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[Assistant] Aside from Poitianus, his administration was free of corruption, ran efficiently, and always tried to keep the overall health of the Empire as its primary object.


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[Assistant] In almost every way, Severus left Rome better than he found it.


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[Assistant] And though that's not necessarily saying much, after all, it's hard to do worse than comedists, it is saying something.


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[Assistant] Severus ruled with an iron hand, but he was not a bloodthirsty tyrant. He left that to his sons, who soon enough just became the one son.


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[Assistant] The feud between Karakalla and Geta, not unexpectedly, hit a rolling boil the minute Severus died.


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[Assistant] Fear of their father was just about the last thing keeping the boys in check, and without the old man around anymore, it was just a matter of time before the sons of Severus became the son of Severus, if you catch my drift.


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[Assistant] The dead emperor's body was still warm when Caracallan made the opening move.


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[Assistant] He tried to induce the legions to ignore Geddes' claim to the throne, and instead hail him as sole emperor.


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[Assistant] But, knowing that his younger brother, he was always going to be in the weaker position politically, Geta had for years cultivated the favor of the troops.


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[Assistant] Karakalla had always been a bit harsh and standoffish. So in contrast, Geta had styled himself as easygoing, generous, and a friend to the common soldier.


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[Assistant] His work paid off and Karakalla's initial power grab was rebuffed.


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[Assistant] If Severus wanted both boys to rule, then by God, the legions were going to honor the dead emperor's final order.


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[Assistant] Geta joined a steaming mad Caracalla at the head of the legions, and together they were proclaimed Augustus.


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[Assistant] With no desire to continue their father's feudal campaign in the north, the new emperors canceled the war and headed back to Rome.


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[Assistant] While en route, they did not sleep under the same roof, nor did they ever eat at the same table.


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[Assistant] Colleagues in name only, in every other way they were bitter rivals.


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[Assistant] Back in Rome, they took up residence in the Imperial Palace and built a physical monument to their mutual enmity.


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[Assistant] After taking up residence in opposite wings of the palace, they divided their two halves with hastily constructed barricades manned on each side by armed guards.


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[Assistant] The two brothers never met in private, and when they were forced to appear together in public, they were joined by a host of armed guards.


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[Assistant] There was absolutely no missing the point that each brother expected the other to try to kill him.


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[Assistant] After a few months of this, it became clear to everyone that the mutual paranoia was simply not sustainable.


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[Assistant] The empire needed a functioning government, but its two leaders were so worried about each other that they had time for little else.


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[Assistant] Finally, someone proposed a novel solution, that they simply divide up the empire the same way that they had divided up the palace.


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[Assistant] Ghetto would head east and set up court in Antioch or Alexandria, while Caracalla remained in Rome and governed the West.


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[Assistant] As a practical expedient, it seemed like a great idea. But many old hands in the Senate feared the next logical step in the process would be to break up the empire not just administratively, but literally.


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[Assistant] And a single unified empire was the whole point. It was what made Rome glorious and what made it civilization and everything else barbarism.


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[Assistant] To tear it asunder would be to destroy what every previous generation of Romans had worked so hard to establish in the first place.


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[Assistant] Plus, there was the added suspicion that such a tearing asunder would not come peacefully.


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[Assistant] In other words, that this great idea was nothing more than a recipe for brutal civil war between East and West.


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[Assistant] Chief among the opponents to this plan was the co-Emperor's own mother, Julia Domna.


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[Assistant] She was horrified and not a little bit furious that her two sons would be so immature and petty. They were basically contemplating wrecking the empire rather than face the horror of having to serve alongside one another.


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[Assistant] So in December of 2011, she aimed to broker a peace between them.


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[Assistant] Of all the crimes Karakalla committed in his six odd years on the throne, I think that this first one was by far the most heinous.


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[Assistant] It's not just that he killed Geta, which, yeaah, he's about to.


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[Assistant] It's the fact that he did it right in front of their mother in her apartment while at a meeting she had arranged to try to get them to work through their differences peacefully.


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[Assistant] I just cannot imagine how big of a bastard you'd have to be to use that occasion to kill your brother in front of your own mother.


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[Assistant] Karakalla and Geta agreed to the private meeting with their mother, agreed to come alone, and agreed to come unarmed.


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[Assistant] They were in the middle of hashing things out when an armed gang of Karakalas men burst through the door and made straight for Geta.


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[Assistant] Julia tried to stand between the attackers and her youngest son, but was pushed aside and in the process her hand was wounded.


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[Assistant] The assassins, because that's what they were, then stabbed Geta to death at the clear urging of Karakalla.


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[Assistant] Julia, bleeding from her own hand and covered in her son's blood, thus had to face the further horror that her other son was the one who was behind it all.


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[Assistant] Caracalla assassinating Geta was simply the logical conclusion to an irreconcilable feud.


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[Assistant] And, probably, if Karakawa hadn't have gotten to Geta, Geta would eventually have gotten to Karakawa.


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[Assistant] As I said, Ghetto was always more popular with the troops, and in particular, the men of the Praetorian Guard liked him a heck of a lot more than his dour older brother.


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[Assistant] So just as soon as he was sure Geta was dead, he ran down to the Praetorian camp, and the only thing he could think of to win their support. He lied his head off.


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[Assistant] He told the assembled guard that both he and his brother had been the target of an attack, and while he had managed to escape, that poor Geta was dead.


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[Assistant] Karakalla threw himself at the mercy of the Praetorians and begged them to protect him from those dirty villains who had murdered his beloved brother.


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[Assistant] The guard was distraught over the news that Ghetto was dead and, perhaps swallowing their own suspicions, agreed to keep the remaining son of Severus safe.


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[Assistant] With the Bretonians having bought his story, Karakalla then set out to do everything he could to make them doubt whether he had been telling them the truth.


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[Assistant] Rather than simply letting his hatred of Geta die when Geta died.


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[Assistant] Karakalla became obsessed with erasing his brother from the history books.


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[Assistant] Coins that bore his brother's likeness were rounded up and recast. Any statue or painting or mosaic of Geta was destroyed.


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[Assistant] And Kirikou even went so far as to deface the reliefs on the arch of Severus, literally scratching out Geddes' face from any scene in which he appeared. But this, of course, was not enough.


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[Assistant] Geta had been popular across the social spectrum, and many in his inner circle would suspect Karakalla of treachery and be looking for revenge.


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[Assistant] So Getus friends and associates, the families of Getus friends and associates, and the friends and associates of Getus friends and associates, all became caught up in one of the largest bloody purges in Roman history.


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[Assistant] Caracal's purge, in both breadth and depth, far exceeded anything anyone had ever contemplated.


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[Assistant] Thousands and thousands and thousands of people died.


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[Assistant] Most of them having been guilty of nothing more than being within six degrees of separation from his hated brother.


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[Assistant] Things went on like that for about a year. But after he had sufficiently earned himself the fear and loathing of just about every citizen of Rome, Caracalla decided to take his show on the road.


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[Assistant] As given poetically noted, previous tyrants like Tiberius and Nero and Commodus had tended to stay put in and around Rome, which limited the scope of their depravity to the capital itself.


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[Assistant] But when Karakalla decided to tour the empire, he made himself the common enemy of mankind.


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[Assistant] In 213, he traveled to the Rhine to put down a brief uprising of Germans, and after easily winning a series of skirmishes, he took the lofty title Germanicus Maximus.


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[Assistant] Karakalla's penchant for assuming such lofty titles would eventually rival that of Lucius Verus. And along the way, Karakalla would add Parthicus and Alamannicus to his list of names.


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[Assistant] One of the sons of Pertinax would actually find himself executed around this time after punning on one of the Roman names for the Goths, suggesting that Caracalla should award himself the title of Geticus as well. The emperor was not amused.


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[Assistant] Caracalla returned to Rome briefly, and then headed east to inspect the provinces.


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[Assistant] Along the way, it is reported that he demanded the cities and towns he passed through erect great buildings or theaters or baths in his honor and at their expense.


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[Assistant] And then, after crippling the municipal budgets, he would either bypass them completely or he would order the structure toppled for not being up to his standards.


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[Assistant] At every stop, he would suck up all the available money and food and drink and then throw lavish parties that no one was invited to.


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[Assistant] One of his more charming habits was to refuse to eat seafood unless he was far enough inland that importing fish became very expensive.


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[Assistant] Then, he'd demand the locals bring him oysters for dinner, or else.


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[Assistant] By 215, Karakawa had cut a swath of destruction all the way across the empire, and had lately taken up residence in Alexandria.


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[Assistant] Now, over the course of the last few years, what had once been a secret had become an open secret, and had once been an open secret was now a more or less acknowledged fact.


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[Assistant] After his terrifying purge of anyone connected to Geta.


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[Assistant] Most people sort of took it for granted that Karakawa had been behind Geta's murder after all.


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[Assistant] Karakalla had steadfastly denied these charges, but as time went by, his story morphed into, well, yeaah, I did it, but it was in self-defense.


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[Assistant] Basically, Getahead tried to kill me, but I killed him first instead.


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[Assistant] No one believed a word of it, and Karakalla was now as much mocked for his shifting alibi as he was feared for his cruelty.


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[Assistant] Then, the always independent-minded citizen of Alexandria decided to greet the arrival of the emperor with a little play satirizing the crime that had made Caracalla the sole emperor.


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[Assistant] A performance which sent him into an insane rage.


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[Assistant] In his fury, and basically to prove that his cruelty far outweighed his usefulness as a punchline, he ordered a general slaughter of the citizens.


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[Assistant] It is reported that before it was over, something along the order of 20,000 people lay dead in the streets.


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[Assistant] Caracalla justified this massacre to the Senate, and by simply noting that he felt it was the whole city of Alexandria who was guilty, not just those who had performed the offensive show. He did not elaborate on how that could possibly be true.


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[Assistant] Tarakalla would do all this, be that evil basically, because he had taken to heart his father's dying advice.


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[Assistant] Well, two thirds of his father's advice anyway. He had pretty well ignored the whole be harmonious with your brother thing.


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[Assistant] But enrich the soldiers? Scorn all other men? That Karakawa took almost too literally.


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[Assistant] He'd increased the pay of the soldiers beyond even what his father had so recently raised it to, and took every opportunity he could think of to deliver to his troops lavish surprise bonuses.


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[Assistant] Whether or not they loved or even liked the Emperor was now beside the point. There was no way they were going to revolt against him.


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[Assistant] No matter how vicious the emperor was, that would be the scorn all other men bit, the army was with him.


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[Assistant] In time though, the troops went from pleasantly accepting the bonuses to impatiently expecting them. While Karakalla was alive, they got what they expected.


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[Assistant] But once he was gone, the precedent set would prove to be devastating to his successors.


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[Assistant] The Empire simply couldn't afford to pay the legions what Karakalla had taught them to expect.


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[Assistant] The coming crisis of the third century will in part anchor itself on this poisoned root planted by Karakalla.


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[Assistant] Having tortured his own people enough for the time being, in 216, the Emperor apparently decided to look beyond the frontiers of the Empire for fresh victims.


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[Assistant] In a particularly galling incident, reported by Herodian, Caracal appears to have accepted a peace offering from the Parthian king, and then went even further by agreeing to marry the king's daughter in order to secure a lasting friendship between the two great empires.


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[Assistant] Karakalla and his entourage then crossed the Euphrates and marched overland to an agreed to meeting place where the couple would be wed.


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[Assistant] The Parthians had no reason to suspect treachery and arrived ready to celebrate a marriage that would have profound and hopefully happy political implications.


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[Assistant] But Cara Callip had never had any intention of marrying the foreign princess.


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[Assistant] And when the two families got together, Caracalla ordered his men to slaughter the parking wedding party and burn the city to the ground.


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[Assistant] The Parthian King managed to escape with his life, but everyone else was killed in the surprise attack.


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[Assistant] Karakalla then marched back across Mesopotamia, looting and burning the countryside on his way back to Syria.


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[Assistant] Then he fired off a dispatch to the Senate, announcing that the entire Parthian Empire now bowed at his feet.


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[Assistant] This was a bit of an overstatement to begin with, but beyond that, Caracalla neglected the whole part about his own murderous duplicity.


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[Assistant] Oh yea, they should feel free to call him Parthicus from now on though.


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[Assistant] A life of chilling sadism will finally catch up to Karakalla.


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[Assistant] He was simply too dangerous to too many people to not have one of them finally decide to knock him off.


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[Assistant] In the end, it will prove to be one of his praetorian prefects, a man named Marcus Opelius Macrinus.


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[Assistant] Who will turn to murder after finding himself in a rather uncomfortable position of having a soothsayer prophesize that he is destined to wear the purple one day.


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[Assistant] Since prophecies like that were liable to get a man killed, Macrinus will quickly decide to beat Caracalla to the punch.


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[Assistant] And the funny thing about it is that in trying to steer clear of the deadly implications of this prophecy, Macrinus would make it all come true.


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[Assistant] Karakalla had donned the purple in early 211 AD at the age of 23. And from that moment on, he dedicated himself to the task of being a brutal, unforgiving, and moody tyrant towards everyone except his soldiers.


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[Assistant] He was as bad as they come, and I think the only reason we don't put him down as the worst emperor of all time is that, for one, he wasn't emperor for that long, and two, most of the really terrible things he did were merely exaggerated extensions of what his father had already done.


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[Assistant] He didn't have the time or the imagination to take a healthy empire and really wreck it the way that say, Commodus had done. Which is what it takes if you want to be considered the worst of the worst.


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[Assistant] I don't see Caracalla's reign then representing a turning point in the history of Rome, but I do see it as representing a breaking point.


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[Assistant] His time on the throne became a sort of malevolent high watermark that future emperors alternatively tried to dial back from, or ratchet back up to, depending on their dispositions.


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[Assistant] Karakalla, in his enrichment of the soldiers and his scorning of all other men, inadvertently set a standard that everyone would point to down the road as either a cautionary tale or as a shining beacon of light.


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[Assistant] Things can never again be like they were under Karakalla.


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[Assistant] Things must go back to the way they were under Karakalla.


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[Assistant] The former argued by the old men of the Senate, the latter by the hard men of the Army.


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[Assistant] This running argument was a major current in the tension that would define the coming crisis years. When put succinctly the argument sounds like this.


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[Assistant] Is the army the tool of the state, or is the state the tool of the army?


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[Assistant] Karakalla, for his part, probably was not acting from any deeply thought out political philosophy, nor probably did he care a whit that future generations would fight over his legacy.


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[Assistant] He just wanted to enrich the soldiers and scorn all other men. Like I say, no imagination at all.


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[Assistant] But before we get to the business of bringing a violent and ignoble end to a man who deserved just that.


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[Assistant] We should swing back and briefly touch on three things. The first trivial, the second architecturally interesting, and the last fairly momentous.


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[Assistant] First, I can't believe I didn't mention this before, but yea, how did Karakalla get his name?


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[Assistant] As I said in episode 100, he was known as Lucius Septimius Bossianus until his father became emperor, at which point his name was changed to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Caesar.


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[Assistant] His contemporaries, including the historians Cassius Dio and Herodian, generally shorthanded this to simply Antoninus.


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[Assistant] The name Karakalla, not really used in his lifetime and really not used in his presence, was a nickname that referred to a particular type of Gallic cloak that the Emperor habitually wore.


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[Assistant] As the years passed, it became easier to label him with that distinctive cognomen, rather than Antoninus, which was a name practically every emperor adopted, so as to associate their reign with that now clearly past golden age.


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[Assistant] The same sort of thing happened with Caligula, who was referred to in his own time simply as the Emperor Gaius.


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[Assistant] The second thing, the architecturally interesting thing,


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[Assistant] ...are the Baths of Karakalla, which the Emperor ordered built in 212 and which were completed in 216.


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[Assistant] This massive, massive complex in the southeast of Rome was one of the last great construction projects of Roman antiquity.


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[Assistant] Before too long, Constantine will drag the imperial capital to Byzantium, and Rome itself will fall on hard times.


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[Assistant] Even in Italy, the dominant imperial cities will become Milan and Ravenna, depending on the decade.


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[Assistant] Leading to a general disinclination in spending money to gussy up a city past its prime.


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[Assistant] The complex, which sprawled over 33 acres, was by far the greatest and most ambitious bathhouse in Bathouse Crazy Rome.


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[Assistant] And more than any of its predecessors was a full recreational facility.


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[Assistant] The thing was, and its ruins still are, quite a sight to behold.


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[Assistant] It cost a pretty penny and no doubt displaced a lot of residents and businesses, but I think we can be pretty sure that that wasn't of any interest at all to Caracalla.


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[Assistant] One of the other last great building projects in ancient Rome, the Baths of Diocletian in the northeast of the city, copied profusely from the design of Caracalla's baths, which at that point had been operating for 50 years.


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[Assistant] Both baths continued to operate well after the nominal fall of the Western Empire.


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[Assistant] Was that in 212, shortly after becoming emperor in his own right,


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[Assistant] But by the stroke of a pen, or maybe the hammering of a chisel.


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[Assistant] Every free man within the borders of the empire became a citizen of Rome.


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[Assistant] What had once been a valued prize, a prize so valuable that wars had been fought over who could have it and who couldn't, was now as common as the beggar in the street.


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[Assistant] But before you start getting the wrong idea, no, Karakalla did not issue his edict of universal citizenship because he was feeling the moral tug of equal justice or something like that.


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[Assistant] No, as Gibbon says, by the time Caracalla issued the order, Roman citizenship was far more a burden than it was a privilege.


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[Assistant] But even though it was now more of a burden than it was a privilege, that did not mean that citizenship did not still come with privileges. However base and immediate his motivations had been


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[Assistant] Caracalla's edict was a landmark moment in the history of Rome and the history of western civilization.


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[Assistant] In an instant, one of the greatest legal distinctions of all time was blown to pieces. They were all Romans now.


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[Assistant] When Caracalla left Rome in 213 AD to travel the empire and become the common enemy of mankind, it was the last time the people of Rome would ever see him.


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[Assistant] He was still in the East in 217, taking a victory lap after his triumph over the Parthians, when he met that violent and ignoble end I was just talking about.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned in passing last week, Caracalla posed too great a danger to too many men to not have one of them get desperate enough to attempt assassination.


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[Assistant] Not that I am in any way advocating a determinist reading of history, but the life and times of Karakalla just scream when he'll get assassinated, not if he'll get assassinated.


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[Assistant] The wind finally came when an oracle in North Africa started blabbing to anyone who would listen that Marcus Opelius Macrinus, one of Caracalla's praetorian prefects, was destined to wear the purple.


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[Assistant] Everyone knew that prophecies like that were extremely dangerous, even during the reign of a relatively mild prince.


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[Assistant] But to have it floating around during the reign of a violent paranoid like Karakawa, well, that was basically a death sentence.


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[Assistant] The prophet in question was rounded up and brought to Rome for questioning, and the Praetorians tried everything to get him to recant. Threats, bribery, torture. But the oracle stuck to his story.


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[Assistant] Eventually, the Praetorian officers in charge of the investigation were obliged to send a report off to the emperor who was traveling around Syria with the imperial court in tow.


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[Assistant] At this point, the invisible hand of destiny, also known by its more common name, the lucky break,


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[Assistant] Stepped in, giving Macrinus a chance to save his own skin.


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[Assistant] The report in question arrived with a bundle of other business, and Karakawa, never much for mundane governance, handed the entire untouched bundle to the good prefect, Macrinus, with instructions for him to take care of the trivial matters and brief him if, by some miracle, there was actually something interesting in there.


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[Assistant] Macrinus retired to his quarters and began working through the dispatches when he came across a particular report from the Praetorians back in Rome.


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[Assistant] I can only imagine that Macrinus muttered a fair share of curses under his breath as he read what the oracle refused to unsay.


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[Assistant] At a minimum, those few brief sentences were going to cost Macrinus his long and successful career. More likely though, they were going to cost him his life.


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[Assistant] Macrinus had been born in modern Algeria around 165 AD and, like Septimius Severus, was the son of an equite.


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[Assistant] But unlike Severus, he did not have influential uncles in Rome, and so he was never recommended for senatorial status.


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[Assistant] As a result of his status, he never held any of the traditional posts up and coming Roman politicians usually hold, and never held any position of authority in the legions.


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[Assistant] But he nonetheless distinguished himself as an able administrator and routinely secured important posts within the imperial bureaucracy during the reign of Septimius Severus.


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[Assistant] As you've probably noticed, there were essentially two paths to public prominence in the Roman Empire.


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[Assistant] One was to be a great soldier, which Macrinus was not. The other was to be a great lawyer.


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[Assistant] Which Macrinus, over the years, established that he most assuredly was.


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[Assistant] It was on the strength of his prowess as a jurist then, rather than on the strength of his prowess as a fighter, that Caracalla named him Praetorian Prefect shortly after becoming Emperor.


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[Assistant] The appointment of a civilian to what was essentially a military post was not uncommon at all. And in fact, emperors, the good ones anyway,


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[Assistant] Like to represent both paths to prominence in their choice of prefix.


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[Assistant] One old military hand to keep the troops in line and one capable bureaucrat to handle all the administrative work that had accrued around the guard over the years.


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[Assistant] Whether or not Macrinus was aiming this whole time to become emperor himself one day is unknown. But I would have to say that it's pretty doubtful.


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[Assistant] Over the years, prefects had aspired to be emperor in all but name.


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[Assistant] But their equestrian status, the very thing that qualified them to be prefect, disqualified them from being emperor.


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[Assistant] So Janus had made probably the most concerted effort to get around this by marrying into the Julia O'Claudian family.


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[Assistant] But most other ambitious prefects simply considered that final step a bridge too far and were content to wield power behind the throne.


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[Assistant] The empire had seen Italian emperors, and then Spanish emperors, and then even African emperors. Emperors who were the sons of emperors, emperors who were the sons of equites, and even an emperor who was the son of a freedman. But all those men, by the time they donned the purple, were listed on the senatorial rolls.


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[Assistant] Which is why it was patently absurd that this loose cannon oracle was predicting the reign of an equite named Marcus Opelius Macrinus.


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[Assistant] But no one could get the silly nutcase to shut up. So, absurd or not, Macrinus had to take the implications of the prophecy seriously.


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[Assistant] With no way of keeping the information from Caracalla forever, and Cassius Dio reports that the Emperor had perhaps already heard rumors about the prophecy.


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[Assistant] Macrinus's kill or be killed instincts took over, and he initiated a conspiracy to assassinate Karakalla.


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[Assistant] He was likely not too worried about negative blowback for the regicide he was contemplating. It's not like Karakalla was a beloved figure, even in the army. They only liked him because he continued to pay them.


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[Assistant] We don't know exactly how the murder exactly happened, despite the rich detail we find in the histories describing it, because those reports conflict with each other, and were most likely third-hand accounts of third-hand accounts anyway.


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[Assistant] The most commonly told version, probably because it was endorsed by Given, is that in April of 2017,


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[Assistant] Caracalla's entourage was on its way to a temple near the eastern frontier, and, specifically, very near the site of the disastrous Battle of Cary, when the Emperor called for a pit stop.


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[Assistant] Macrinus had already convinced a disgruntled soldier, most likely disgruntled at being passed over for promotion, to be his assassin.


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[Assistant] And with the Emperor all alone by the side of the road taking care of business, Macrina signaled for the disgruntled soldier to approach the Emperor on some invented pretense.


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[Assistant] As the head of the Imperial Bodyguard, the other Praetorians took their cues from Macrinus.


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[Assistant] And when the prefect seemed unconcerned about this single soldier approaching the emperor, they too relaxed their vigil. The soldier came up alongside the emperor.


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[Assistant] And without warning, pulled out a dagger and began stabbing Karakalla to death.


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[Assistant] The assassin was instantly dropped by an archer and the bodyguard, but the damage had been done.


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[Assistant] Caracalla's bloody corpse lay motionless in the dust.


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[Assistant] He was 29 years old and had ruled the empire for just over six years.


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[Assistant] Just like practically every other time an emperor was assassinated, the death of Karakalla opened up a power vacuum that needed to be filled, and filled fast, or everything was going to go to hell.


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[Assistant] Without having the time to work things out in advance with a ready, willing, and able Nerva or Pertinax, Macrinus had gone ahead and killed Karakalla without a Shadow Emperor waiting in the wings. Which usually means big trouble.


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[Assistant] Word quickly spread of the emperor's death and the legions, especially the legions in the east where most of the imperial court currently resided, suddenly found themselves once again in the business of king making.


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[Assistant] The Senate, who were supposed to have the final authority in these matters, found itself too far away from the action, and too weak anyhow, to get a wording edgewise.


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[Assistant] For three days, candidates were nominated and rejected by the legions for various reasons. Until, with fearful desperation beginning to creep into everyone's hearts, the Praetorians decided that it was time for them to put their weight behind one of their own.


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[Assistant] The senior prefect, a man named Adventus, begged off the job. But Macrinus, perhaps swayed by the prophecy that had got them all into this mess in the first place,


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[Assistant] Accepted the drive to make one of the Praetorian leaders emperor.


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[Assistant] He had put on a pretty good show of surprise and grief following the murder of Karakalla, and so no one suspected that he was in fact the man behind the man who had killed the Emperor.


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[Assistant] With the Bratorians united, the rest of the legions resigned themselves to Macrinus.


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[Assistant] And in what would have been an unthinkable reality just a few days before.


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[Assistant] Rome found itself with its first ever emperor of equestrian rank.


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[Assistant] Back in Rome, the Senate too resigned itself to Emperor Macrinus.


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[Assistant] They were so happy to be rid of Karakalla that they probably would have supported inanimate carbon rod for the job. But beyond just being not Karakalla.


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[Assistant] Macrinus did bring to the table some nice attributes.


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[Assistant] He was an accomplished lawyer and his prefect. He had always been fair and judicious with the Senate.


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[Assistant] So the overall feeling was that basically, the empire could do a lot worse. I mean, it just had, right? In time, they would come to regret their decision.


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[Assistant] Not really for anything Macrinus did while in office, though they did nail him for a few things that he did while in office.


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[Assistant] But because it dawned on them one day that they had set a terrible precedent in allowing someone outside the senatorial club to take the job.


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[Assistant] But at the beginning, it was all, yay, Caracalla is dead, long live Macrinus.


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[Assistant] The brief reign of the Equestrian Emperor is notable for one other small bit of trivia.


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[Assistant] He would be the first emperor never to set foot in Rome while in office.


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[Assistant] When the rapid succession of barracks emperors comes marching down the road pretty soon, this will become more and more the norm.


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[Assistant] But up until this point, every emperor had spent at least part of their reign in the capital.


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[Assistant] The new emperor sowed the seeds of his own destruction right from the very beginning.


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[Assistant] He had been ruthless enough to kill Karakalla, but he was unable to extend that ruthlessness to the rest of the Severn family.


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[Assistant] In an attempt to appear liberal and generous and guilt free.


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[Assistant] He refused to purge the imperial family and at first even allowed them to remain in Rome with their standing more or less unaffected by the fact that they were no longer technically the imperial family anymore.


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[Assistant] Taking up residence in Antioch, Macrinus thus allowed a group of people suddenly booted from power, free reign in Rome to connive their way back in.


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[Assistant] It's not that the Severance had any great love for Karakawa, or any reason at this point to suspect Macrinus of having killed him.


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[Assistant] But as Emperor, the Karakawa had been the linchpin that held them all fast to power. And now that he was dead, they were suddenly adrift.


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[Assistant] It should come as no surprise then, that they conspired like mad to pin themselves back down.


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[Assistant] After he started receiving reports that the severance were in fact plotting against him.


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[Assistant] But really, not to sound cruel, if he wanted to stay emperor, he should have killed them all.


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[Assistant] They had no less plan for him, and he should have known that.


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[Assistant] Julia Domna, for her part, did what Macrinus could not do, and, facing exile from the capital, decided that enough was enough.


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[Assistant] She went on a hunger strike and died shortly thereafter.


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[Assistant] Life had taken a harsh turn for the Empress following the death of her husband, and this last insult to her dignity was too much to bear.


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[Assistant] Probably a good thing that she died too, as it spared her from witnessing the further depravities of her extended family.


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[Assistant] Said depravities mostly arose at the instigation of Julia's sister, Julia Misa, who, by virtue of her relation to the Augusta, had lived a rich and untroubled life, but, much to her chagrin, she had never tasted the real power her sister had once wielded.


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[Assistant] Julia Misa wanted that power and had no compunctions about how she was going to get it.


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[Assistant] She had already been eyeing the fortunes of her two grandsons, who were the only males in the extended severant family, and as such, stood as very likely candidate to succeed the childless Karakalla should he remain childless.


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[Assistant] With Caracalla dead, those two boys now stood as the only real heirs to the House of Severus. The legitimate Imperial House of Severus.


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[Assistant] That these boys would become a rallying point for discontentment could have been seen from a mile away.


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[Assistant] The two boys in question were the only sons of Julia Misa's two daughters, and together they all packed up and headed back to a Misa in 217.


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[Assistant] The elder boy was named Varius Avidius Bossianus, and at this point he was 14 years old.


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[Assistant] His younger cousin, named Marcus, Julius, Ghesius, Bossianus, Alexianus, was himself only nine at the time of Caracalla's death.


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[Assistant] The fact that they hadn't reached manhood yet is probably what saved them both, as even at this point in history, the Romans looked sideways at murdering children.


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[Assistant] But really, Macrinus not killing them both when he had the chance turned out to be a blunder of the First Order.


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[Assistant] Because soon enough, Macrinus will be dead, and history will come to know those two young harmless pups as his imperial successors.


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[Assistant] Who we know as Ella Gobelus and Alexander Severus.


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[Assistant] But before we get to that, we should get back to Macrinus, and his attempt to stabilize the empire, his own claim to the throne, and the fortunes of what he hoped would be a new dynasty, all at the same time.


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[Assistant] In case you're wondering, things will not go smoothly.


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[Assistant] Karakalla had, as you can imagine, left the Empire in pretty dismal shape.


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[Assistant] His persistent draining of the treasury to heap rewards upon the legions had created a two-fold problem for his successor.


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[Assistant] One, there was very little money left in the imperial treasury.


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[Assistant] And two, the army expected to keep receiving the same kind of lavish donatives they had received under the late emperor.


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[Assistant] When Macrinus got into power and recognized the fiscal mess the Empire was in, he immediately tried to scale back the soldiers' pay to a reasonable level, which immediately ticked them off something fierce.


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[Assistant] It didn't help that he promised them the moon when they agreed to support him.


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[Assistant] But I can forgive Macrinus a little on that front because, come on, campaign promises aren't worth the paper they're printed on.


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[Assistant] The other pretty massive problem Caracalla had left for Macrinus was his utterly disastrous forays into foreign affairs.


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[Assistant] Locals in Dacia were upset about hostages Caracalla had taken. The people of Armenia were angry about Caracalla's imprisonment of their popular king. And the Parthians, well, the Parthians were understandably annoyed at that whole fake wedding real massacre thing we talked about last week.


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[Assistant] In trying to set all of this right, Macrinus took the angle of least resistance, and in so doing, earned himself the scorn of both the Senate and the legions for appearing weak. He returned the hostages to Dacia,


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[Assistant] Appointed the son of the man Caracalla had imprisoned to take over the throne of Armenia. And in Parthia, well, Parthia was a bit more difficult.


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[Assistant] They had come barging west with a pretty good sized army on a mission of vengeance.


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[Assistant] And the lifelong jurors was forced to don armor to go out and meet them.


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[Assistant] The legions were by this time pretty cocky about their ability to handle the Parthians, who were about to completely fall apart and be reformed as the much more powerful Sassanid Empire.


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[Assistant] So they were dismayed to find that after one inconclusive battle, Macrinus was suing for peace.


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[Assistant] They were doubly dismayed when they discovered that it was the Romans who would be paying the Parthians to prevent further hostilities.


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[Assistant] And it was a huge sum of money that they were going to be paying them.


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[Assistant] And hey, aren't you the same guy who said you were too broke to pay us?


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[Assistant] So now not only are you proving to be kind of a cheapskate, but it turns out that you're a coward to boot, and a liar. You are not who we signed up for, sir.


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[Assistant] The sinking of his standing with the Legions was soon matched by the sinking of his standing with the Senate.


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[Assistant] Macrinus, who had once seemed at least an acceptable alternative to Karakalla, was now proving to be nothing of the sort.


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[Assistant] It did not help that Julia Misa, who still wielded considerable informal influence, had instigated a pretty vicious whisper campaign against the now she probably guessed had killed her nephew. Julia played the moment perfectly.


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[Assistant] Just when Makrinis' reputation was bottoming out, and everyone was wondering how they were going to ditch this loser, Julia offered them a solution.


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[Assistant] She announced that her eldest grandson, 14-year-old Varius Avidius Bossianus, was actually the biological son of Karakawa and the true heir to the Imperial throne.


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[Assistant] When intelligent men did the math, they perhaps did not necessarily buy wholly the theory that at the tender age of 14, Karakalla had fathered a child with his maternal cousin. But hey, stranger things have happened, and Macrinus seems pretty much like a non-starter, so you say the boy is the true heir to the throne? Well, let's go with that.


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[Assistant] But what that turned out to be was about a hundred times worse than Macrinus.


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[Assistant] And almost immediately after the teenager, history calls Elagobolis won the throne.


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[Assistant] Even the Legion that had been the first to support him was ready to revolt against him.


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[Assistant] In the episode before last, while I was discussing Septimius Severus' campaign in Caledonia, I mentioned that one of the lasting consequences of the war was that Severus helped reconstruct Hadrian's Wall, leading the Romans to actually call it the Severan Wall. This is not true at all.


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[Assistant] What he actually did was re-occupy and reconstruct the Antonine wall, which had been abandoned around the time Marcus Aurelius became emperor.


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[Assistant] Roman historians did thereafter call this fortification the Severan Wall, but they never, ever called Hadrian's Wall that, because Severus never ordered any major reconstruction of Hadrian's Wall.


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[Assistant] Sorry for the mix-up, and thanks to Lane Brown for bringing this flub to my attention in the comments section. So, moving on.


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[Assistant] I think it's possible that in another time and place, Marcus Opelius Macrinus might have made a pretty good emperor.


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[Assistant] He was smart, able to make difficult decisions, and had always been an excellent administrator.


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[Assistant] Even the things he actually did that caused everyone to lose confidence in him proved to be more or less the right call in the long run.


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[Assistant] Wasting the Empire's dwindling resources in an attempt to defend the honor of Caracalla was bad policy, and Macrinus knew it. So he refused to do it.


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[Assistant] The dead emperor had picked fights all over the place, and rather than digging in on those fights, Macrinus asked everyone to please form an orderly line, and one by one, described to him the nature of their grievance with Rome.


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[Assistant] Then he gave them whatever they wanted to make the issue go away.


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[Assistant] Macrinus knew full well that in each case, Rome, that is, Caracalla, had been the guilty party. And, ever the lawyer, he knew that it would be far more damaging for these things to go to trial than to just settle out of court right now.


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[Assistant] But things get tricky when it's an emperor committing needlessly provocative crimes.


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[Assistant] Because when an emperor does something, it is Rome doing something. And so, like it or not, when you refuse to defend Caracalla's honor, it looks very much like you are refusing to defend Rome's honor.


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[Assistant] And in the honor crazy classical world, that was simply not acceptable.


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[Assistant] In trying to mop up after Caracalla, Macrinus was making Rome look weak, spineless, and even cowardly.


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[Assistant] I think it is fair to say that, as the old saying goes, most Roman leaders would rather be strong and wrong than weak and right.


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[Assistant] Weak and right may mean right today, but it also means that they'll think they can push you around tomorrow.


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[Assistant] Strong and wrong means that everyone is still afraid to mess with you.


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[Assistant] Macrinus chose to be weak and right, and as a result, he was not long for the throne.


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[Assistant] But still, I think Macrinus might have survived and even thrived had he not had two big factors working against him.


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[Assistant] Factors that another emperor, say Hadrian, who also brazenly ignored everyone's notion of being strong, did not have to deal with.


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[Assistant] First, Macrinus was essentially a usurper, without anything resembling a claim to the throne, legal, sentimental, or otherwise.


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[Assistant] It had always been hard to toss aside even ridiculously terrible emperors like Commodus or Caligula because they came with a lofty imperial pedigree.


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[Assistant] But tossing aside a man without history and of such low rank like Macrinus, just say the word.


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[Assistant] Second, by this point in Roman history, the discipline of the rank-and-file troops had deteriorated to the point that honor and duty took a backseat to cash and prizes.


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[Assistant] I think their general attitude during the third century is best summed up in a quote from the inhibitable Dwight K. Schrute.


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[Assistant] I feel like part of what I'm being paid for here is my loyalty, but if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I'm going wherever they valued loyalty the most.


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[Assistant] Once the legions decided that someone else was going to value their loyalty more than Macrinus, his days were numbered.


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[Assistant] After a year spent paying off Rome's enemies while simultaneously refusing calls to pay off Rome's armies,


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[Assistant] McCreen has left the door wide open for someone to step forward and challenge his claim to the throne.


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[Assistant] In the spring of 218, that challenger appeared right on cue.


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[Assistant] Caracalla's maternal aunt, Julia Misa, aided immeasurably by a crafty eunuch named Gannys,


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[Assistant] ...had spent the few months they had been in exile, working single-mindedly to get her family back into power.


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[Assistant] She quickly recognized Macrinus' two big weaknesses, his lack of any real claim to the throne, and his perceived stiffing of the soldiers, and exploited both to the hilt.


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[Assistant] To attack the first weak point, she announced that her grandson, Varius Avidius Bossianus, who I will call Elagabalus from here on out, was actually the son of Caracalla, and thus was the only man in the empire with a legitimate claim to the throne.


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[Assistant] To attack the second weak point, she simply promised that any Legion supporting her grandson would be rewarded handsomely for the trouble.


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[Assistant] On May 16, 218 AD, the third legion, stationed in Syria, decided to roll the dice and openly declared their loyalty to the true emperor, young Elagobulus.


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[Assistant] When Macrinus learned of the rebellion, he immediately dispatched a sizable contingent of his Praetorian legions to nip the rebellion in the bud.


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[Assistant] But when messengers arrived back to report on what had happened, Macrinus was shocked to learn that rather than cowing the third legion and taking Elagobolis into custody,


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[Assistant] The Praetorian rank and file had instead joined the uprising.


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[Assistant] Themselves as disappointed and macrinous as anyone, the Praetorian soldiers had turned on the senior officers and killed them before declaring their loyalty to Elagobolis.


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[Assistant] Now, suddenly, Macrinus had a full blown crisis on his hands.


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[Assistant] He scrambled to keep the rest of the legions in line and belatedly promised them the lavish donatatives he had thus far been holding back. But it was too little, too late.


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[Assistant] The second legion saw which way the winds were blowing and defected to Elagopolis soon after the Praetorian mutiny.


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[Assistant] Now Elagabal has controlled two full legions, as well as the cream of the Praetorian Guard.


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[Assistant] The fact that all the rest of the legions in the Empire were still nominally with him was cold comfort to Macrinus.


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[Assistant] Because in the microcosm of Syria, where a major confrontation was now inevitable, he was about to be outnumbered.


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[Assistant] About three weeks after the third legion declared for Elagobolis, that final confrontation arrived.


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[Assistant] Outside of Antioch, Macrinus gathered what troops he could still muster to fight for him, and lined them up against the legions of Elagobolis, who were led into battle by the unit Ghanis.


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[Assistant] In the ensuing battle, the two sides were pretty evenly matched, but the superior command of Ghanis won out against the less capable Macrinus.


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[Assistant] There's still some debate as to whether the battle in and of itself should have been decisive. After all, Macrina still had the rest of the empire with him. He'd even convinced the Senate to declare Elagobulus and Julia Misa enemies of the state.


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[Assistant] Plus, whatever their personal feelings towards Macrinus, the legions of the west may not have been as keen on backing a 14 year old Syrian boy as the eastern legions had been. But in the battle, two things happened.


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[Assistant] First, Elogoblus apparently displayed a degree of courage during the fight and had rallied a flagging cavalry charge.


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[Assistant] While second, in contrast, Macrinus had fled the field the minute things began to go against him.


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[Assistant] There's only deep in the impression that Macrinus was a coward, and whatever little faith people were still willing to invest in him, fled the field along with the Emperor.


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[Assistant] The now disgraced Macrinus tried to flee back to Rome to regroup, but he was caught by agents of the severance in Cappadocia and executed.


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[Assistant] He was 58 years old and had ruled the empire for just 14 months.


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[Assistant] This left Rome in the hands of fourteen-year-old Elagabalus.


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[Assistant] With no other viable candidate stepping forward, and with amnesty promised the Senate, who had after all just declared him a public enemy,


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[Assistant] The senators accepted the legitimacy of the boy shortly after the severing victory at Antioch.


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[Assistant] Now, we often call young Elvigabolus the first eastern-born emperor.


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[Assistant] But in fact, he was half Syrian, half African, just like Karakawa and Geta had been. The reason he is often saddled with this distinction,


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[Assistant] Is that because, unlike any of his predecessors, this new Emperor was culturally Eastern.


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[Assistant] Wherever they came from originally, the men who became emperor, by the time they became emperor,


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[Assistant] Something the Romans back in Rome were about to find out.


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[Assistant] After the defeat of Macrinus, Elagabalus and his entourage, or should I say at this point, Julia Misa and her entourage, which included Elagabalus, took their sweet time making the trip back to the capital.


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[Assistant] They passed the winter of 218-219 in Bithynia, and only with the autumn of 219 approaching, more than a year after the initial revolt of the Third Legion, did they arrive in Rome.


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[Assistant] But to prepare the Romans, and the Senate especially, for the coming of their new master, a portrait of Elagabalus had been delivered to the capital, with instructions to hang it in the Senate House, where it would oversee all proceedings.


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[Assistant] The picture was mostly meant to help them all recognize Elagabalus when he finally arrived, as most people had no idea what he looked like.


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[Assistant] But all the senators saw was a horrifying glimpse of what was to come.


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[Assistant] The portrait showed Elagabalus dressed in silk and robes, adorned with rings and other jewelry, and is that makeup? Is that kid wearing eyeliner?


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[Assistant] Though Roman austerity had long ago been vanquished by the might of luxury and decadence, there were still a few old taboos rattling around, and a man wearing silk robes and makeup was definitely on that list.


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[Assistant] But appearances aside, the Senate was also inflamed by Ella Goebbels' disregard for another taboo.


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[Assistant] Traditionally, the key powers invested in the emperor, the tribunition authority, the proconsular super authority, were just that, invested in the emperor by the senate.


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[Assistant] Whether it was an exercise in rubber stamping was beside the point.


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[Assistant] The Emperor had to ask, and the Senate had to give.


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[Assistant] In assuming power though, Elagopoulos and his advisors had not asked.


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[Assistant] The men surrounding the new emperor had simply declared that Elagoblus now held all the powers of Imperial office. This rankled the Senate to no end.


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[Assistant] Coupled with the disturbing portrait of the Syrian dandy hanging on the wall, well, let's just say that the reign of Elagabalus was not getting off to a great start.


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[Assistant] And it wasn't just the stuff shirts in the senate who were regretting the rise of the boy emperor.


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[Assistant] The legions who had raised him up and were on hand to witness Elagabalus' day-to-day conduct were shocked at the boy's behavior.


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[Assistant] Raised with all the privileges that came with being a member of the Imperial family.


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[Assistant] Elagoblus, not unlike Caracalla and Geta, had been spoiled rotten.


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[Assistant] He had no boundaries, no sense of prudence, and displayed no evidence whatsoever of holding any inhibitions.


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[Assistant] He dressed as he liked, wore the perfumes that he liked, and frequently consorted with any man, woman, boy or girl that struck his fancy.


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[Assistant] It didn't take long for many in the legions, officers and soldiers alike, to begin to doubt the character of this proto-Commodus they had helped to win the throne.


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[Assistant] And a telling sign of the kind of loyalty Elgobelus commanded once people really got to know him.


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[Assistant] Two Eastern Legions, including the third, which, as you'll recall, had been the first ones to support him,


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[Assistant] Both attempted revolt before Elagabalus even made it to Rome.


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[Assistant] The mutinies were put down, and in the process, the third legion, the one that had been first to declare for him, was completely disbanded. Which is not exactly a promising omen.


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[Assistant] Elagabalus and his extended family finally arrived in Rome in the autumn of 219, and right off the bat, Julia Mesa, through Elagabalus, ensured that the Severan dynasty was firmly re-entrenched in the hearts and minds of the Romans by forcing the Senate to deify both Caracalla and her sister Julia Domna.


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[Assistant] She then finally got her own taste of real authority by graciously accepting the title Augusta, which the Senate had generously foisted upon her and Elagabalus's mother.


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[Assistant] But that was not enough for the new Augusta, and she crossed way over the line, pretty far over the line, even for the line crossing happy court of Elagabalus.


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[Assistant] By forcing the Senate to allow her and her daughter to sit in on senatorial sessions.


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[Assistant] Women had never been allowed to take part in these proceedings, and though Livia and Agrippina had both been allowed to listen in, they were both safely hidden from view by a curtain.


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[Assistant] But Julia Musa was aiming to become the most powerful woman the Empire had ever known.


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[Assistant] She considered Ella Gobbles to be merely a puppet, and planned to control every aspect of the Imperial administration herself. And if that meant crashing another taboo, so be it.


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[Assistant] But young Elgobolus had no intention of being merely a puppet. He was emperor, not his mother or his grandmother. What he said was the final word, and what he wanted would be what the empire got.


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[Assistant] He was a typically headstrong 14 year old, and much to Julia Misa's dismay, she found herself, along with everyone else, subject to his whims.


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[Assistant] The thing that perhaps tipped the scales away from Julia Misa and made Elagabalus so hard to control.


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[Assistant] Which filled the teenager with the sense that he was a quasi-divine figure.


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[Assistant] We need look no further than the fact that he assumed the name Elagobolus to prove how much the young emperor felt that his role as High Priest defined him.


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[Assistant] At the end of the day, it was probably more important to him than his role as the head of some mortal empire.


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[Assistant] A fact that will become all too apparent to the citizens of said mortal empire.


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[Assistant] And one that took its various cults and temples and ceremonies very seriously.


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[Assistant] The gods they worshipped had been the gods who transformed Rome from a disreputable little village of vagabonds into the master of the western world. That was not a thing to be taken lightly.


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[Assistant] And it was important that credit was always given where credit was due.


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[Assistant] But in Elagabalus' mind, there was only one god, the sun god El-Gabal, who also became known as Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun.


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[Assistant] The new emperor, obsessively pious as he was, announced shortly after arriving in Rome that henceforth all temples in the city would be rededicated to El Gabal.


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[Assistant] Because all the gods, Jupiter included, were simply inferior aspects of the one true God.


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[Assistant] The rituals and cults that had defined Rome, and in the Roman mind kept them safe, were suppressed.


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[Assistant] In their place, Elagabalus instituted dozens of variations of sun worship. With the caper being an hours-long ceremony, the emperor himself performed almost daily, and that he required the senate not just to attend, but to take part in.


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[Assistant] To the Romans, this was not just blasphemy, it was dangerous.


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[Assistant] Everyone feared what Jupiter's reaction would be when he discovered that the Romans had ceased to make offerings in his names and that the rituals he prescribed had been abandoned.


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[Assistant] Compounding the sense of outrage that was bubbling up in Rome was the private life of young Elagabalus.


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[Assistant] Well, maybe private life isn't the right term, as it was in every sense of very public life.


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[Assistant] Were he alive today, it is likely Elagobolis' identity would be classified as some variation of transgender.


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[Assistant] He took both male and female lovers, but most of the time dressed in clothing that would have been considered highly effeminate.


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[Assistant] Famously, his most stable long-term relationship was with his chariot driver, Hierocles, and it tickled the emperor to no end to refer to himself as Hierocles' wife, or Hierocles' queen.


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[Assistant] And this was really where his conduct became a source of shame for the population.


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[Assistant] As we've noted previously, homosexual relations in Rome were widespread and not particularly controversial. But that was as long as you were the dominant partner.


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[Assistant] To have the emperor take on the passive role, dress as a woman, and cheerfully answer to the title of queen, well, that was way outside the bounds.


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[Assistant] Even when he assumed the regular old gender role of straight husband, he infuriated Roman sensibilities.


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[Assistant] Over the course of his brief reign, less than four years total, he took no less than five different wives, abandoning them and sometimes returning to them with alarming speed.


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[Assistant] Most offensive though, was his decision to marry a Vestal Virgin. So that together, they could produce divine children.


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[Assistant] Obviously, this made a mockery of the virgin part of the Vestal Virgins, and if it went unpunished, the Romans feared this sacrilege would bring who knows what terrible fortune upon the empire.


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[Assistant] All of these outrages, his flouting of sexual taboos, his destruction of traditional Roman religion, and his habit of appointing lowborn friends and lovers to key administrative posts, began to wear so thin that the fabric started to tear.


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[Assistant] Julia Misa, who had been the driving force behind the boys elevation in the first place, quietly began to reconsider her position.


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[Assistant] She found herself on the outs with the boy, unable to control the puppet she thought she had so skillfully carved.


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[Assistant] Her daughter seemed content to let the boy follow his whims wherever they may take him, happy to trade power and influence for the luxuries of imperial court life.


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[Assistant] Giving up on Elagobolis, she turned to her other grandson, Alexander Severus, to see what he was made of.


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[Assistant] In contrast to Elagabalus, Alexander was a quiet, serious boy who seemed much better suited temperamentally for a long-term stay on the throne.


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[Assistant] Elogoblus on the other hand, utterly indifferent to how many people he was pissing off, was clearly going to run into a dagger one of these days.


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[Assistant] If Julia played her cards right, she might be able to position Alexander as the successor to Elagobolus. And so, when Elagobolus finally ran into that dagger, she would still have another shot at being the real power behind the throne.


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[Assistant] In 221, she managed, after a bit of coaxing and pleading, to convince Elagabalus to name his cousin Caesar.


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[Assistant] And at least for now, make Alexander the heir to the throne.


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[Assistant] This way, if anything, God forbid, should happen to you, then the throne will remain in the family.


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[Assistant] Naturally, when you have children of your own, this can all be rearranged, but for now, it's just a smart insurance policy. Think of your mother.


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[Assistant] They'll probably kill her if the throne falls into the wrong hands.


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[Assistant] Coincidentally, as soon as Elagabalus agreed and Alexander was made Caesar, the assassination attempts began.


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[Assistant] There was no shortage of conspirators ready to take a shot at Elagabalus.


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[Assistant] Elagabalus managed to escape the first few tries, but it was becoming obvious that not only did he have enemies, but those enemies filled the ranks of the Praetorian Guard.


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[Assistant] Having the best seat in the house to witness all of Elagobolis' depravities, and being forced to obey all of his orders to boot,


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[Assistant] The Praetorians probably hated him more than anyone else, and Elagabalus soon realized that he really couldn't trust them anymore.


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[Assistant] Especially because they all seem to love his cousin Alexander so much. And come to think of it


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[Assistant] Maybe my grandmother didn't want me to name him Caesar, so he could be my heir, just in case.


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[Assistant] Maybe she wanted me to name him Caesar, so he could be my replacement.


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[Assistant] Furious at being duped into appointing his own replacement, Elagobolus immediately wrote Alexander out of his will and revoked the title of Caesar in March of 222.


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[Assistant] Suspicious of everyone at this point, he then let it be known that Alexander had actually died, just to see how people would react. The Praetorians flew into a frenzy.


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[Assistant] Not yet convinced that Alexander was dead, they threatened to riot if Elagobolis did not produce the boy alive and well right this instant.


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[Assistant] Oligobolus took note of the rage exploding out of the Praetorian camp and was pleased that he had flushed out their true feelings.


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[Assistant] But he was not so pleased to discover that he had sort of let the genie out of the bottle.


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[Assistant] The Praetorians refused his orders to stand down, and they continued to threaten the Emperor with deadly force if he didn't produce Alexander, right this instant.


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[Assistant] Afraid of what they might actually do to him, Illegobulus had no choice but to comply.


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[Assistant] Accompanied by his mother, Elagobolis escorted Alexander to the camp. And when they all made their entrance, the Praetorians began to cheer.


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[Assistant] Completely ignoring the Emperor and his mother, the Rhetorians raised Alexander on their shields and bore him to the head of the line and acclaimed him Caesar.


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[Assistant] Elagabalus interrupted this celebration by reminding the Praetorians that Alexander was not, nor would he ever again be Caesar, and that as the Emperor, his word was final. This was a big mistake.


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[Assistant] But Praetorians turned on him with hate in their eyes and Elagabalus suddenly realized how much danger he was in.


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[Assistant] He and his mother tried to flee, but they were quickly seized by the angry guard.


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[Assistant] Without ceremony or hesitation, they were both killed and their bodies dragged through the streets in disgrace.


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[Assistant] Elagabalus was only 18 years old and he had ruled Rome for just shy of four years.


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[Assistant] His reign had been a strange detour that in the end had very little impact on the course of Roman history.


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[Assistant] All his religious reforms were cancelled immediately, all of his friends and consorts were thrown out of power, and life more or less returned to normal.


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[Assistant] As usual when it comes to the Bad Emperors, it is difficult to pick through the various histories to determine which stories about Elagobolus are true and which ones are false.


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[Assistant] Everyone had an axe to grind with the mad little teenager from Syria, and the only tool anyone had left was character assassination.


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[Assistant] So did he really smother dinner guests to death under a massive pile of flower petals? Probably not.


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[Assistant] But the infuriating obsession with Sol Invictus was real enough.


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[Assistant] As was probably a lot of his scandal social life.


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[Assistant] But again, how much and which particulars are true is tough to discern.


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[Assistant] He was bad enough and dangerous enough that he was betrayed by his grandmother and abandoned by the Praetorian Guard.


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[Assistant] But then again, I can think of perfectly selfish reasons for everyone to have acted just the way they did without Elagobolis needing to be a horrible monster for them to do it. Julia Misa was angry the boy wouldn't listen to her.


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[Assistant] The troops, maybe, had been promised more money if they backed Alexander.


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[Assistant] But in all likelihood, the stereotype of Elagobolus the crazy hedonist was not invented out of whole cloth. These things come from somewhere.


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[Assistant] And everyone in Rome sure seemed pretty happy when he was gone.


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[Assistant] Next week, we'll get into the tragic reign of his successor, Alexander Severus.


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[Assistant] Who tried in every way to be the polar opposite of Elagobolis.


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[Assistant] He was smart, conscientious, dedicated, and made a habit of listening to those who needed to be listened to and ignoring those who needed to be ignored.


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[Assistant] Young Alexander always showed maturity and vision beyond his years, but the era into which he was born refused to reward his unimpeachable character and instead used it as an excuse to stab him in the back.


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[Assistant] The reign of Alexander Severus was the calm before the storm.


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[Assistant] The clouds had begun to gather with the death of Marcus Aurelius, and they had only grown darker and more ominous as the empire endured first commonus, then a succession of imperial assassinations, then a three-way civil war, then a humorless military dictatorship run by Septimius Severus, and then finally the cruel debauchery of his heirs.


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[Assistant] When Ella Gobelus was killed by the Praetorian Guard in 222, it seemed like the lightning and the thunder and the rain was about to start. But then a curious thing happened.


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[Assistant] For 13 years, the Roman Empire was granted a stay of execution.


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[Assistant] The provinces flourished, the rule of law prevailed, and the burdens of life were eased.


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[Assistant] But in the end, it was just a stay of execution, not a full pardon.


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[Assistant] And when Alexander Severus was assassinated in 235, the thunder and the lightning and the rain finally arrived.


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[Assistant] When discussing the very worst emperors in Roman history, it is common to point out that the most striking similarity between Caligula and Nero and Commodus and Caracalla and Elagabalus was how young they all were.


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[Assistant] The old man of that group is Caligula, who was all of 25 when he came to power.


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[Assistant] In fact, when you go back through the rolls, there are basically no examples of a Roman leader under the age of 30 being anything but a train wreck.


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[Assistant] The exception that proves the rule was, of course, Scipio Africanus, and he appears to have used up almost all the wisdom and talent the gods had ever planned on granting the Under 30 set.


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[Assistant] In 222, though, Alexander Severus, ascending to the throne at the age of 13, broke this string of underage train wrecks.


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[Assistant] Somehow, he managed to scrape together whatever leftover residue of youthful confidence Scipio had not sucked up for himself, and he used it to rule the empire with something approaching wisdom for more than a decade.


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[Assistant] Probably the biggest determining factor in Alexander not becoming a horrible train wreck was his mother.


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[Assistant] A fact that I'm sure will make every mother out there nod their head in agreement and make every teenager out there roll their eyes in annoyance. But guys, it's true.


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[Assistant] As different as Alexander was from his cousin, so too was his mother, Julia Mamia, different from her sister.


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[Assistant] Julia Mamia loved her son and wanted him to be happy, but was not so indulgent that she just let him do whatever he wanted.


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[Assistant] She took very seriously the fact that as emperor, Alexander had very serious responsibilities.


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[Assistant] She had seen up close the corrupting power of, well, power.


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[Assistant] And so did her best to shield her son from its worst effects.


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[Assistant] As we will see, Julia Mamia was no saint, and her own faults would become a big problem for the regime.


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[Assistant] And of course, standing over Julia Mamie's shoulder the whole time, making sure that she did right by her son, was her mother, Julia Misa, who would be damned if she was going to let some hormonal teenager blow the deal for her a second time.


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[Assistant] At 13, Alexander had neither the experience nor the education to run the government all by himself.


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[Assistant] Even with his mother and grandmother pulling the strings there was simply not yet enough innate authority emanating from the boy to hold the regime together.


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[Assistant] So Julia Mamiam went out of Colin on the most influential families in Rome and quickly organized a governing council composed of 16 widely respected senators.


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[Assistant] This had the effect, not only of granting the new regime access to wisdom and experience, they would not have been able to conjure on their own.


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[Assistant] But more importantly, it had the effect of co-opting the Senate.


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[Assistant] Bringing these 16 senators into the imperial fold meant cooling a potential hotbed of sedition and buying Alexander time to get on his feet.


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[Assistant] But, and this is where the Severans really played it smart, the governing council did not become just some blue ribbon photo op.


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[Assistant] They were given real, actual authority, and everyday debated and resolved the real issues facing the empire.


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[Assistant] Alexander sat at their head, and as emperor, he had the final say in everything.


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[Assistant] But the men of the council were not only listened to, they were usually deferred to.


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[Assistant] The senators on the council acquitted themselves admirably and Alexander was able to sort of ride his advisors good sense all the way to legitimacy city.


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[Assistant] He was lucky to have among their number two men of note who helped steer the ship of state wisely during these early years.


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[Assistant] Who's 80 volume history of Rome has provided a lot of the material that your humble podcast is based upon, especially these last few episodes.


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[Assistant] I'll deal with Cash's deal a bit more in a second, but right now I want to focus on Ulpian, who was the predominant force during Alexander's first year in office.


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[Assistant] He had been born around 170 and had risen quickly up the political ranks until he became a member of Septimius Severus' advisory board.


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[Assistant] He remained a high-ranking Imperial official after Severus's death and somehow managed to emerge from Caracalla's regime with his reputation intact.


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[Assistant] In fact, his reputation was so intact that when Elagobulus took power, Ulpian was banished from Rome for fear that he would prove to be a pain in the new emperor's far less virtuous backside.


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[Assistant] With Elagobolis' death, Ulpian was immediately recalled by Julia Mamia to serve on the council she was putting together to run the government for her son.


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[Assistant] Upon his return, Ulpian was named Praetorian Prefect and tasked most especially with untangling the knot of corruption and vice that had infected both the army and the imperial bureaucracy.


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[Assistant] Well above and beyond his distinguished political career though, Ulpian is best known as a legal scholar of the first order.


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[Assistant] Throughout his life, he wrote endless commentaries on the laws of the empire, and his work was so highly regarded that when Justinian was compiling his definitive body of civil law, the writings of Ulpian represented a full third of Justinian's Digest, the companion book to his more formal Justinian code.


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[Assistant] Which compiled authoritative legal opinions and gave them the force of law.


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[Assistant] But despite the esteem within which he was held by emperors, he wound up despised by the Praetorian Guard, and unfortunately, was about to meet his mortal end.


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[Assistant] The first order of business for the council was to reverse the complete takeover of Rome by the sun god known as Elgabal or Sol Invictus and reinstate traditional Roman religion.


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[Assistant] As we will see down the road, this did not mean banishing the sun cult completely. It just meant that any temples expropriated by Elagabalus were returned to their original deities.


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[Assistant] Indeed, the worship of Sol Invictus remained popular, and as previously noted during the History of Rome Christmas special, the popularity of the Feast of the Unconquered Sun perhaps played a role in the Christian decision to celebrate the birth of Christ on December the 25th.


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[Assistant] Once the council got Rome right with the gods, they then went through the roles of the bureaucracy and reviewed every single man Elagabalus had appointed during his four years in power.


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[Assistant] Those found to be unqualified or corrupt, which is to say practically all of them.


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[Assistant] We're immediately purged and replaced by men of far greater merit.


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[Assistant] Before Alexander's first year in office was up, the Romans were back to performing the religious ceremonies they had always performed, and the government was back in the hands of men who knew what they were doing.


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[Assistant] Following the initial obvious moves to strip away the layers of Elagabalus's legacy, the council then set about instituting more ambitious reforms.


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[Assistant] Because they were not just dealing with the tainted legacy of Elagobolis. They were also dealing with the tainted legacy of Karakalla.


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[Assistant] Caracalla, you'll recall, had declared everyone in the empire a citizen, so that they would all qualify for taxes that is mere subjects they had been exempted from.


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[Assistant] This had put an enormous financial burden on the provinces and was slowly eating away at their local economies.


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[Assistant] The big problem was that money that should have stayed at home was being shipped to Rome. Local municipalities were having a hard time raising revenue.


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[Assistant] And local merchants were having a hard time finding anyone who could afford their goods and services.


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[Assistant] And it's not like the money headed to Rome was being sent back in the form of imperial reinvestment.


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[Assistant] No, it was just landing in the Emperor's pocket, and God knows what he was doing with it.


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[Assistant] So soon after the governing council was formed, they initiated a mass cut of the insanely high tax rate that had been levied on the provinces.


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[Assistant] They balanced this reduction in imperial revenue by simply cutting back on all that lavish god knows what that Karakalla and Ella Gobelus had been up to.


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[Assistant] But their spending cuts, while well intentioned, struck a nerve that was dangerous to strike. The Army.


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[Assistant] The troops had been taught to expect salaries and donatives and bonuses that far exceeded what the treasury could actually afford.


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[Assistant] So when Alexander and his governing council attempted to realign military spending and fiscal reality, well, let's just say that the average soldier didn't care much about fiscal realities, he just knew that some skin flint back in Rome was holding out on him.


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[Assistant] Was more like the governing council was in for a rude awakening when they discovered what happened when they tried to reduce soldier pay.


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[Assistant] The pushback claimed its first victim in 223, just a year after Alexander took office.


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[Assistant] Despite Ulpians merits, or perhaps because of them.


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[Assistant] The Praetorian Guard quickly came to hate him for his annoying combination of frugality and discipline, and after a year of watching their privileges whittled away, the rank and file of the Guard finally snapped.


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[Assistant] We don't know what the last straw was, but in early 223, there is no other way to put this, the Praetorians win Berserk.


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[Assistant] For three days, Rome was engulfed by riots between the Praetorians, who clamored violently for the head of Ulpian, and the general population, who loved him and attempted to defend him from the much better armed Praetorian cohorts.


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[Assistant] Finally though, the civilian mobs were broken up on the third day, and Ulpian was left exposed.


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[Assistant] He managed to make it to the Imperial Palace, but despite the entreaties of Alexander, the soldiers murdered Ulfian right there at the feet of the young emperor.


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[Assistant] Their bloodlust sated, the guard returned to their camp, and Calm returned to the city.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately for Alexander though, and much to his embarrassment, there was little he could do about the riots or the murder.


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[Assistant] If he tried to come down on the Praetorians right away, they would just kill him as they had Elagabalus and find someone new to rule the empire.


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[Assistant] Though he was popular with the guard, he was not popular enough, and he knew it. So he had to endure the humiliation of watching his own bodyguards disobey direct orders, beat and kill innocent civilians, and then murder his chief advisor right in front of him.


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[Assistant] He identified the leaders of the insurrection though, and in time, he promoted them away from Rome to positions in the provinces where they were duly punished for their past crimes.


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[Assistant] Once Ulpian was disposed of though, the guard seemed to return to their senses, and Alexander's regime appeared safe for the time being.


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[Assistant] But they were soon dealt another blow, and in 224, Julia Misa, the guiding light of the Severan comeback, died, leaving Alexander without his most cunning advisor, and leaving his mother in sole charge of Alexander's emerging character.


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[Assistant] In guiding her son, she took the most direct route she could think of, and physically limited the young emperor's access to those whom she did not approve of.


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[Assistant] The sycophants who always wind up circling power like flies around garbage were kept out of the palace and Alexander was only allowed to spend time with teachers and senators and advisors who had been pre-screened by Julia.


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[Assistant] Also well aware that idle hands are the devil's plaything.


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[Assistant] She refused to allow Alexander to simply lay about in the palace all day.


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[Assistant] Instead, she forced him, not necessarily against his will, as it is difficult to distinguish his will from his mother's at this point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To go down to the forum and preside over the daily legal trials.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As emperor, he was expected to be the supreme judicial authority in the empire, and he needed to get himself acquainted with the rigors of doing a good job at it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Naturally, he was advised by expert lawyers when making his decisions at first, but in time, he learned how to be an impartial judge, and throughout his reign, he always paid careful attention to his duties as the final arbitrator of justice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 224 AD is also notable for another significant development in the history of Rome, and for that matter, the history of the world.