How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  There still remained the two other claimants to the throne. Severus did a deal with the legate of Britain, Decimus Clodius Albinus, giving him the title of Caesar, and making him his junior colleague. The bulk of his forces then went east to fight Gaius Pescennius Niger in Syria. The Severans won a series of battles, culminating in the final victory at Issus in 194 - coincidentally near the site of one of Alexander the Great's victories over the Persians. Niger was killed in the pursuit. Severus had not been present at any of the battles, but did then supervise a brief campaign against the peoples beyond the frontier. Returning from the east in 195 he provocatively named his seven-year-old son Caesar without apparently consulting Albinus. Civil war was renewed, resulting in a climatic battle two years later outside Lugdunum (modern Lyons in France) where the British legate had set up his main base. Dio claims that the armies involved were massive, no fewer than 150,ooo men being fielded by each side, which would have added up to the vast majority of the entire army. This is obviously an exaggeration, but it may be that Albinus in particular had raised large numbers of levies since 193. The bulk of the regular army had rallied to Severus. Even so, the fighting was fierce, and at one point Severus himself was unhorsed and narrowly escaped death or capture. There were rumours that his new praetorian prefect deliberately delayed entering the battle in the hope that both leaders would be killed. However, in the end he led the great cavalry charge that won the day. After four years of civil war and turmoil, the empire had a single unchallenged ruler once again. The conflict had been far worse and more prolonged than the `year of four emperors', which followed the death of Nero.22

  There was nothing exceptional about Severus' career before 193 - rather like that of Vespasian, who had emerged as victor in 69. They were senators each with a reasonably distinguished career, but it is doubtful that under other circumstances either would have been considered potential emperors. Each man had simply found himself as legate in charge of a large army at a time when there was a power vacuum at the centre, and then had played his hand well - if especially ruthlessly in the case of Severus. In many ways Severus was a typical member of the Senate in this period. He was born in Lepcis Magna (in modern Libya), which had originally been founded by Carthaginians. Carthage itself had been destroyed in 146 Bc by a Roman army, the culmination of three massive conflicts with Rome. Even so, Severus grew up with Punic as his first language, and his Latin was always tinged with a provincial accent, which tended to turn an `s' into a `sh' sound. He may well have pronounced his name Sheptimius Sheverus. Dio says that he desired more education than he actually received, but this should be judged by the exceptionally high standards of the Roman elite. One sixth-century source claims that he was dark skinned, but the only coloured portrait of him to survive shows a fairly Mediterranean complexion. He was from North Africa, just as Trajan and Hadrian were from Spain, but this did not make him any less Roman. His father was not a senator, but the family had been involved in politics for several generations. The African provinces produced a good number of senators in this period, including Clodius Albinus. There is no suggestion that any of these men thought in a distinctively `African' way.13

  Severus had won the war, but knew that this did not in itself guarantee his long-term survival. He quickly promoted his two sons to positions of prominence even though they were still infants, marking them down as his heirs to show that his death need not mean a return to civil war. He also looked to the past to give legitimacy to his new dynasty. At first he associated himself closely with Pertinax, for it was useful to appear as his just avenger. However, in an unprecedented step, he declared himself the adopted son of Marcus Aurelius, whose prestige was far greater. One senator caustically congratulated him on `finding a father'. More disturbingly, this led to an official rehabilitation of Commodus, who had now become the emperor's adopted brother. Senatorial opinion was shocked, but Severus' attitude towards the Senate steadily hardened. His reign began with proclamations that he wanted no senator to be put to death, but before the civil war was over he had ordered many such executions.

  There was also resentment and fear of the power wielded by the new praetorian prefect, Plautianus, who was another native of Lepcis Magna. Malicious gossip claimed that he and Severus had been teenage lovers. It is clear that the emperor trusted him and permitted him great patronage and influence, so that in time there were rumours that the prefect was planning to seek the throne himself. In the end Plautianus was executed, after a death-bed condemnation by Severus' brother. So much power was not supposed to be wielded by favourites, especially ones from outside the Senate, and Plautianus' spectacular rise and fall inevitably took others with him. It was a dangerous time to be successful for any senator. Severus spent little time in the Senate - he was away from Italy for most of his reign - and rarely bothered to flatter its members or make them feel secure.14

  There were other signs that the emperor was worried about maintaining power. He raised three new legions - I, II and III Parthica - and stationed the II Parthica not far from Rome at Alba. It was the first time a legion had been permanently stationed in Italy since the creation of the Principate. Together with the expanded guard units, Severus had an army of some 17,000 men at his immediate disposal. Scholars have often liked to see this as the creation of a strategic reserve, which was supposedly shown to be necessary during the savage wars of Marcus Aurelius' reign. In fact, it had far more to do with the potential threat of a provincial governor rebelling against the emperor. Keeping the army loyal was vital for the emperor. In an effort to secure the soldiers' goodwill, Severus raised their pay and also removed the ban on marriage. Raising the new legions created a lot of new positions for officers - for instance, no fewer than 177 centurions' commissions. Given that many were probably posted in from other units, this meant that a large number of men would owe their initial commission or a step in promotion to Severus. A similar desire to bind the army to him encouraged his foreign wars. From 197202 Severus campaigned in the east, leading an army down the Euphrates to sack the Parthian capital at Ctesiphon and creating a new province of Mesopotamia. From 208-211 he was in Britain, supervising a series of massive campaigns against the Caledonian tribes of what is now Scotland."

  Foreign wars offered military glory free from the taint of winning victories over fellow Romans. The Arch of Severus, which still stands next to the Senate House in the Forum at Rome, commemorates his Parthian War. It was also no coincidence that Severus chose to operate in the two regions that had provided his rivals in the civil war. There was doubtless some military necessity, since the armies on each frontier as well as the prestige of Rome can only have been weakened when troops were drawn away to fight and die in an internal struggle. It also gave units that had fought on opposite sides in the civil war the chance to campaign side by side under the same leader. Most importantly, Severus had the chance to reward and promote the officers in each area, showing his trust in them, and retiring or posting elsewhere any whose loyalty was suspect. Not everything went well, for there was some tension in the army when it failed to take the city of Hatra, but in general the objectives were achieved. Severus' reorganisation of the east again reveals his concern for his own security. Syria was divided into two provinces, with two and one legions respectively. Mesopotamia was garrisoned by the newly raised I and III Parthica. The province's governor was an equestrian prefect like the one in Egypt, and both the legions were also commanded by equestrians. This was also true of II Parthica at Alba. The process was not quite complete until a year or two after Severus' death, when Britain was also divided, but from then on no province would contain - and hence no governor command - more than two legions."

  Septimius Severus was a good emperor, who did his best to rule the empire well, but he was also a man who had won power through military force and feared that someone else might follow his example. This insecurity guided his decisions at all levels. None of this might have mattered too much if he had founded a dynasty that proved solid and
enduring. In the last years of his life he made his sons Caracalla and Geta joint heirs. This was a risk, since only in the case of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus had a pair of emperors worked well together. Severus often criticised Marcus for having chosen Commodus as his successor, and so preferring blood to talent, but he was faced with the same problem. As long as Caracalla and Geta were alive, they would inevitably have posed a threat to any alternative emperor. If only one succeeded, then the other would always represent a potential challenge, especially since the pair loathed each other from an early age. Severus is said to have hoped that taking them on campaign would be better for them than remaining in Rome with its many opportunities for vice, and perhaps also teach them to work together. He was disappointed. Stories even circulated that Caracalla tried to murder his father in his eagerness to succeed. Severus' health was anyway failing badly, after years of being plagued by gout. On 4 February 211 the sixty-five-year-old emperor died at Eburacum (modern York) and his two sons jointly inherited the throne. It is claimed that his last advice to them was simple - `Live in harmony, enrich the soldiers, and despise everyone else.'17

  3

  Imperial Women

  After Alexander's succession to power he possessed the trappings and name of emperor, but control of administration and imperial policy was in the hands of his womenfolk, who tried to bring back a complete return to moderate dignified government.' - The historian Herodian, middle of the third century AD!

  he two brothers proved utterly incapable of living in harmony. Concluding peace with the Caledonians, they quickly left Britain. On the journey back to Rome they bickered, and then tried to ignore each other altogether. Once there they lived in separate wings of the palace, and had all connecting corridors and doorways bricked up, so that they would never meet by chance. They opposed each other in absolutely everything, even supporting different teams at the chariot races. Rumour said that they actually considered splitting the empire in two, with Caracalla staying in Rome and ruling the west, while Geta controlled the east from either Alexandria or Antioch. The dividing line would be the Bosphorus, and each brother would station legions on their shore to deter the other from aggression.'

  No one had ever considered dividing the empire in this way, even when Antony and Octavian had carved up the provinces between themselves in the years before Actium. Yet the source for the story wrote his account just a few decades later, long before the empire was actually divided, so this is clearly not an invention from hindsight. The plan was blocked by the emperors' mother, Julia Domna, who demanded to know how they thought that they could divide her. On 26 December mother and both sons met in private in the palace to arrange a reconciliation. Caracalla had other ideas and concealed a party of loyal praetorian centurions nearby. Part way through, these men burst into the room and killed Geta with their swords. Julia Domna was left to cradle the body, and was so covered in his blood that she did not notice a wound to her own hand.'

  Caracalla left quickly, rushing to the praetorian camp where he declared that he had acted in self-defence, having discovered that his brother was plotting against him. The guardsmen readily accepted his story and pledged their support. He had a harder job convincing the legionaries of II Parthica stationed at nearby Alba. They refused him entry and he had to address them from outside the rampart. Even then the soldiers replied that they had sworn an oath to both brothers and not simply one. Persuasion, backed by the promise of a very hefty gift of money, eventually won over the legion. Only after securing the loyalty of the only significant military units in Italy, did Caracalla go to the Senate, telling the same story of his brother's `plot'. The senators had little choice but to acclaim him, especially since he was accompanied by files of fully armed guardsmen. Geta was formally condemned and his memory ordered erased from the record. Surviving inscriptions from all over the empire show the marks of where the younger brother's name was chiselled away.4

  Caracalla was twenty-three, older and more experienced than Commodus when he came to power, but still young for an emperor. It is questionable whether Geta would have proved any more capable, although later authors liked to contrast his virtue with his brother's evil nature. Unlike Commodus, Caracalla was neither stupid nor lazy, but he was unpredictable and impatient, and had a vicious temper. He had ordered the execution of several members of the imperial household almost as soon as his father died. The murder of his brother was followed by a far more widespread and even bloodier purge, which included many prominent senators and equestrians. A recently excavated cemetery in York contained a number of skeletons of men who had been chained up and then executed, but yet were still buried with some respect. Pottery fragments dated the find to roughly this period, and it is more than possible that the men concerned were officers and officials killed on Caracalla's orders. There were other victims throughout the remainder of the reign. Pertinax's son, who had been too young and unimportant to be worth killing in 193, died now, because he could not resist making a pun referring to the murder of Geta. Marcus Aurelius' last surviving daughter was also suspected of disloyalty and forced to commit suicide, something that the elderly lady is said to have done with great calmness and dignity. Dio says that in all some 20,000 people perished.'

  Frequent executions made senators permanently nervous of the emperor's moods, and Carcalla lacked the skill - and possibly also the desire - to win them over. He was not much more successful with the wider population of Rome, even though these were unlikely to feel his anger directly. He gave lavish games, and even took part in a chariot race, although he did not emulate Commodus' excessive desire to perform in the arena. Yet he did become unpopular because the crowd saw him as too bloodthirsty when he watched gladiatorial fights. One famous gladiator was made to fight three consecutive bouts, in the last of which he was killed, and this was seen as unfair. Work was begun on a bath complex, the Baths of Caracalla, whose huge ruins are still visible today, providing work for the unemployed as well as the prospect of a future amenity.'

  After a year Caracalla left Rome and never again returned to Italy. By nature he was restless, and both this and his temper were not improved by his bad health. As he travelled he visited a number of shrines and temples associated with healing deities, following the courses they prescribed. Stories circulated that he was troubled by dreams in which Severus silently rebuked him for his brother's murder. Dreams were taken seriously by many in the Roman world and books survive offering detailed interpretations. The emperor was still the emperor wherever he happened to be, and petitioners followed him, seeking an audience and asking for a favour or ruling in a dispute. Surviving records suggest that Caracalla was as prone to rapid and spontaneous replies as our literary sources claim, and confirm that in many cases his judgement was still clear and often sensible. However, he was not always enthusiastic about performing such a dull task. Dio remembered that he and others were frequently summoned to the imperial camp while the emperor was in Syria, having been told that he would see them at dawn. They were then often left to wait - even though there was no chamber to accommodate them - for hours on end, and sometimes sent home at the end of the day because Caracalla had decided not to see them at all.7

  Small and unhealthy, Caracalla liked to see himself as the rugged, aggressive man of action, and most of all as a soldier. When he spoke to the praetorians after Geta's murder, he had told them to `Rejoice, comrades, for now I am in a position to do you favours.' Army pay was raised during his reign, so much so that imperial revenue struggled to cope with the increased burden. On campaign the emperor dressed and acted the part of an ordinary soldier, even going as far as to grind his own ration of wheat into flour to prepare his meal. These theatrics were probably mainly for the benefit of the guardsmen, and it may also have been one of the heavy praetorian standards that he sometimes chose to carry on the march. Most emperors were accompanied by distinguished senators on campaign, but Caracalla preferred the company of army officers - again, probably mainly from the guar
d. He was also very fond of his cavalry bodyguard, the singulares Augusti, many of whom were German. Some of these men were commissioned as centurions and kept in close attendance. The emperor nicknamed them his `lions'. Dio also remembered seeing him take drinks to the sentries on duty outside his headquarters. Other Roman generals -Julius Caesar prominent amongst them - had played the part of the `fellow soldier', but here as in so many other things, Caracalla took it to an excess. It was far more than an acknowledgement that his power ultimately rested on control of the army. He also developed an obsession with Alexander the Great, and evidently liked to see himself as resembling the youthful conqueror of so much of the known world!