Emperor Caracalla: Was He as Bad as Everyone Says?

History remembers Caracalla, who reigned over Rome from 198 to 217 AD as one of the empire’s most despotic rulers. He started his reign by killing his brother and massacring his followers before waging multiple bloody campaigns (usually with little to no justification). Away from the battlefield his other major policies, like debasing the coinage and making everyone a Roman citizen, were as controversial as they were transformative. But was he as bad as everyone says? Or did Caracalla’s ruler have some redeeming features? History is rarely black and white, but in Caracalla’s case, it might just be. 

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Caracalla: Rome’s Ultimate Bad-Boy Emperor, A Bad Beginning

Caracalla was born towards the end of Emperor Commodus’s reign on 4 April 188 AD while his father, Septimus Severus, was serving as the governor of Gallia. By the time Caracalla was seven his father had replaced Commodus as emperor and had changed his son’s name to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus as a way of connecting his new dynasty, the Severans with the previous Antonine dynasty.

Why do we call him Caracalla? Well, it was never officially his name. Instead, it was a nickname given to him because of his chosen type of cape. The name was originally meant as an insult but evolved over time.

In 195 AD Caracalla was made his father’s heir, hence the name change. Just three years later, at the tender age of ten, his father made him his co-ruler. This was quite the responsibility for a child but even from an early age, Caracalla was nothing if not ambitious.

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Portrait of Caracalla in his youth. (George Shuklin/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sibling rivalry played a major part in Caracalla’s early years. His brother, Geta, was less than a year younger than him and the two fought constantly. This may have been partly due to the fact that Caracalla was clearly his father’s favorite. When he was just 14, Caracalla was paired off in a political marriage to the daughter of one of his father’s closest allies, Plautianus. The two teenagers despised each other from day one.

They weren’t married for long, however. In 205 AD Caracalla’s father-in-law was executed after being charged with treason. Caracalla made sure his wife was exiled and one of his first acts after ascending was to have her executed like her father. Starting his rule with matricide was classic Caracalla and fairly indicative of things to come, but that’s jumping ahead.

In 208 Emperor Severus learned that there was unrest in Britain and decided it was the perfect opportunity to toughen up his spoiled sons and teach them a thing or two about ruling. Severus took Caracalla with him while he campaigned in Scotland and left Geta in England to manage its civil administration. 

According to the Roman historian Dio, Severus may have chosen the wrong son to bring with him. While Caracalla did gain some military experience during the campaign, he also supposedly tried to kill his father at least once, already impatient to take the throne. Severus called his son out, reportedly putting a sword between them and telling his son to finish the job. Caracalla wasn’t the type to do his own killing, however, and refused to follow through.

Instead, according to some ancient sources, he began trying to persuade his father’s doctors to speed up his father’s demise (the emperor was already ill by this stage of his rule). Whether or not they agreed is unknown but either way, Severus died in February 211 AD in what is now York, England. On his deathbed, Severus implored his sons to get along. They didn’t listen.

From Co-Emperor to Sole Emperor

It seems that before his death Severus had had second thoughts about making Caracalla his sole heir. Following their father’s death Caracalla and Geta were made co-emperors, a match most definitely not made in heaven. They began plotting against each other from day one and it was almost impossible for them to agree on anything. According to the Roman historian Herodian, they acted like petty children, going as far as dividing the imperial palace in half like children drawing a chalk line down the middle of the room.

Septimius Severus with his wife Julia Domna, and his two sons, Geta and Caracalla. Note that the face of Geta has been destroyed. (© José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro)

As things escalated the two began trying to kill each other, attempting to convince each other’s servants to drop poison in the other’s food. Things got so bad that at one point a plan to split the empire into East and West was floated by their advisors. It only didn’t go ahead because their mother, Julia Domna, shot the plan down in the hopes her sons would learn to get along.

She was mistaken though; it was clear the two would never make peace. Eventually, Caracalla emerged as the victor. On 26 December 211 AD, after several botched attempts, Caracalla finally managed to kill his brother. He wasn’t remotely subtle.

He did so by arranging a meeting with his brother and mother in the imperial apartments, claiming he wished to smooth things over. Instead, he turned up with centurions and had Geta murdered as he hid in their mother’s arms. She was forbidden from mourning or shedding a single tear for her deceased son.

Geta dying in his mother's arms at the hands of Carcalla by Jacques Pajou. (Public domain)

Next came a purge as, again according to Dio, Caracalla rounded up all of his dead brother’s followers. Supposedly over 20,000 people were killed on his orders including several high-profile Roman politicians. When the senate questioned the young emperor’s actions, he claimed he had acted in self-defense and argued having two emperors had been a dumb idea anyway.

The Senate was powerless to do anything and presumably just nodded along. Caracalla then finished things off by showing his petty side. He had his brother damned from memory, which meant mentioning his name was now a crime.

Caracalla, the Military’s Emperor

Like most strongman rulers, Caracalla had a soft spot for the military and knew that treating them well was the key to holding onto power. One of his first acts as emperor was to raise each soldier’s annual pay by 50%, something he paid for by debasing the Roman coinage. This meant lowering the coin’s silver content from 58 to 50 percent.

Some economic historians point to this as the beginning of Rome’s later monetary woes. Caracalla also minted a coin, called the antoninianus which was meant to be worth 2 denarii but whose silver content was only worth 1.5 denarii. It’s been argued these decisions led to inflation and set the precedent for later emperors to continue debasing the coinage whenever they needed to magic money out of nowhere. Others disagree, however, and the argument surrounding Roman inflation is a whole thing in and of itself.

Roman Emperor Caracalla introduced the antoninianus as a temporary measure to curb Roman inflation. (Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. / CC BY-SA 2.5)

When not raising their pay Caracalla also liked to act like he was any other soldier. When on a campaign (which he often was) he would carry out normal chores, like carrying a legionary standard, and even making his own bread like all Roman troops did. Whether or not his efforts were genuine or a publicity stunt, they worked and made him incredibly popular with the men who served under him.

Early on in his reign Caracalla also decided it was time to end the fighting in Britain. It had become a sore spot for the empire that the campaign had been stalled since Severus’s death and the fledgling emperor needed a win. He announced the campaign was at an end, gave himself the title Britannicus, and installed a protectorate in southern Scotland to make sure the locals behaved themselves. 

In 213 AD Caracalla left Rome seeking military glory and rarely returned. He began a campaign in Raetia and Upper Germany against a group of Germanic tribes known as the Alemannia. It’s unclear whether or not they’d done anything to deserve this.

As a group, many historians believe the Alemannia weren’t really a threat to the Roman Empire. Emperors like Caracalla had a habit of overstating the threat they posed, using them as a punching bag to gain military glory and popularity back home. Caracalla’s campaign was likely a preemptive strike and the perfect opportunity for him to gain glory away from his father's military shadow. 

The campaign was a success, and it took the Germanic tribes of the region 20 years to recover. Caracalla rewarded himself with another title, Germanicus. While Caracalla is mostly remembered in a negative light, it is largely agreed he did a respectable job securing Rome’s borders, even if he did do it for self-serving reasons.

 

The Constitutio Antoniniana, Caracalla’s Most Controversial Move

Away from his military adventures one of Caracalla’s most infamous acts came in 212 AD when he announced the Constitutio Antoniniana. This controversial bit of legislation made every free person who lived within the Empire a citizen. It was a surprisingly liberal-sounding act by an emperor whom history has vilified.

The Constitutio Antoniniana (contemporaneous Greek translation) in a display case (Frank Waldschmidt-Dietz/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Of course, Caracalla didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart. It was a clever bit of political maneuvering that came with several benefits. For a start, it made him look like a benevolent ruler who believed everyone deserved to be a citizen. The empire consisted of lots of conquered lands and this edict made all those conquered people feel like part of the Empire.

It also gave the imperial coffers a major boon. More citizens meant more taxpayers. This was good because Caracalla had spent most of his money on the army and desperately needed more. The goodwill he generated from the act also meant he got away with raising taxes on slaves and inheritances by 5 and 10 percent.

If you needed any more evidence that the edict was little more than a cash-generating exercise, it didn’t even benefit the new citizens. The edict made everyone a citizen but then split the populace into upper and lower classes, the honestiores and humiliores. Surprising no one, the upper classes had more rights while the lower classes had fewer legal protections and suffered harsher punishments. So, extraordinarily little changed for the new citizens except they paid more tax now.

Attacking Parthia and Massacring Alexandria

With this new revenue stream coming in Caracalla once again turned his attention to the Roman army and his ego. The young emperor had always worshipped Alexander the Great and wanted the name Caracalla to be synonymous with Alexander’s. Ignoring all the other ways Alexander had been a great leader, Caracalla chose to focus on campaigning.

He decided to attack Rome’s biggest rival at the time, the Parthian Empire. Parthia was being torn apart by internal struggles and its Royal House was in shambles. There had never been a better time to strike. The fact that he had no justification for attacking Parthia (its king was doing his best to be as unprovocative as possible at the time) didn’t seem to bother him. 

A Parthian (right) wearing a Phrygian cap, depicted as a prisoner of war in chains held by a Roman (left) (Public Domain)

Caracalla traveled to the East in 215 AD but made a pit stop in Alexandria so that he could pay his respects at the tomb of his childhood hero. Initially, the Alexandrians welcomed the Roman emperor but soon tired of his presence. Supposedly they began mocking Caracalla behind his back, in particular making jokes about how he had killed his brother. Upon learning of this Caracalla flew into a rage and got the last laugh by massacring a substantial portion of the city’s population.

While he was busy in Alexandria Caracalla had left the planning of his campaign to one of his generals, Theocritus. By the time the emperor arrived at the frontier himself in 216 AD things had taken a turn for the worse. The old Parthian king, Vologaeses, was dead and his more competent brother, Artabanus V, had taken over. During Caracalla’s stint in Alexandria Artabanus had managed to pull Parthia back together and invading no longer seemed such a great idea.

In an attempt to save face, Caracalla offered a political marriage between himself and one of Artabanus’s daughters. The sly new king saw through Caracalla’s plan though, knowing the marriage would lead to Caracalla laying claim to Parthia. According to Herodian, Caracalla then replayed the same ploy he had used against his brother. He invited the Parthian king and his household to dinner to announce a truce. Upon their arrival he had his guests put to the sword with only Artabanus and a few others escaping. 

Caracalla Got His Just Desserts

Eventually, Caracalla’s bad behavior caught up with him. Following the Parthian disaster Caracalla moved on to a campaign in Media in 217 AD. Throughout this period, he showcased another character flaw by mercilessly mocking his Praetorian Prefect, M. Opellius Macrinus. 

This was the beginning of the end for Caracalla. The emperor began to move against the prefect after hearing a prophecy that he would be emperor someday. Macrinus was no fool though, and after hearing of Caracalla’s plans for him, decided to get rid of Caracalla.

Later that year as Caracalla and his men were marching to Carrhae (a city in present-day Turkey) the emperor called for a halt so that he could relieve himself. While he was urinating one of Macrinus’ most loyal soldiers snook up on the emperor and took him out. Caracalla was just 29 years old, but his life of backstabbing others had already caught up with him.

To be fair, Macrinus soon learned a similar lesson. Caracalla had spent his reign wooing the army and it posthumously paid off. The army was enraged that Caracalla had been assassinated and Macrinus’s reign didn’t last long at all. In 218 AD Caracalla’s followers in the army made his cousin, Elagabalus, the new emperor. This began a period known as the Crisis of the Third Century during which each successive emperor was worse than the last.

Conclusion

So, does Caracalla deserve his bad reputation? Most assuredly. He earned it in a variety of ways. He may not have been Rome’s most lunatic or murderous emperor, but he was certainly up there. Not only did he kill his brother and his wife, but he also had a habit of mass executing those who either stood in his way, disagreed with him, or in the case of Alexandria, simply didn’t like him.

He was also one of Rome’s most self-serving emperors. He was almost like a modern politician: particularly good at announcing policies that benefited him but dressing them up in a way that appealed to the masses. He bought the army’s loyalty and paid for it by giving the average Joe an almost worthless citizenship that actually cost them money in higher taxes.

He did Rome no favors. While not everyone agrees that his debasing the coinage led to inflation, the fact is upon his death Caracalla left Rome in a worse state than he had found it. The emperors who succeeded him during the Crisis of the Third Century copied his army-centric, me-first style of rule, leading to a major period of Roman decline. So, to sum up, how bad was Caracalla? According to Dio, his mother took her own life, despairing of her cruel son’s actions.

Top image: Close up of the statue of Carcalla at The Casa del Labrador in Aranjuez, Spain. Source: Manel/ CC BY-ND 2.0

By Robbie Mitchell