Chapter 18
More Civil War, Auctioning the Empire, and Paranoid Lunatics
In This Chapter
The mad, bad, crazy world of Commodus
How the Roman Empire got auctioned off
Why the Roman world collapsed into civil war
How Septimius Severus established a new dynasty
ARoman emperor could do pretty much what he wanted because he had the money and there were plenty of people hungry for power who’d let him. Which wasn’t a bad thing, if the emperor was good at his job and didn’t let it all go to his head. Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, who ruled between AD 96 and 180 (see Chapter 17 for details), did this. They put the Empire first and didn’t use the power at their disposal to pursue their own selfish ambitions. Apart from a few ructions, their reigns were the high summer of the Roman age. The Empire had never been richer, more powerful, or more stable.
The same can’t be said of the emperors who followed. The men discussed in this chapter put their personal ambition first. The result was intermittent civil war as one man after another used the Empire’s resources for his own ends. The good times were over.
I Think I’m Hercules: Commodus (AD 180–192)
Marcus Aurelius (whose reign is discussed in Chapter 17) lost quite a few sons, including one half of a pair of twins. The other twin, Lucius Aurelius Commodus, lived and was 17 when his father died in 180.
Marcus Aurelius hadn’t planned on having Commodus succeed him. But Lucius Verus, the man he had picked to succeed him, died in 169. Marcus Aurelius, being a Stoic (refer to Chapter 1), seems to have accepted that things were the way they were.
Like Caligula in AD 37 (refer to Chapter 16), Commodus was too young and inexperienced to be emperor. Other emperors, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, for example, had been trained up to the job. They’d commanded army units and had served as magistrates in Rome and as provincial governors abroad. Commodus hadn’t done any of those things.
Depending on which Roman historian you read, Commodus was either a simple coward who fell in with a bad lot, or he was cruel, foul-mouthed, and debauched. Either way, he certainly ended up debauched, and Rome suffered for it. Incidentally, the Latin word commodus means ‘pleasant’ or ‘obliging’. Rarely was a man more inappropriately named.
Commodus and the affairs of state
Because Commodus was too busy spending his time chariot racing and carousing with his friends, he used the praetorian prefect Perennis to run not just the army but also all the other affairs of state. Perennis (an equestrian like all prefects) started making equestrians into legionary commanders, largely because Commodus hated and distrusted anyone of senatorial rank. Following Perennis’s death – he was executed for treason; see the section ‘Plots against Commodus and his demise’ – Commodus gave a freedman called Cleander control of the Praetorians and pretty much everything else.
Cleander was an operator. Realising his master wasn’t in the least bit interested in affairs of state, he turned his job into a business trafficking in jobs. He sold senatorships, governorships, and military commands, charging his customers as much as he could. He even sold 25 consulships alone in a single year – one of the lucky buyers was a man from North Africa called Septimius Severus (see the section ‘Septimus Severus’ later in this chapter for more on his political career). Commodus let Cleander get away with it because Cleander gave Commodus some of the cash. When a riot broke out during a famine, the crowd blamed Cleander. All this terrified Commodus, who ordered Cleander executed.
After the fall of Cleander in 189, the last three years of Commodus’s reign descended into mayhem. Men he’d once regarded as favourites were murdered for their money or, in one case, simply because Commodus was jealous of his sporting skills.
Things were so bad that when plague broke out in Rome, killing as many as 2,000 in a single day, no-one took any notice. They were far more frightened of Commodus, who in a fit of egomania had decided Rome should be renamed Commodiana.
Commodus the gladiator
Commodus was obsessed with fighting in the arena, killing animals, and riding chariots. He decided he was the reincarnation of Hercules, so he dressed up like the mythical hero with a lion skin headdress and waving a club. That is, when he wasn’t parading around dressed as the god Mercury. Unlike Nero, who wasn’t particularly good at sport or performing, Commodus was actually quite accomplished, and one day killed 100 bears himself. He fought as a gladiator and paid himself a fortune out of the gladiatorial fund. Senators were forced to attend and watch what everyone regarded as a thoroughly humiliating spectacle. On one occasion, Commodus decapitated an ostrich and waved its head at the senators as a reminder of what he’d like to do to them.
Plots against Commodus and his demise
Throughout his years as emperor, Commodus had to deal with a series of conspiracies against his life. The first was orchestrated by his sister. After that, Commodus was very wary of plotters and used secret police (known as frumentarii) to root them out. The following sections share the highlights.
Plot 1: The loving sister
When Marcus Aurelius died, Commodus was on campaign. Upon hearing the news of his succession, he abandoned the war against the German tribes, negotiated a treaty on favourable terms, and headed back to Rome with his best friend Saoterus, parading him in a triumphal chariot and kissing him. One historian said Saoterus was Commodus’s ‘partner in depravity’.
Commodus’s sister Lucilla started a plot as a result. It was uncovered and Lucilla was forced into exile, but the commanders of the Praetorian Guard killed Saoterus anyway.
Plot 2: Rumour has it . . .
Although Perennis (refer to the earlier section ‘Commodus and the affairs of state’) was good at his job, the soldiers were annoyed at how he’d pushed his rival out of the way for the post of Prefect. They mutinied. A band of soldiers came all the way from Britain to Rome and told Commodus in person that Perennis was plotting to kill him.
Commodus believed the soldiers and promptly allowed the troops to kill Perennis and his family in the year 185.
Plot 3: The end of Commodus
It was unlikely Commodus would die in his bed, and he didn’t. In 192, the praetorian prefect Aemilius Laetus and Commodus’s chamberlain Eclectus decided to kill Commodus when news got out that the emperor was planning to execute both consuls and replace them with gladiators. While everyone was distracted by the mid-winter festival, the Saturnalia (see Chapter 8), they had Commodus fed poison by his mistress Marcia who was in on the plot. Commodus was already so drunk, he vomited the poison up, so they had an athlete strangle Commodus on the last day of December in 192.
Pertinax: The 87-Day Wonder
When Commodus died, he left no successor. Laetus and Eclectus, who had arranged Commodus’s death (see the preceding section), went to see Publius Helvius Pertinax, the 66-year-old consul and prefect of Rome, who the Roman historian Dio said was an ‘excellent and upright man’. The son of a freedman, Pertinax grew up to become an equestrian, before Marcus Aurelius made him a senator. He was rich and had governed various provinces including Africa and Britain. He was a stickler for discipline and tough enough to suppress a mutiny in the army in Britain where he was nearly killed, and he also put down several rebellions in Africa.
Reintroducing discipline
Before Pertinax accepted Laetus and Eclectus’s offer, he sent a friend to see Commodus’s body, just to make sure the story was true. He then went in secret to the Praetorian Guard and offered them a fat bonus to accept him as emperor. Pertinax said he was going to put everything right again and sort out discipline. To that end, he did the following:
He had all the statues of Commodus knocked down and declared the dead emperor a public enemy.
He reordered government and had himself declared ‘Chief of the Senate’.
He gave posthumous pardons to people unjustly put to death.
He sold off Commodus’s possessions to raise money so that he could pay the soldiers and the mob.
Ticking off the soldiers
After the debauchery of Commodus’s reign, you’d think that everyone would be relieved to have someone competent in charge, but Pertinax’s intentions worried the soldiers and the imperial freedmen, who could see all the privileges awarded them by Commodus disappearing in a puff of smoke.
Soldiers were no longer allowed to behave as they please, which had included (incredibly) hitting passers-by as they went about Rome and waving axes. Pertinax put a stop to the axe-carrying and told them to stop insulting the public. But that just made the soldiers nostalgic for the ‘good old days’ of booze-fuelled chaos under Commodus.
Biting the dust
To rid themselves of Pertinax, the Praetorians and Laetus started a plot to put a consul called Falco on the throne. Pertinax found out about it and pardoned Falco. To cover his back, Laetus then turned on the soldiers. Terrified that they were going to be killed, 200 of them went round to the palace and murdered Pertinax along with Eclectus.
Pertinax had managed a reign of 87 days, five less than the previous record for the shortest reign of a Roman emperor held by Otho in 69 (refer to Chapter 16).
Didius Julianus and Civil War
When Pertinax died, Didius Julianus, a former colleague of Pertinax’s in the consulship who’d been exiled by Commodus, raced to the Praetorians’ camp and offered them serious cash to make him emperor. He had a rival, the new city prefect Sulpicianus (Pertinax’s father-in-law), and the two men competed to outbid one another in the auction of the Roman Empire. If that sounds incredible now, it was considered no less incredible at the time. It went on until Didius Julianus suddenly increased his bid by a huge amount and won the auction (see Chapter 24 for details of Didius’s personality).
The people of Rome were not amused and called Didius ‘Empire robber’. A mob raced to a circus and held out there, demanding that soldiers in the East under the governor Pescennius Niger in Syria come and save them from Didius. They resented Didius because they’d hoped that Pertinax would do away with all Commodus’s abuses. Didius didn’t care. He was having the time of his life, handing out favours, going to the theatre, and having banquets. It was bound to end in tears, and it did.
Immortalised in bronze
The Senate voted Didius a statue made of gold, but he refused because he’d noticed that gold and silver statues were always destroyed and asked for a bronze one instead so that he would be remembered forever. But as the historian Dio pointed out, the only worthwhile way to be remembered was as a man of virtue. The bronze statue was knocked down when Didius was killed. So much for immortality then.
When the soldiers in Syria, under the command of the governor Pescennius Niger, heard the appeal from Rome to come and get rid of Didius Julianus, they promptly declared Pescennius Niger emperor. Niger wasn’t the only one who had such aspirations. Two other men threw their hats into the ring: Clodius Albinus, a North African who was governor in Britain (even Commodus had once considered him an heir) and Lucius Septimius Severus, another North African in Pannonia who was declared emperor by his troops.
The scene was set for an almighty civil war. Severus was the cleverest. He knew that once Didius Julianus was dead, the three of them would have to fight it out, and it was unlikely anyone would be a clear winner. And as Severus had every intention of being the winner, he came up with a cunning plan.
Severus pretended to be friends with Clodius Albinus and said that Albinus could be his declared heir. Albinus fell for the trick hook, line, and sinker, believing this meant he had a share in imperial power without having to fight for it, and waited in Britain. Severus marched on Rome where Didius Julianus tried to turn the city into a fortress. The problem was that the Praetorians were so used to easy living, none of them knew how to build fortifications properly, and some of them were going over to Severus. In the end, Didius was done for by Severus’s promise that if they handed over the men who’d killed Pertinax he would protect them. The Senate assembled, approved the soldiers’ action, sentenced Didius to death, and declared Severus emperor.
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Septimius Severus (AD 193–211)
Lucius Septimius Severus was born in 145 at Leptis Magna, a major city of North Africa on the coast of what is now Libya. He came from a wealthy family of Punic and Italian descent, was a scholar, and his favourite childhood game was playing at being a judge. He came to Rome to finish his education and, with family backing, became a senator under Marcus Aurelius (see Chapter 17 for his reign). He bought one of the consulships sold by Cleander under Commodus (refer to the section ‘Commodus and the affairs of state’, earlier in this chapter). Highly superstitious, Severus was always on the look out for omens and was convinced that he was destined to be emperor because, amongst other signs:
He once dreamed that he’d been suckled by a she-wolf like Romulus (refer to Chapter 10 for more about this mythic figure).
When he married his second wife Julia Domna (a Syrian) in Rome in AD 173, the reigning emperor Marcus Aurelius’s wife Faustina had prepared their nuptial chamber.
An astrologer had once predicted that Julia Domna would marry a king (and, in fact, that’s why Severus chose her as his wife).
A snake once coiled itself round Severus’s head but did him no harm.
While governor in Gaul, he’d dreamed the whole Roman world had saluted him.
Securing the throne
After the death of Didius Julianus, Septimius Severus had a long way to go before securing the throne. Leaving Clodius Albinus in Britain optimistically assuming he was a permanent fixture in the new regime, Severus could safely head out East to clear Pescennius Niger off the map. Niger hadn’t been wasting his time and had sewn up the whole region. But Severus defeated Niger’s forces three times and caught up with him while he tried to escape towards the river Euphrates. Niger was promptly executed in 194 along with anyone even suspected of being a supporter. Severus fined cities that had supported his rival and punished them by taking away municipal status.
Pertinax’s funeral
Septimius Severus put on a massive show for Pertinax’s funeral before setting out to defeat Niger. An effigy of the dead man was made and treated as if it was a real man asleep, even with a slave to wave flies off. A procession of soldiers, senators, and equestrians and their families was followed by an altar decorated with ivory and jewels from India. Finally the ‘body’ was placed in a three-storey tower and set ablaze.
Next on Severus’s list was Clodius Albinus, who’d realised he’d been stitched up and had strengthened his army. Albinus’s soldiers declared him emperor and together they crossed from Britain to Gaul and set out for Rome. Severus met them near the city of Lugdunum (Lyons) in 197. The battle, supposedly involving 150,000 soldiers on each side, was a close-run thing, and Severus was very nearly killed, but he won the day. Because the last thing Severus wanted was a rival dynasty, he ruthlessly ordered Albinus executed and had his head displayed on a pike. Then he ordered the killing of Albinus’s wife and children and all his supporters. Albinus’s body was left to rot before it was thrown into a river.
Dividing and ruling
Severus was undisputed master of the Roman world by 197. Britain and Syria were each subdivided into two provinces so that never again would an upstart of a governor be able to call on either province’s garrison to try and seize power. (Actually Severus was wrong about this, as Chapter 20 explains.)
Building a dynasty
Severus purged the Senate of any supporters of Niger and Albinus and set about establishing a dynasty, claiming to be the son of Marcus Aurelius. It was obvious nonsense, but lots of emperors over the turbulent decades to come did the same thing to appear legitimate. His eldest son was named Bassianus at birth but was now renamed Marcus Aurelius Antoninus as part of Severus’s spurious lineage, pretending to be descended from the famously good emperors of the second century AD. But the boy was always known as Caracalla because he wore a hooded Gaulish cloak called a caracalla.
Severus was particularly dependent on his praetorian prefect, Fulvius Plautianus. Plautianus ruthlessly stole whatever he could, tortured people for information, and had so much influence he even got away with being rude to Julia Domna. In 202, Plautianus’s daughter Plautilla was married to Caracalla, even though Caracalla loathed them both. When Severus’s brother denounced Plautianus in 205, the game was up and Plautianus was killed (reminiscent of what happened to Sejanus under Tiberius, see Chapter 16).
Severus and religion
Thanks in part to his exotic Syrian wife, Julia Domna, his own origins, and his campaigns, Severus was very interested in eastern cults. While Severus was visiting Egypt, he worshipped Serapis (a hybrid Egyptian god made up from Osiris and Apis), and it was probably while Severus was in Britain that a legionary commander of his in York dedicated a temple to Serapis.
The Arch of Severus
The arch of Septimius Severus in the Forum in Rome is one of the most complete monuments still standing in the city. At 23.2 metres (76 feet) wide and 21 metres (68 feet) high, it’s one of the biggest. It has one large central arch and a smaller one on each side and is covered with carvings commemorating Severus’s campaign against the Parthians.
Dealing with the frontiers
Severus was lucky. The borders on the Danube and Rhine were peaceful, and he could afford to go and deal with the Parthian threat in the East. He dealt the Parthians a fatal blow from which they never recovered and reconquered territory given up under Hadrian. He made the city of Palmyra into a colony, and it rapidly grew into one of the greatest cities of the Roman Empire as it lay on the great trade route to the Far East.
Dealing with the Roman Senate
Severus only came back to Rome in 202. He had no interest in pretending to co-operate with the Senate, the last bastion of the Republic. He started giving administrative jobs to the equestrians and even made them commanders of new legions, as well as putting them in charge of some provinces (a process which had begun under Commodus). He brought in many provincials from the East, which is hardly surprising given where he and his wife came from, and he must have extended Roman citizenship to do this.
Beefing up his sons in Britain
By 208, Severus was off again, this time to Britain. Britain’s northern frontier was a constant irritation, and he’d already had to order the repair and reconstruction of Hadrian’s Wall. But the real reason was to toughen up his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, whom he was determined would succeed him. These two needed all the prestige of a great war of conquest and preferably one that didn’t mean any risk for Rome.
The war was a farce. The Roman army headed into Scotland, plagued by guerrilla tribesmen who kept agreeing to peace and then breaking their word. The Romans found it impossible to fight the enemy properly, because small bands of tribesmen just lurked in swamps and disappeared into the forests and mists after attacking the Roman column. The Roman army, weighed down by equipment, got dragged farther and deeper into northern Britain.
Severus’s death
After three years of fighting in Britain, Severus died, worn out with old age and gout, in the northern British city of York in 211. Needless to say, he’d seen omens of his own death – he dreamed he was being carried up to heaven and was terrified when an Ethiopian soldier said, ‘You’ve been a conqueror, now be a god!’
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He was born a long way from Rome.
He was made an emperor in the provinces.
He died an emperor in the provinces.
He spent most of his reign away from Rome.
He brought more provincials into the Roman elite than ever before.
Not Living Up to Dad’s Expectations – Caracalla (AD 211–217)
Septimius Severus had the succession all nicely worked out when he died. Caracalla had been lined up as co-emperor since 198 and was joined in 208 by his brother Geta. For the first time in Roman history, there were three emperors (Augusti) of equal rank. It was a great plan except that the brothers hated each other, and hating each other was of far more concern to them than anything else.
As a boy Caracalla was sensitive, intelligent, and compassionate; he even restored rights to the cities of Antioch and Byzantium which his father had punished for supporting Niger back in 193. But as he grew up, he turned into an arrogant and ambitious thug who loathed his brother and fancied himself as Alexander the Great.
Getting rid of Geta and a host of others
Severus’s death in 211 couldn’t have come soon enough for Caracalla, who amazingly had already tried to kill his father during the campaign in Britain. Now Caracalla took care to have any of his father’s closest advisers murdered, as well as Severus’s doctors for not speeding up his death. Caracalla and Geta abandoned the war in Britain and headed home.
Caracalla had his own wife Plautilla murdered, too. She was daughter of his father’s favourite, the praetorian prefect Fulvius Plautianus (see the earlier section ‘Building a dynasty’). Caracalla had had her exiled to Sicily years before. He then told the praetorians that Geta had plotted against him and had him killed. To do this, he had to get their mother Julia Domna to summon them to her room, so that Geta would be without his bodyguards. Two soldiers rushed in on Caracalla’s orders and killed Geta in his mother’s arms. Caracalla forced Julia to treat the murder as a deliverance. He had to calm the soldiers down with money and then proceeded to murder any other relatives or members of Marcus Aurelius’s family that looked like potential rivals. He didn’t stop there and had any supporters of Geta killed, too.
Caracalla’s problem was that he refused to take advice from anyone, and resented anyone who knew something he didn’t. He was determined to have total power and to prevent anyone else from having power of any sort.
Universal citizenship (AD 212)
Caracalla used to demand money with menace from anyone and everyone. He also loaded the population with more taxes – he doubled the tax on freeing slaves, for example. Caracalla desperately needed cash for the soldiers’ pay rises and hand-outs to his friends and favourites. So he cancelled exemption from tax on legacies for Roman citizens. By making everyone into Roman citizens, they all became liable for the tax (refer to Chapter 3 for more on the rights and responsibilities of Roman citizens). No wonder he declared ‘no-one in the world should have money except me, and I want to give it all to the soldiers!’ The army changed, too – because citizenship was a qualification for being a legionary and a reward for an auxiliary soldier, the army started to evolve into a different kind of force.
Caracalla’s indulgences
Caracalla had an insatiable blood lust. He loved seeing killing in the arena and even took part in the games himself. He forced senators to provide huge numbers of animals at their expense; he also made them build houses all over the place so that he could stay there if he fancied (but almost never did). He also drove around in chariots dressed in the colours of the Blue faction (see Chapter 8 for circus factions) and had a champion charioteer, called Euprepes, killed just for being a member of a rival faction.
On a journey to Gaul, Caracalla suddenly had a governor killed, and thanks to inscriptions found in Britain with a scrubbed-out name, it seems he might have ordered the execution of a governor there, too. He had four of the Vestal Virgins killed on the grounds that they were no longer virgins, even though he had defiled one of them himself (for information on Vestal Virgins, see Chapter 10).
Caracalla swaggered around with weapons he thought had once been used by Alexander the Great, decided he was a reincarnation of Alexander, and even organised a 16,000-strong force of Macedonians on the lines of Alexander’s phalanx (a close order of Macedonian infantry). Despite that, he decimated the population of Alexandria and then built a kind of Berlin Wall to divide the survivors because he’d heard that the Alexandrians had treated him as a joke.
The end of Caracalla
Caracalla’s opportunity for war came first with fighting off more threats along the Danube; then he set his sights on trying to conquer more territory in the East. He asked the Parthian king Artabanos for the hand in marriage of his daughter, which was instantly rejected, so Caracalla began a war to attack the Parthians. He met his end on that campaign in 217 at the hands of Macrinus the praetorian prefect, who murdered him – events you can read about in the next chapter.