rhine frontier at this time, the mention of “Loca” * copied on the Ravenna Cosmography (by its own admission incomplete) tentatively suggests that traditional tribal meeting (or hosting) places – at least as far north as the River Tay - were recognised and perhaps carefully monitored by Rome.

The price for such unusually long lasting and cordial (in the absence of records to the contrary) native behaviour in the face of external organisation of their activities is unlikely to have been anything less than the receipt of regular northbound largesse from the Roman state - undoubtedly coined under a range of names and guises.
Suggestions that buffer states set up in southern Scotland at this time, while attractive are – given recent history – probably unlikely precocious experiments in advance of recorded Roman attempts to create this very arrangement in the 4th C AD.

At the end of the day the payment of regular largesse to the tribes of ancient Scotland was probably the most productive expedient undertaken by the Roman state to control its troublesome northwest frontier; not least as the empire was to be convulsed in the 3rd C AD by internal instability, a state of affairs Britain’s island nature can only have shielded them from marginally, not removed them from the repercussions of entirely.

In the absence of greater information though a sense of war weariness on both sides however comes across in the historical record though we should not fool ourselves into thinking all was a sweet smelling bed of roses through the 3rd C AD.
Inscriptions found along Hadrian’s Wall attest to units engaged with various tribal raiders while memorials to soldiers killed in action while still within their wallforts remain a sobering reminder of the realities of a military superpower rubbing shoulders with what was - at the end of the day - an intractable native that would not allow themselves to be ground under the imperial hobnailed boot.

Caracalla however, is attributed with rapidly formulating a situation out of the ashes of war that would - by and large - outlast the bulk of the 3rd C (the Scottish forts would soon go) until the tribes themselves coalesced into new dynamic political (not different cultural) entities – possibly to counter new external threats such as the Scotti.

As such Caracalla – and his lieutenants deserve recognition for setting down the template (it may have been his father’s blueprint) for the largest single period of settled relations between the Roman state and the tribes of ancient Scotland.

Possible Loca

Locus Maponi – Location suggested to be the Lochmabenstane at Gretna
Locus Manavii – Location suggested to be the Clachmabenstane in Clackmannan
Dumnonii - Location currently unidentified in Dumnonian territory
Novantes- Location currently unidentified in Novantae territory
Selgoves – Location currently unidentified in Selgovae territory
Tava – Location currently identified in association with the River Tay
Mixa/ Minox – Currently unidentified location

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