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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Caracalla Biography CARACALLA (188-217). Emperor of Rome from 211 to 217. His real name was Bassianus. He was the son of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna and was born at Lugdunum (Lyons). His father nicknamed him Caracalla, because he was fond of wearing a long, hooded mantle, so called in the Gallic language. In 193 his father became Emperor, and three years later, on the overthrow of Albinus, the last of the rivals to the throne, Caracalla was declared Caesar, or heir presumptive. He was made pontifex in 197 and became co-Emperor in 198, taking the name of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. At this time he showed no signs of that reckless, brutal nature which characterized his later years. During the rest of his father's reign Caracalla accompanied him on his expeditions, notably to Britain, where Severus died at Eboracum (York) in 211. He now returned to Rome and associated his younger brother, Geta, in the government; but, unable to endure an equal he killed Geta in the very arms of their mother on Feb. 27, 212, and ordered his name to be erased from all public monuments. Caracalla now vented his mad rage on all the friends and adherents of his brother by a wholesale butchery, in which the great jurist Papinianus perished. In 212 he gave citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire; it has been held, however, that his motive was to increase revenue from the taxes on inheritances, a tax to which only Roman citizens were liable. The rest of his reign as sole Emperor was occupied largely with military campaigns on the frontiers, and in the farther East. He was killed on the road to Carrhæ, in Mesopotamia, at the instigation of Macrinus, the prefect, who succeeded to the throne. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. IV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 514. |