4. The deadly hatred which reigned between the two sons of Severus, M. Aurelius Antoninus Bassianus Caracalla, aged 23—29, and his young step-brother Geta, aged twenty-one, led to a dreadful catastrophe; for at their return to Rome, and after a fruitless proposition had been made for a division of the empire, Geta murdered, April 4, 212. Geta was assassinated in the arms of his mother Julia Domna, together with all those who were considered as his friends. The restless spirit of Caracalla, however, soon drew him from Rome, and in traversing first the provinces along the Danube, and then those of the east, he ruined them all by his exactions and cruelty, to which he was driven for money to pay his soldiers, and to purchase peace of his enemies on the frontiers. The same necessity led him to grant the right of citizenship to all the provinces, that he might thereby gain the duty of the vicesima hereditatum et manumissionum (twentieth upon inheritances and enfranchisements), which he very soon afterwards changed into a tenth (decima).—With respect to his foreign wars, his first was against the Catti and Alemanni, 215. among whom he remained a long time, sometimes as a friend and sometimes as an enemy. But his principal efforts, after having previously ordered a dreadful massacre of the inhabitants of Alexandria, to satisfy his cruel rapacity, were directed against 216. the Parthians (see above, p. 304); and in his wars against them he was assassinated by Macrinus, the præfect of the prætorian guard.
The præfect, or captain, of the prætorian guard became, from the time of Severus, the most important officer in the state. Besides the command of the guards, the finances were also under his control, together with an extensive criminal jurisdiction. A natural consequence of the continually increasing despotism.
Æl. Spartiani Antoninus Caracalla et Ant. Geta, in Script. Hist. Aug.
Macrinus, April 11, 217—June 8, 218.
5. His murderer, M. Opelius Macrinus, aged fifty-three, was recognized as emperor by the soldiers, and forthwith acknowledged by the senate. He immediately created his son, M. Opelius Diadumenus, aged nine years, Cæsar, and gave him the name of Antoninus. He disgracefully terminated the war against the Parthians by purchasing a peace, and changed the decima (tenth) of Caracalla again into the vicesima (twentieth). However, while he still remained in Asia, Bassianus Heliogabalus, grand-nephew of Julia Domna, and high priest in the temple of the Sun at Emesa, whom his mother gave out for a son of Caracalla, was proclaimed emperor by the legions, and, after a combat with the guards, subsequently to which Macrinus and his son lost their lives, they raised him to the throne.
Mæsa, the sister of Julia Domna, had two daughters, both widows; Soæmis, the eldest, was the mother of Heliogabalus, Mammæa, the youngest, the mother of Alexander Severus.
Jul. Capitolini Opelius Macrinus, in Script. Hist. Aug.
Heliogabalus, June 8, 218—March 11, 222.
6. Heliogabalus, aged 14—18, who assumed the additional name of M. Aurelius Antoninus, brought with him from Syria the superstitions and voluptuousness of that country. He introduced the worship of his god Heliogabal in Rome, and wallowed openly in such brutal and infamous debaucheries, that history can scarcely find a parallel to his dissolute, shameless, and scandalous conduct. How low must the morality of that age have been sunk, in which a boy could so early have ripened into a monster!—The debasement of the senate, and of all important offices, which he filled with the degraded companions of his own lusts and vices, was systematically planned by him; and he deserves no credit even for the adoption of his cousin, the virtuous Alexander Severus, as he shortly after endeavoured to take away his life, but was himself for that reason assassinated by the prætorian guards.
† Æl. Lampridii Ant. Heliogabalus, in Script. Hist. Aug.