The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

An irruption of the Caledonians in the north of Britain led him to think that a campaign under his eyes would alter the evil ways of his sons, and he set out for the West. Julia accompanied them, but we can hardly suppose that she ventured further north than Eboracum (York). The mist-wrapped hills and watery lowlands beyond were to the Roman a shuddering wilderness, fit only for the breeding of savages who were as amphibious as rats. Dio unflatteringly describes the north Britons and Scots of the time as “inhabiting wild, waterless mountains and desolate, swampy plains,” and “dwelling in tents, without coats or shoes, possessing their wives and rearing their offspring in common.” We may find some consolation in the assurance of Lampridius that Britain (south of this region) was “the greatest glory of the Empire.” Even the Scots, however, had their glories. When Severus returned to York, after having pushed to the extreme north of Caledonia, and lost 50,000 men without bringing the elusive enemy to battle, he brought with him envoys of the Caledonians to discuss the terms of peace. Among them was the wife of the chief “Argentocoxus”—should it be Macdermott?—with whom the philosophic Empress held converse through an interpreter. Julia insinuated that their matrimonial arrangements were not all that could be desired. “We satisfy the needs of nature in a much better way than you Roman women,” said the hardy Scot. “We have dealings openly with the best of our men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest.” Eugenics is an ancient practice, if a modern theory.

Severus was borne back, weary and dispirited, on his litter to York. Bassianus, impatient to reach the throne that he would soon disgrace, had attempted his father’s life, and fully exhibited the brutality of his character. Yet Severus, who had often censured Marcus Aurelius for entrusting the Empire to Commodus, listened in turn to the fond pleading of his parental feeling, and designated his sons as his successors. He died at York in February, 211, and a hasty settlement was made of affairs in Britain that they might return at once to the capital. They placed the ashes of the Emperor in an alabaster urn, and set out with it for Rome.

From that day the life of Julia Domna was one of anxiety, and we may trust that it was one of pain. Even on the journey homeward her sons were ostentatiously armed against each other’s designs. Bassianus—or Antoninus, as he had now been named—was a strong, brutal, and imperious youth, as eager to murder his brother as he had been to shorten his father’s life. Geta was brighter, gentler, and more cultivated, and the affection of the legions for him kept Antoninus in check while they were with the army. When they arrived in Rome, their first business was the funeral of Severus. His pale wax image was laid on a lofty ivory couch, and the black-robed Senators and white-clad matrons watched it for seven days. Then it was borne to the old Forum, where the chorus of sons and women of the nobility sang the old funeral chants, and on to the great wooden tower, stuffed with spices and inflammable matter, in the Field of Mars; where, from the midst of the flaming pile, the released eagle symbolized the passage of the soul of Severus to the home of the gods.

The quarrel between Antoninus and Geta at once broke out with greater menace than ever. They kept their separate apartments rigidly guarded in the palace, and a troop of soldiers and athletes watched day and night over the person of the younger Emperor. Some one suggested that the Empire should be divided, as it was later, and that Geta should take the Asiatic half. Herodian says—though one reads with suspicion his full reports of speeches that were made a century before—that Julia opposed this plan passionately. They must divide their mother, she declared, before they should divide the Empire. The gloom grew deeper over the palace, and the inevitable end did not tarry long. Antoninus one day professed that he wished to be reconciled, and invited Geta to meet him in his mother’s room. As soon as Geta entered, the officers whom Antoninus had at hand drew their swords. Geta flew to his mother’s bosom, and she put her arms about him; but they killed him in her embrace, and even cut the arm in which she clasped him. Once more the channels ran with the best blood of Rome, as Antoninus turned vindictively upon the supporters of his brother. Even ancient nobles who had survived several of these massacres, such as Claudius Pompeianus, the second husband of Marcus Aurelius’s daughter, now came to a violent end. The aged sister of Marcus Aurelius, Cornificia, was put to death for weeping at the news of the brutal crime. Dio assures us that no less than 20,000 men and women, including some of the finest of the time, were put to death in that awful carnage. Surely one of the chief causes of the deterioration of Rome—these repeated purges of its best elements—has been overlooked in the endless speculations about its fall!

The “Historia Augusta” tells us that Julia herself was discovered in tears by Antoninus, and only escaped death because the Emperor feared a rebellion if he killed her. Curiously enough, the same historian, and several others, go on to give us a far different and less honourable account of her conduct after the death of Geta. In the general horror with which his abominable deeds were contemplated, Antoninus had the astuteness to purchase the favour of the army. He bestowed an extraordinary donation on the Guards, and entered upon a systematic policy of enriching and indulging the troops. From the pale faces of the citizens of Rome he retired to the military quarters on the Danube, and endeavoured by a year of hard hunting and carousing to banish the ghosts which, he confessed, haunted him. Inscriptions have been found in Germany which suggest that his mother was with him. However that may be, she joined him when he crossed the Hellespont to Asia—and was nearly drowned in the passage—and began to take a most important part in the administration. With the Senate, over whom he had set in authority a Spanish juggler, he was too disdainful to deal, except on the most important subjects. His chief aim was to wring money out of Rome and the provinces, and spend it on the troops. He “plundered the whole earth,” says Dio. He wore the long rough cloak of a Goth—from which he was given the nickname of “Caracalla” (the name of the garment)—and ate the rough food of a soldier on campaign; though he gave himself wildly to the luxurious life of the cities of Asia Minor.

Julia settled in Nicomedia, where she spent a good part of 214 and 215, and then in Antioch. Caracalla never married again; indeed, there can be little doubt that venereal disease was the chief cause of his madness and brutality during these years. As a boy, “reared by a Christian nurse,” says Tertullian, he had been most gentle and humane. Julia, therefore, was still Empress, and she undertook the greater part of Caracalla’s work. All letters from Rome were forwarded to her, and she dealt with them all, except a few that had to be submitted to the Emperor. The inscriptions cut in honour of her during these years were remarkably numerous, and from them and the coins we learn how great were her authority and influence. Her official title grew until it at length became: “Julia Pia Felix Augusta, Mater Augusti et Castrorum et Senatus et Patriæ.” All the several epithets that were ever bestowed on other Empresses were gathered together in her name.

This intimate association with so foul an Emperor as Caracalla lent colour to the current belief that she was linked with him in another capacity than that of mother. Herodian (iiii), Eutropius (viii), and Aurelius Victor (“Epitome,” xxi), give the charge as an undoubted fact. Spartianus (“Historia Augusta,” “Caracalla,” x) gives a circumstantial story of the mother leading the son astray, and Aurelius Victor gives the same anecdote in his “De Cæsaribus,” xxi. She is said to have presented herself to Caracalla in what Serviez calls “an exceedingly magnificent and becoming dress”—se maxima corporis parte denudasset, is the text—and yielded with ease. The anecdote is too common a sample of the salacious gossip of the time to be taken seriously, but the substantial charge is not so easily set aside. Dio, it is true, does not give it. When he speaks (c. 10) of Caracalla having “possessed the rascality [πανοῦργον] of his mother,” he does not indeed pay a tribute to her character, but the word he employs seems to indicate craft, perhaps unscrupulous craft, rather than lasciviousness.

But even Dio relates an adventure which fairly shows that this grave charge against Julia was widely credited in his day. In the year 216, during his tour in the East, Caracalla announced that he would honour Alexandria with a visit. Unsparing as the Alexandrians had been in their witticisms on the ugly, bald, and prematurely old young man, with all his brutality and folly, they had no suspicion of his real intention, and they prepared to receive him with great honour. Once inside their gates, however, he savagely precipitated his troops on the unarmed citizens and for several days directed the carnage and pillage from the temple of Serapis. This savage onslaught is said by Dio to have been a punishment for the jibes of the Alexandrians, and we know from Herodian that one of their most deadly shafts was to speak of him and his mother as Œdipus and Jocaste.

It cannot therefore be said that Dio is unaware of the current belief, nor can we follow Miss Wilkins when she suggests that the “elderly Empress” was incapable of such conduct. Julia had been married only twenty-nine years before, and may very well be presumed to have been in her early forties in the year 216. She was in “the full flush of life,” as Dio expressly says, and is not known to have embraced any system of ethics or religion which would lay a stigma on incest. But the general moderation of her career and the repellent character of Caracalla, unrelieved by a single grace of person or disposition, must weigh heavily in the scale against the gossip of Rome.

We know, at least, that she endeavoured to curb the wild excesses that were bringing a doom on her son and endangering the stability of the Empire. When he debased the coinage, and despoiled his subjects, she remonstrated, but he laughingly drew his sword and said: “Courage, mother, while we have this, money will not fail us.” “In such things,” says Dio, “he paid no heed to his mother, who gave him much excellent advice.” She continued to act as the first minister of her son, while he wandered from region to region in search of adventure. One of his exploits will suffice to illustrate his peculiar method of winning glory. From Egypt he advanced against the Parthians. He sent a flattering letter to the Parthian king, submitting that the two great Empires ought amicably to divide the world, and asking for the hand of his daughter. His persistent lying disarmed even the crafty Parthians, and he was admitted into their kingdom with a body of troops. He at once flung his troops upon the vast unarmed multitude that came out to greet him, mingled their blood with the flowers they had strewn in his path, and sacked a large part of Medea and Parthia.