Fruitless negotiation for dividing between them. between their apartments; the doors and passages were diligently fortified, and guards posted and relieved with the same strictness as in a besieged place. The emperors met only in public, in the presence of their afflicted mother; and each surrounded by a numerous train of armed followers. Even on these occasions of ceremony, the dissimulation of courts could ill disguise the rancour of their hearts. 19 This latent civil war already distracted the whole government, when a scheme was suggested that seemed of mutual benefit to the hostile brothers. It was proposed, that, since it was the empire impossible to reconcile their minds, they should separate their interest, and divide the empire between them. The conditions of the treaty were already drawn with some accuracy. was agreed that Caracalla, as the elder brother, should remain in possession of Europe and the western Africa; and that he should relinquish the sovereignty of Asia and Egypt to Geta, who might fix his residence at Alexandria or Antioch, cities little inferior to Rome itself in wealth and greatness; that numerous armies should be constantly encamped on either side of the Thracian Bosphorus, to guard the frontiers of the rival monarchies; and that the senators of European extraction should acknowledge the sovereign of Rome, whilst the natives of Asia followed the emperor of the East. The tears of the empress Julia interrupted the negotiation, the first idea of which had filled every Roman breast with surprise and indignation. The mighty mass of conquest was so intimately united by the hand of time and policy, that it required the most forcible violence to rend it asunder. The Romans had reason to dread that the disjointed members would soon be reduced by a civil war under the dominion of one master; but if the separation was permanent, the division of the provinces must terminate in the dissolution of an empire whose unity had hitherto remained inviolate.20 Murder Had the treaty been carried into execution, the sovereign of Europe might soon have been the conqueror of Asia; but Caracalla obtained an easier, though a more guilty, victory. He artfully listened to his mother's entreaties, and consented to meet his brother in her apartment, on terms of peace and reconciliation. In the midst of their conversation, some centurions, who had contrived to conceal themselves, rushed with drawn swords upon the unfortunate Geta. His distracted mother strove to protect him in her arms; but, in the unavailing struggle, she was wounded in the hand, and covered with the blood of her younger son, while she saw the elder animating and assisting 21 the fury of the assassins. As 20 Herodian, 1. iv. [c. 4] p. 144. 19 Herodian, 1. iv. [c. 1] p. 139. 21 Caracalla consecrated, in the temple of Serapis, the sword with which, as he boasted, he had slain his brother Geta. Dion, 1. lxxvii. [c. 23] p. 1307. soon as the deed was perpetrated, Caracalla, with hasty steps, and horror in his countenance, ran towards the Prætorian camp, as his only refuge, and threw himself on the ground before the statues of the tutelar deities.22 The soldiers attempted to raise and comfort him. In broken and disordered words he informed them of his imminent danger and fortunate escape; insinuating that he had prevented the designs of his enemy, and declared his resolution to live and die with his faithful troops. Geta had been the favourite of the soldiers; but complaint was useless, revenge was dangerous, and they still reverenced the son of Severus. Their discontent died away in idle murmurs, and Caracalla soon convinced them of the justice of his cause, by distributing in one lavish donative the accumulated treasures of his father's reign. The real sentiments of the soldiers alone were of importance to his power or safety. Their declaration in his favour commanded the dutiful professions of the senate. The obsequious assembly was always prepared to ratify the decision of fortune; but as Caracalla wished to assuage the first emotions of public indignation, the name of Geta was mentioned with decency, and he received the funeral honours of a Roman emperor.24 Posterity, in pity to his misfortune, has cast a veil over his vices. We consider that young prince as the innocent victim of his brother's ambition, without recollecting that he himself wanted power, rather than inclination, to consummate the same attempts of revenge and murder.b 23 The crime went not unpunished. Neither business, nor pleasure, nor flattery, could defend Caracalla from the stings of a Remorse guilty conscience; and he confessed, in the anguish of a and cruelty tortured mind, that his disordered fancy often beheld the calla. angry forms of his father and his brother rising into life to threaten of Cara 22 Herodian, 1. iv. [c. 4] p. 147. In every Roman camp there was a small chapel near the head-quarters, in which the statues of the tutelar deities were preserved and adored and we may remark that the eagles, and other military ensigns, were in the first rank of these deities; an excellent institution, which confirmed discipline by the sanction of religion. See Lipsius de Militiâ Romanâ, iv. 5, v. 2. 23 Herodian, 1. iv. [c. 4] p. 148. Dion, 1. lxxvii. [c. 3] p. 1289. 24 Geta was placed among the gods. Sit divus, dum non sit vivus, said his brother. Hist. August. p. 91. [Spartian. Geta, c. 2.] Some marks of Geta's consecration are still found upon medals. a The account of this transaction in a new passage of Dion varies in some degree from this statement. It adds that the next morning, in the senate, Antoninus requested their indulgence, not because he had killed his brother, but because he was hoarse and could not address them. Mai. Fragm. Vatican. p. 228.-M. The favourable judgment which history has given of Geta is not founded solely on a feeling of pity; it is supported by the testimony of contemporary historians: he was too fond of the pleasures of the table, and showed great mistrust of his brother; but he was humane, well instructed: he often endeavoured to mitigate the rigorous decrees of Severus and Caracalla. Herod. iv. 3. Spartianus in Getâ [c. 4].—W. and upbraid him.25 The consciousness of his crime should have induced him to convince mankind, by the virtues of his reign, that the bloody deed had been the involuntary effect of fatal necessity. But the repentance of Caracalla only prompted him to remove from the world whatever could remind him of his guilt, or recall the memory of his murdered brother. On his return from the senate to the palace, he found his mother in the company of several noble matrons, weeping over the untimely fate of her younger son. The jealous emperor threatened them with instant death; the sentence was executed against Fadilla, the last remaining daughter of the emperor Marcus; and even the afflicted Julia was obliged to silence. her lamentations, to suppress her sighs, and to receive the assassin with smiles of joy and approbation. It was computed that, under the vague appellation of the friends of Geta, above twenty thousand persons of both sexes suffered death. His guards and freedmen, the ministers of his serious business, and the companions of his looser hours, those who by his interest had been promoted to any commands in the army or provinces, with the long-connected chain of their dependants, were included in the proscription; which endeavoured to reach every one who had maintained the smallest correspondence with Geta, who lamented his death, or who even mentioned his name.26 Helvius Pertinax, son to the prince of that name, lost his life by an unseasonable witticism.27 It was a sufficient crime of Thrasea Priscus to be descended from a family in which the love of liberty seemed an hereditary quality.28 The particular causes of calumny and suspicion were at length exhausted; and when a senator was accused of being a secret enemy to the government, the emperor was satisfied with 25 Dion, 1. lxxvii. [c. 15] p. 1301. 26 Dion, 1. lxxvii. [c. 4] p. 1290. Herodian, 1. iv. [c. 6] p. 150. Dion (p. 1298) [1. lxxvii. 12] says that the comic poets no longer durst employ the name of Geta in their plays, and that the estates of those who mentioned it in their testaments were confiscated. 27 Caracalla had assumed the names of several conquered nations; Pertinax observed that the name of Geticus (he had obtained some advantage over the Goths or Geta) would be a proper addition to Parthicus, Alemannicus, &c. Hist. August. p. 89 [and 92; Spartian. Caracal. c. 10, and Geta, c. 6]. 28 Dion, 1. lxxvii. [c. 5] p. 1291. He was probably descended from Helvidius Priscus and Thrasea Pætus, those patriots, whose firm, but useless and unseasonable, virtue has been immortalised by Tacitus. "The most valuable paragraph of Dion which the industry of M. Mai has recovered relates to this daughter of Marcus executed by Caracalla. Her name, as appears from Fronto as well as from Dion, was Cornificia. When commanded to choose the kind of death she was to suffer, she burst into womanish tears; but, remembering her father Marcus, she thus spoke:-"O my hapless soul (xi, animula), now imprisoned in the body, burst forth! be free! show them, however reluctant to believe it, that thou art the daughter of Marcus." She then laid aside all her ornaments, and, preparing herself for death, ordered her veins to be opened. Mai. Fragm. Vatican. ii. p. 230.-M. the general proof that he was a man of property and virtue. From this well-grounded principle he frequently drew the most bloody inferences." The execution of so many innocent citizens was bewailed by the secret tears of their friends and families. The death of Death of Papinian, the Prætorian præfect, was lamented as a public Papinian. calamity. During the last seven years of Severus he had exercised the most important offices of the state, and, by his salutary influence, guided the emperor's steps in the paths of justice and moderation. In full assurance of his virtue and abilities, Severus, on his deathbed, had conjured him to watch over the prosperity and union of the Imperial family.29 The honest labours of Papinian served only to inflame the hatred which Caracalla had already conceived against his father's minister. After the murder of Geta, the præfect was commanded to exert the powers of his skill and eloquence in a studied apology for that atrocious deed. The philosophic Seneca had condescended to compose a similar epistle to the senate, in the name of the son and assassin of Agrippina.30 "That it was easier to commit than to justify a parricide," was the glorious reply of Papinian;31 who did not hesitate between the loss of life and that of honour. Such intrepid virtue, which had escaped pure and unsullied from the intrigues of courts, the habits of business, and the arts of his profession, reflects more lustre on the memory of Papinian than all his great employments, his numerous writings, and the superior reputation as a lawyer which he has preserved through every age of the Roman jurisprudence.32 extended whole em It had hitherto been the peculiar felicity of the Romans, and in the worst of times their consolation, that the virtue of the His tyranny emperors was active, and their vice indolent. Augustus, over the Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus visited their extensive pire." dominions in person, and their progress was marked by acts of wisdom and beneficence. The tyranny of Tiberius, Nero, and 29 It is said that Papinian was himself a relation of the empress Julia. 30 Tacit. Annal. xiv. 11. 31 Hist. August. p. 88. [Spartian. Caracal. c. 8.] 32 With regard to Papinian, see Heineccius's Historia Juris Romani, 1. 330, &c. a Caracalla reproached all those who demanded no favours of him. "It is clear that, if you make me no requests, you do not trust me; if you do not trust me, you suspect me; if you suspect me, you fear me; if you fear me, you hate me.' And forthwith he condemned them as conspirators. A good specimen of the sorites in a tyrant's logic. See Fragm. Vatican. p. 230.-M. b Papinian was no longer Prætorian præfect: Caracalla had deprived him of that office immediately after the death of Severus. Such is the statement of Dion; and the testimony of Spartianus, who gives Papinian the Prætorian præfecture till his death, is of little weight opposed to that of a senator then living at Rome. -W. Domitian, who resided almost constantly at Rome or in the adjacent villas, was confined to the senatorial and equestrian orders.33 But Caracalla was the common enemy of mankind. He left the capital (and he never returned to it) about a year after the murder A.D. 213. of Geta. The rest of his reign was spent in the several provinces of the empire, particularly those of the East, and every province was, by turns, the scene of his rapine and cruelty. The senators, compelled by fear to attend his capricious motions, were obliged to provide daily entertainments at an immense expense, which he abandoned with contempt to his guards; and to erect in every city magnificent palaces and theatres, which he either disdained to visit, or ordered to be immediately thrown down. The most wealthy families were ruined by partial fines and confiscations, and the great body of his subjects oppressed by ingenious and aggravated taxes.34 In the midst of peace, and upon the slightest provocation, he issued his commands at Alexandria, in Egypt, for a general massacre. From a secure post in the temple of Serapis, he viewed and directed the slaughter of many thousand citizens, as well as strangers, without distinguishing either the number or the crime of the sufferers; since, as he coolly informed the senate, all the Alexandrians, those who had perished, and those who had escaped, were alike guilty.3 The wise instructions of Severus never made any lasting impression on the mind of his son, who, although not destitute of imagination and eloquence, was equally devoid of judgment and humanity.36 One dangerous maxim, worthy of a tyrant, was remembered and abused by Caracalla "To secure the affec"tions of the army, and to esteem the rest of his subjects as of little "moment." 37 But the liberality of the father had been restrained by prudence, and his indulgence to the troops was tempered by Relaxation of discipline. 33 Tiberius and Domitian never moved from the neighbourhood of Rome. Nero made a short journey into Greece. "Et laudatorum Principum usus ex æquo, quamvis procul agentibus. Sævi proximis ingruunt." Tacit. Hist. iv. 74. 34 Dion, 1. lxxvii. [c. 9] p. 1294. 35 Dion, 1. lxxvii. [c. 23] p. 1307. Herodian, 1. iv. [c. 9] p. 158. The former represents it as a cruel massacre, the latter as a perfidious one too. It seems probable that the Alexandrians had irritated the tyrant by their railleries, and perhaps by their tumults." 36 Dion, 1. lxxvii. [c. 11] p. 1296. 37 Dion, 1. lxxvi. [c. 15] p. 1284. Mr. Wotton (Hist. of Rome, p. 330) suspects that this maxim was invented by Caracalla himself, and attributed to his father. " After these massacres Caracalla also deprived the Alexandrians of their spectacles and public feasts: he divided the city into two parts by a wall, with towers at intervals, to prevent the peaceful communications of the citizens. Thus was treated the unhappy Alexandria, says Dion, by the savage beast of Ausonia. This, in fact, was the epithet which the oracle had applied to him; it is said, indeed, that he was much pleased with the name, and often boasted of it. Dion, lxxvii. [c. 23] p. 1307.-G. |