SECTION G.
Death of Severus—Caracalla and Geta—Roman citizenship—Extended to veterans—Tabulae
honestae, missionis—Bestowed on all British provincials.
G.I.—This mighty work kept Severus in Britain for the rest of his life. He incessantly watched over its progress, and not till it was completed turned his steps once more (A.D. 211) towards Rome. But he was not to reach the Imperial city alive. Scarcely had he completed the first stage of the journey than, at York, omens of fatal import foretold his speedy death. A negro soldier presented him with a cypress crown, exclaiming, "Totum vicisti, totum fuisti. Nunc Deus esto victor."[[305]] When he would fain offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, he found himself by mistake at the dark temple of Bellona; and her black victims were led in his train even to the very door of his palace, which he never left again. Dark rumours were circulated that Caracalla, who had already once attempted his father's [213] life, and was already intriguing with his stepmother, was at the bottom of all this, and took good care that the auguries should be fulfilled. Anyhow, Severus never left York till his corpse was carried forth and sent off for burial at Rome. With his last breath he is said solemnly to have warned "my Antonines" that upon their own conduct depended the peace and well-being of the Empire which he had so ably won for them.[[306]]
G. 2.—The warning was, as usual, in vain. Caracalla and Julia were now free to work their will, and, having speedily got rid of her son Geta, entered upon an incestuous marriage. The very Caledonians, whose conjugal system was of the loosest,[[307]] cried shame;[[308]] but the garrison of the Wall which kept them off was, as we have seen, officered by Julia's creatures, and all beyond it was definitely abandoned,[[309]] not to be recovered for two centuries.[[310]] The guilty pair returned to Rome, and a hundred and thirty years elapsed before another Augustus visited Britain.[[311]]
G. 3.—They left behind them no longer a subject race of mere provincials, but a nation of full Roman citizens. For it was Caracalla, seemingly, who, by extending it to the whole Roman world, put the final stroke to the expansion, which had long been in progress, of this once priceless privilege; with its right of appeal to Caesar, of exemption from torture, of recognized marriage, and of eligibility to public office. [214] Originally confined strictly to natives of Rome and of Roman Colonies, it was early bestowed ipso facto on enfranchised slaves, and sometimes given as a compliment to distinguished strangers. After the Social War (B.C. 90) it was extended to all Italians, and Claudius (A.D. 50) allowed Messalina to make it purchasable ("for a great sum," as both the Acts of the Apostles and Dion Cassius inform us) by provincials.
G. 4.—And they could also earn it by service in the Imperial armies. A bronze tablet, found at Cilurnum,[[312]] sets forth that Antoninus Pius confers upon the emeriti, or time-expired veterans, of the Gallic, Asturian, Celtiberian, Spanish, and Dacian cohorts in Britain, who have completed twenty-five years' service with the colours, the right of Roman citizenship, and legalizes their marriages, whether existing or future.[[313]] As there is no reason to suppose that such discharged soldiers commonly returned to their native land, this system must have leavened the population of Britain with a considerable proportion of Roman citizens, even before Caracalla's edict. Besides its privileges, this freedom brought with it certain liabilities, pecuniary and other; and it was to extend the area of these that Caracalla took this apparently liberal step, which had been at least [215] contemplated by more worthy predecessors[[314]] on philanthropic grounds. Any way, Britain was, by now, in the fullest sense Roman.
ROMANO-BRITISH PLACE-NAMES.[[315]]
TOWNS, ETC.