JULIA DOMNA
With the accession of Septimius Severus to the throne, we find
ourselves confronting one of the most dominant personalities in the
long line of Roman Empresses--a woman of the standard of Livia,
Agrippina, and Plotina--and passing again into one of the brighter
periods of the life of the Empire. The degradation of Commodus’s
reign will disappear like a mist on a summer morn; the jaded frame of
the Empire will seem to recover all its vigour in a few years. These
periods of rapid recovery are not sufficiently appreciated by the
rhetorical censors of the morals of Rome, whose investigations are
almost entirely confined to the reigns of Caligula, Nero, Commodus,
Caracalla, and Elagabalus; as if it were just to define the climate of
a region by its worst days only. Let a strong man rise to power, let
an imperial encouragement be given to virtue and manliness, and even
the city of Rome takes on a normal moral aspect. The throne is but an
electric point, and, according as it is positive or negative, it draws
into the light of history either the good or the bad elements of Rome.
Both are there all the time. And if the good rulers had made as drastic
a purge of evil types, as evil rulers made of good types, when they
came to power, the Empire might not have provided so much material to
the censors of extinct civilizations.
The Empresses whom we have hitherto considered were, with a few
exceptions, the daughters of Roman patricians, or of distinguished
provincials who had lived in Rome for a generation or two. In Julia
Domna, the wife of Severus, we have for the first time a woman of
the East on the throne; and, as her family will for some time deeply
influence the fortunes of the Empire, it will be interesting to glance
at her origin.
On the bank of the Orontes in Syria, at the large village or small town
of Emesa (now Hems), there was in the second century a very ancient
and prosperous religious centre. At some early date in the history
of the land a mysterious stone had been cast on the country from the
home of the gods--a meteorite, modern science would call it--and it
had been set up as a symbol of the Regenerating God (Elagabal, which
the Greeks improperly turned into Heliogabalus, or Sun-god). A fine
temple was in time built to shelter it, pilgrims sought it from the
whole country, and the richest gifts were made to the god and his
living representatives. About the middle of the second century the
priest in charge was a certain Bassianus, who had two handsome and very
clever daughters. The planets which presided at the birth of the elder
promised her, according to the astrologers, a throne; and, as there
was a camp of Roman soldiers near Emesa, and the temple was a great
attraction to the soldiers in their exile, the pretty Syrian girl and
her horoscope came to be known very far away. In the year 186 or 187 an
offer of marriage came to the priest’s daughter from one of the highest
officials, the _legatus_, of the rich province of Lower Gaul, and she
crossed sea and land to accept it. Within six years this officer,
Septimius Severus, was Emperor of Rome, and Julia Domna was Empress.
Some doubt has been thrown on this pretty story, and Serviez, whose
chapter on Julia Domna is a piece of irresponsible fiction, describes
her as coming to Rome, on her own account, in search of adventure.
But we have abundant evidence that Severus was a most enthusiastic
astrologer, and there is nothing improbable in the story. Severus was
of the province of Roman Africa, of humble family, and, like so many
energetic men in the days of Antoninus and Marcus, had earned promotion
from office to office. He had first married a certain Paccia Marciana
at Rome. He was then made Prætor, had a military command in Spain and
Gaul, spent some years in study at Athens, and became Legate of the
Lugdunian province. At Lyons he lost his first wife, and sought a
second. Hearing that there was a maid in Syria with a royal horoscope,
he sent for her, and married her at Lyons. A child was born the first
year, and, although Bassianus (more popularly, Caracalla) is described
by Eutropius and Aurelius Victor as her stepson, he was undoubtedly her
first child. Geta, his brother and co-Emperor, was born two years later.
By that time they were living in Rome, where Severus was Consul.
Commodus, whose follies excited his ambition no less than his disdain,
gave him the command in Lower Germany. Immediately afterwards Commodus
was assassinated, and about three months later came the news of the
murder of Pertinax. It was easy to inflame the troops with anger on
this occasion, and, as Severus offered a more than usually heavy bribe,
he was acclaimed Emperor, and, as we saw, led the legions upon Rome.
We do not know whether Julia had remained at Rome, or accompanied him,
but she would be present when Rome greeted its new ruler. He rode in
full armour, in the centre of a picked body of six hundred men. When,
however, he saw that Rome had entirely deserted Julianus, he entered
the city in civic costume, on foot. Flowers and laurel and gay hangings
decorated all the houses, and the early summer sun shone on the
white-robed masses of the citizens. Another splendid, but less joyous,
spectacle was offered on the morrow, when a wax image of Pertinax
was honoured with an Imperial funeral. Then he set about the stern
business of securing his Empire. He had no title to it but his sword,
and there were two other able generals--Albinus in Britain and Niger in
Syria--urging the same title on their own behalf.
We do not know whether Julia accompanied Severus during the long civil
war that followed. Some of the authorities represent her as egging on
her husband to the destruction of his rivals. The advice would not
be unnatural, but it would be so superfluous that we disregard the
statement. With a craft that has not won him the regard of historians,
Severus held Albinus in Britain with the empty title of Cæsar, while
he proceeded to crush Niger in the East. As there are coins of the
year 196 which entitle Julia “Mother of the Camps,”[15] she probably
accompanied Severus to the East, but we need not pursue the long
campaign. Severus committed the work to his generals, and kept watch
over Rome and the West. Several years were absorbed in pacifying the
East, and he then turned toward Britain. Acting under the strain of
African barbarism which undoubtedly existed in the nature of Severus,
he sent men with a treacherous commission to murder Albinus, and the
discovery of the plot brought the British legions thundering over Gaul.
The rivals met decisively at Lyons, and a titanic conflict ended with
the triumph of Severus.
Rome had followed the even struggle with suspense, and some had
ventured to take sides. The omens were ambiguous. A strange light--the
aurora--flickered in the northern sky, and a rain mixed with
silver--Dio soberly assures us that he plated several bronze coins
with it--fell upon the city. Human judgment had been as uncertain as
that of the gods, and many of the Romans had espoused the “white”
(Albinus) or the “black” (Niger) cause, instead of that of the “grey,”
to put it in the language of the hour. For Severus to have abstained
entirely from punishing those who had supported his rivals, after the
years of anxiety they had caused him, is too much to expect; but it
must be admitted that his vengeance was cruel, and that his plea of the
security of the State was little more than a cloak for a very human
resentment, The “Historia Augusta” gives a ghastly list of forty-one
Senators whom he put to death, and crowds of lesser folk suffered from
his vindictiveness. From Syria to Gaul he marked the progress of his
triumph with a trail of human blood.
Of the attitude of Julia in regard to these executions we have no
knowledge. Severus was a cruel and passionate African, and we have no
reason to think that any one impelled him to commit these deeds. His
whole behaviour in the hour of triumph was injudicious and unworthy.
He made a most unpleasant speech to the Senate in praise of Commodus,
and directed that the highest honours should be paid to his memory. It
may be that the consciousness of his lowly origin--which his sister
tactlessly irritated by coming to Rome, and displaying her rural
innocence to the amusement of the nobles--made him more suspicious of
the patrician order than he need have been. Albinus, however, had come
of a most ancient and honourable, if somewhat decayed, stock, and his
finer blood may have influenced the Senate.
Leaving Rome under a painful impression of his harsh use of power, he
set out for the East, where the Parthians were again in arms. Julia
accompanied him on this campaign, but it is of little interest. The
Parthians retired before his advance, and he pursued them down the
Euphrates, and for a time held Babylon and several of the ancient
cities of the East. Foiled, and incurring heavy losses, in the siege
of Hatra, he retired sullenly from Mesopotamia, and sought consolation
in a pleasant tour through Palestine and Egypt. They returned to Rome,
about the beginning of the third century, for their first long stay in
the capital.
The remarkable number of inscriptions that still survive in the most
distant parts of the Empire bear witness that Julia was already
regarded as an active Empress, not merely as the companion of Severus.
Probably she comes next to Livia--some would place her before Livia--in
the general recognition of her political existence. But on her return
to Rome she found a bitter opponent in the person of Severus’s chief
minister, and for a time she confined herself to personal concerns.
This minister, Plautianus, was a fellow-townsman, possibly a relative,
of the Emperor, and enjoyed and abused his entire confidence. He
was promoted to the command of the Prætorian Guards, whom Severus,
after punishing them for the murder of Pertinax, had reorganized and
enormously increased. Finding himself at the head of fifty thousand
picked men, and entrusted, during the long absence of the Emperor, with
the supreme affairs of State, Plautianus indulged his vanity in the
strangest excesses. When his superb chariot drove through Rome, runners
were sent ahead to warn the common folk that they must turn away, and
not gaze on his august person; and there were more statues of him in
Rome than of the Emperor. He even had a hundred Romans, of all ages,
including many of noble birth, emasculated, in order that his daughter
might be attended with all the splendour and security of an Oriental
harem. Severus begged the hand of this privileged maiden for his elder
son. Bassianus was then (203) in his sixteenth year, and had just been
nominated Cæsar by his father. Plautianus consented, and a princely
wedding took place. People remarked, as the rich gifts were borne
through the Forum to the palace, that the Prefect of the Guards had
been able to give his daughter a dowry that would have sufficed for the
daughters of fifty kings.
Two circumstances conspired to wreck this auspicious marriage.
Bassianus disliked Plautilla, Julia hated her conceited and overbearing
father. A third circumstance, in the opinion of Rome, was that
Bassianus was already too intimate with a fiery little Syrian cousin,
then living at the palace, of whom we shall see much in the next
chapter. At length Plautianus brought a formal charge against the
Empress, and there was agitation in the palace. The charge seems to
have been one of adultery, and, though it was not established, some
of the later historians declare that she owed her escape only to the
fondness of Severus. Aurelius Victor (“De Cæsaribus,” xx) says that
“his wife’s infamies robbed Severus of the height of his glory”; and he
charges her with, to the Emperor’s knowledge, loose ways and treason.
Lampridius (“Historia Augusta,” “Severus,” c. 18) affirms that she was
“notorious for her adulteries and guilty of conspiracy.” Eutropius and
Herodian join with them in bringing an even graver charge against her
later. Dio, however, who was on the spot, brings no charge against her
character, and many hold that his silence is more instructive than the
chatter of later compilers. We may add that Severus was very eager
to stamp out adultery, and, although his efforts were frustrated by
the unwillingness of the citizens to use his law--Dio, when he was
consul, found three thousand charges lying unheeded in the offices--his
known temper must be taken into account. On the other hand, Dio wrote
his history in the reign of a member of Julia’s family, and may have
omitted much out of discretion.
The evidence is, as usual, perplexing, and there is no need to press
for a verdict. The Oriental religion, to which Julia adhered, was not
one to lay bonds upon the passion of love, and the removal from the
guarded seclusion of the East to the free life of the West would not
engender scruples. The charge, in fact, was not admitted by Severus
to be proved, though noble dames were tortured to wring evidence from
them. After this scorching ordeal, however, Julia moderated her open
hostility to Plautianus, and sought consolation in a close application
to letters and philosophy. Her sister, Julia Mæsa, had by this time
come from Emesa to join her in the palace, and had brought two married
daughters, of whom we shall hear more.[16] With these, and the literary
men of Rome, she formed an intellectual circle, and withdrew from
politics.
But there can be little doubt that Julia encouraged her son’s dislike
of Plautilla. Herodian declares that the young wife was “a most
shameless creature.” We may refuse to accept this description of the
unhappy young princess, and see in it only an echo of the attack upon
her. Bullied and threatened by Bassianus, she at last returned in tears
to her father’s mansion, and the Prefect renewed his attacks with
great warmth. Severus refused to hear complaints against him, until
his brother Geta suggested to him, on his death-bed, that Plautianus
was acquiring his enormous wealth with a view to seizing the throne.
From that hour Severus behaved more coldly to his minister, and Julia’s
party took courage. At length Bassianus persuaded his father that
the minister was plotting. If we may believe the romantic version,
Plautianus sent a man to assassinate Severus and his sons. The man
betrayed him at the palace, and was directed by Bassianus to return and
pretend to bring the Prefect to see the dead bodies. At all events,
Plautianus came in haste to the palace, was alarmed to see the gates
close behind him, and was led to the presence of the Emperor and
Bassianus. Shortly afterwards, the head of Plautianus was tossed on to
the street from the roof of the palace. Dio adds that a man plucked a
handful of hair from the bleeding head, and rushed with it to Julia
and Plautilla, crying: “Behold your Plautianus!” The unhappy girl was
banished to Lipara, and was executed there by Bassianus after the death
of his father.
It was perhaps inevitable that a series of executions should follow
the fall of the favourite, but in a short time the life of the palace
fell into a quiet routine. Severus, a big, powerful man, with a crown
of grey hair above his venerable features, set an example of sobriety
and industry. He was generally at work before dawn, and would return
to work after a frugal midday-meal with his boys. They were years of
peace and prosperity, and he made admirable use of the opportunity to
restore the decaying buildings and institutions of the Empire, and to
replenish the treasury. He regretted his lack of culture, and listened
with deference to the learned discussions in which his wife and her
relatives engaged. His one accomplishment in the way of science was a
thorough command of the mysteries of astrology, as the golden stars
with which he decorated the ceilings of his palace informed the visitor.
Julia joined with him in the work of restoration. We know that at
Rome she rebuilt the temple of Vesta, and the numerous provincial
inscriptions suggest a much wider interest. Under her lead the women of
Rome were encouraged to look beyond their homes. Sabina had erected,
or dedicated, a meeting-hall for women in the Forum of Trajan, but it
had fallen into decay. Julia restored this early “women’s club,” and
no doubt introduced into it the enthusiasm for letters and philosophy
which she still had. Her “circle,” as Philostratus calls it, probably
included the historian Dio, who was still at Rome, and the poet
Appian, who had some years before described her as “the great Domna.”
Philostratus himself, a Greek writer and rhetorician, one of the most
learned men of the time, was closely associated with her. It was at
her request that he wrote his famous “Life of Apollonius of Tyana.” In
his “Lives of the Sophists” (Philiscus) he speaks of her as “Julia the
Philosopher,” and in one of his letters (lxxiii) he refers with high
appreciation to her learning.
Julia was then in the prime of her life, and in her happiest days. The
bust of her that quickly catches the eye in the Vatican Museum--the
largest surviving portrait-bust of the period--will hardly be deemed to
possess the beauty with which the historians invest her. The thick lips
and large nose, which betray her ancestry, do not compare well with the
features of other Empresses. But the grave, strong, thoughtful face
and large eyes, which we may imagine instinct with Syrian fire, are
undeniably handsome. Her sister, Julia Mæsa, was with her--a woman of
similar strength, moderation, and judgment. But the younger generation
in the palace gave them concern. The young men, Bassianus and Geta,
were loose and luxurious in their ways; and one of the daughters of
Mæsa, Julia Soæmias, was a fit companion for Bassianus. Severus, noting
the advance of his gout, looked with grave eyes on the soft habits and
the constant quarrels of the sons whom he wished to leave partners in
the Empire.
[Illustration: JULIA DOMNA
BUST IN THE VATICAN MUSEUM]
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.
But the end of his infamous life was rapidly approaching. He had
written to Rome, some time previously, to direct that the Chaldæans
should be consulted as to the name of his successor, so that he might
slay the man named. The minister to whom he wrote had some grievance
against one of the officials in the East, Opilius Macrinus, and he
wrote to inform Caracalla that Macrinus was designated by an African
soothsayer. The more romantic historians say that this letter reached
Caracalla just as he was engaged in directing a race, and that he
gave it, unopened, to Macrinus himself to deal with. More plausible
is the story related by Dio. The letter went, as all letters went, to
the Empress at Antioch, and a delay was caused. Macrinus had, in the
meantime, learned from Rome the danger that threatened him, and he set
energetically to work. A discontented soldier in Caracalla’s body-guard
was secured, and on the 8th of March, 217, he ended that Emperor’s
infamies with the thrust of a dagger. It was a timely release for Rome.
It was discovered after his death that he had bought great quantities
of poison in Asia.
Julia indulged in an unusual display of violence when the news reached
her at Antioch. She mourned little over the removal of her son, says
Dio, as she “had hated him when he was alive”; but the prospect of
laying down her Imperial power, and retiring into private life, in
the prime of her womanhood, filled her with anger. She learned that,
after a brief hesitation, Macrinus had promised the usual bribe to
the troops, and obtained the Empire. Rumour quickly recognized in him
the assassin of Caracalla, and Julia made the most violent attacks on
him. Meantime, he had written to assure her that he would recognize
her Imperial status, and not remove her guard of honour. He feared the
attachment of the soldiers to Caracalla, and disavowed his share in
the assassination. Julia perceived his weakness, and, abandoning her
first resolve to take her life by refusing food, she entertained a
hope of unseating the upstart. But the soldiers, however much attached
to Caracalla, had little idea of putting a Semiramis on the throne of
Rome. Her plan miscarried, and Macrinus heard of her invectives. He
ordered her to leave Antioch, and go where she willed. Her sister and
nieces returned to the paternal temple at Emesa, where we shall soon
rejoin them, but Julia, failing entirely to foresee the extraordinary
adventure by which they would shortly return to power, racked with the
pain of a cancer, which she had aggravated by a blow on the breast in
her first anger, decided to leave the world. She refused food, and died
in May or June, 217. Her remains were afterwards buried with great pomp
at Rome, and her name was added to the quaint list of the Imperial gods
and goddesses.