The Ancients - Emperor Macrinus: Usurper of Rome

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

Denzel Washington stars as Emperor Macrinus in the epic new movie Gladiator II, but who exactly was this shadowy ruler of Rome?Join Tristan Hughes as he sits down with Dr Alex Imrie and Matilda Brown to explore the real story behind this lesser-known usurper of Rome, a North African-born knight who toppled the fratricidal tyrant Caracalla and took the throne for himself. Discover the dramatic and brutal events that shaped Macrinus' reign, including his conflict with the powerful women of the Severan dynasty and the fateful battles that sealed his fate. Presented by Tristan Hughes. The producer is Joseph Knight, audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.All music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today, well, we're keeping on the Roman Empire and the real stories of characters that feature in the new epic movie Gladiator 2.

Now in the last episode, I interviewed Dr. Alex Imri from Edinburgh University about the real Roman emperors Caracalla and Geta that have a star role in the new Gladiator film. That was a fantastic chat exploring the terrible relationship that these two brothers had and how it ultimately ended with Geta's brutal murder in his mother's arms at the hands of Caracalla. But alongside Caracalla and Getter, there is another central figure in the new Gladiator movie who is based on a Roman Emperor, a North African-born knight who toppled Caracalla and took the throne for himself. That man's name was Macrinus, played by Denzel Washington in the new movie. And in this episode, we're exploring the real

Macrinus' story, who he was, his background, his rise to power, his rule, and ultimately, his demise. Now for this episode, it only felt right to bring back Dr. Alex Emery to continue the story from where we left off in the last episode, covering the reign and fall of Caracalla and then the rise of Macrinus. However, we know how much you love it when we spice things up a bit and have not one but two guests. So joining Alex, we also have another good friend of the podcast, Matilda Brown, a final year PhD candidate at Edinburgh University whose main interest is what happens after Macrinus' reign, and the extraordinary women, the Severan Empresses, who rise to the fore and also play a big role in the downfall of Macrinus.

These two, Alex and Matilda, they have worked together for many years at Edinburgh, they have great rapport, they're brilliant speakers, and we all know each other very well. So no surprise, this was a really fun episode to record and I'm excited to now share it with you. Sit back and relax as we wrap up our Gladiator 2 episodes with the story of the real Macrinus. Alex, Matilda, what a pleasure. Who thought that the stars would align and that this could happen? It is great to have you both on the podcast. Thank you for having us. Fantastic to be here and to share a space with Matilda,

who probably dating myself, I knew first when she was one of my students, and now she has become an extraordinary scholar of the third century. It's wonderful to be back, Tristan. Thank you so much for having us both. And of course, I know you from my uni undergrad days. This really all is coming full circle. I've had the pleasure of having Alex as a colleague now for years, in addition to being taught what I know on the third century by him. So, you know, I'd like to push that compliment back. Any excellence I have is purely due to him. you know, I'd like to push that compliment back. Any excellence I have is purely due to him. Look at us. Look at you guys. Who'd have thought it? Not me, but here we are. And what a great episode we have in store today. And I also want to highlight something straight away, because I can see this, but you listening to this episode, you can't. But Alex and Matilda, they're both dialing in from Edinburgh, but they're in the same room together. So during the course of this fun chat, you guys are always going to be seeing each other's

reactions to questions and answers. So no pressure on you both because you've got another added level there yeah hopefully we'll manage to stay cool we've got this i'll just look for them until they're frowning at me over over my answers and hope to goodness that i keep myself right what better test than an ancients podcast together now our topic today is this figure of macrinus and of course, with the release of Gladiator 2. But I mean, I feel straight away for both you guys, of all Roman emperors, seeing Macrinus in a Hollywood epic, this was not on my bingo card. He certainly feels like one of the less, well, known Roman emperors, particularly outside of academia.

Certainly. I mean, I think that Macrinus is sort of the meeting point of my and Alex's work. Alex is really a Karakalan expert, and I have done my work really beginning with the later Severan Empresses. And so, we kind of meet in this middle ground. And for me, at least, this was sort of the last person I would expect to see dramatized on the silver screen. But there's so much to do with him because we don't really know that much about him except for what we'll tell you today. Yeah, that's a really good point. There is, in some ways, a bit of a blank slate that's just ripe for Hollywood to put in something where the evidence drops off for us. I mean, yeah, like you, Tristan and Matilda, when I looked at Macrinus, when I've read about Macrinus,

I would not immediately assume that he was going to be the subject of a Hollywood epic. Certainly not cast by somebody as titanic as Denzel Washington. I should get right off the bat. I am already starstruck and yet struggling to kind of square away what I've read about Macrinus, short-lived that he is, with this major hollywood star who's going to make him into this this character i think that people will come away well maybe i think just from the trailer i already am intrigued and kind of already predisposed to admire what he's doing with this character so it will be interesting and as you guys have highlighted there so alex you focus more on caracalla and that period before mc Macrinus and Matilda that period after.

Alex, we have had you on the podcast very recently because the episode before, we've been talking all about the story of Caracalla and Geta. And we finished that episode with Caracalla's brutal murdering of Geta and the removal of Geta's image across the empire. So I feel we've got a few years to do before we reach Macrinus. So shall we summarise over the next few minutes or so, what are the main achievements of those years of Caracalla when he's ruling alone? Get us in the mood. Okay, so well, shall we start with Geta laying on the floor in the Imperial Palace, absolutely brutalised by his older brother or by a bunch of centurions that he ordered.

absolutely brutalized by his older brother or by a bunch of centurions that he ordered. After that, Caracalla runs to the guard and the army and tries to secure his regime with those constituencies very quickly, which he does relatively successfully. Now, interestingly, the Historia Augusta gives us a little bit of a hint that there might have been some discord for Caracalla in as much as they have the second legion Parthica that's based at Albanum close the doors on him because they swore allegiance to both brothers and what is this he's coming to them with about sorry where Albanum did you say yes where's that about 20 miles outside Rome okay which is interesting in as much as it's called the second legion Parthica you would think it was stationed in the east but for all intents and purposes and hugely oversimplifying

it becomes something of a kind of mobile reserve a mobile field army that the emperors can take with them usually on campaign in the east it has to be said so Caracalla secures the support of the army he has less success maybe securing the support of the senate he certainly gives a couple of speeches where he decries Geta as this villain, this enemy of the state, and shores up his own regime. But it's quite clear that he is never going to enjoy life in the capital. And so about six months, no more than eight months, maybe after the murder of Geta, he's already gone. He's already outside Rome, and he is on a journey that will be predominantly military. He will do multiple

campaigns and he will never return home from. Now, before we get onto that, I should say that there's one other point that he does while he's in Rome, which is, you know, I'm laboring because it's one of my major passions when I study it. Before he leaves Rome, he seems to enact an edict that we now know as the Constitutio Antoniniana, or the Antonine Constitution. In one move, in one edict, he gives the rights of Roman citizenship to nearly every free person living within the Roman realm. It's a constitutional watershed, and certainly historically scholars thought that citizenship was this kind of mechanical process. You're defeated by Rome and then you're gradually brought into the body politic.

It doesn't seem to be the case. Modern studies have suggested that only around 30-33% of the empire's total population were enfranchised in 212 prior to the edict. So this is a remarkable move and it's something that is quite avant-garde, it seems, for an emperor who's usually known as a bloodthirsty tyrant. He seems to want to secure this huge loyalty base after the murder of Geta, and this is one of the ways he does it, just by making everybody citizens in one move. It's incredible. That is one of the big events of Roman history, isn't it? If you could do the big, big hitters, just don't want to understate just how significant a moment this is.

Yeah, it is a watershed moment for how citizenship is perceived, certainly. There have been a lot of arguments about what is the actual application of it. It could be just a kind of legal expedient to make everything a bit smoother. It could be a political expedient, as I've argued, to kind of make everybody accept the new narrative that Caracal is laying down, that Geta was this villain. But whatever the rationale for it, it's a remarkable move, which is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Register, I think it is. So it has a very, very esteemed now afterlife, but it's introduced by this kind of murderous villain who spends the next five years on campaign on the Northern Frontier, and then eventually the Eastern Frontier frontier where he wages

war on Parthia. And if you're looking for the kind of the spark notes, the short version, he raises an army basically wherever he goes, through Germany, through Thrace, through Greece, into Asia Minor. The only other really important point that I would raise for listeners, if we're doing a very short version of Caracalla's reign here, is that he visits Alexandria, the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Now, Caracalla, you may know, is a big Alexander the Great fanboy. Oh, he loves him, doesn't he? Absolutely loves the man. Cannot get enough of Alexander. Claims that he's Alexander reborn, according to the senators, according to Dio, although I question that to some extent. Anyway, he arrives

in Alexandria. This is supposed to be the pinnacle of his imperial tour. I mean, he's going to the city of his idol, he's visiting the tomb of Alexander, and he's offering sacrifices to the god Serapis as well. Now, he stays there for a few months. He arrives in the winter of 215, and he leaves in the early months of AD 216. The visit has gone incredibly sour at that point though. There are sources, Dio Herodian, the Historia Augusta, they all agree that for some reason or another there's a breakout of civil disobedience, rioting in the city and Caracalla puts it down violently and the sources, while they may exaggerate slightly, they agree that he probably killed around a quarter of the city's population before leaving. I mean, it's a remarkable contrast, that emperor giving

everybody citizenship and then laying waste to one of the foremost cities of the empire before he leaves. It's a remarkable story of kind of extremities, I would say, as Caracalla's reign. And then his final months are spent on campaign against Parthia. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not release too much there. I can't get it. I apologize. Too many spoilers there.

Matilda, are there some really interesting things that take place in Caracalla's reign, whether it's like the people surrounding him that really helped set the scene of this, what seems to be kind of this new center of the Roman Empire whilst Caracalla is traveling, which is the eastern part of his empire? Well, sure. I think that one of the really critical things that we see happen in this period during Caracalla's sole reign is his mom steps in, Julia Domna, who has been Empress of the Roman Empire for the past however many years that Severus reigned, was there at the moment of assassination when the elder son kills the younger. And after Gaeta's death, or even before Gaeta's death, she's granted

all of these extravagant titles. She's granted more honorary titles than any empress had previously been given. She's named mother of the army camp, of the senate, of the fatherland. She's named Pia Felix. These are titles that have only, those last two had only previously been given to emperors before. So we're seeing these honors lavished upon her and we don't really know what those mean. There's some debate in the scholarship, but we do get a sense that she's kind of stepping into almost an admin role for Caracalla. She's answering imperial letters. She's traveling across the empire with him and eventually ends up in Antioch as this eastern imperial center.

She's answering letters. She's receiving petitions. She is holding public receptions for all of the most prominent men. The actual text of the dio passage where this comes from the Greek, it says these are imperial receptions. These are official public events. And she's sorting through all of the mail. She's kind of the main admin on board. She's included in letters sent to the Senate. This looks like a sort of official position. And this is a more, I would say, official recognition from the sources of a role held by an empress like this than we have seen before. So Caracalla is making this movement eastward. He's a military emperor.

We see him doing all of these sort of incredible and horrible things. And we know that there's got to be sort of a gaggle of administrators around him that are helping him rule this empire as he is leading the army. And his mom is one of them, which is incredible and becomes important to the Macrinus story. I mean, it absolutely does. But something which blows my mind straight away is, isn't Julia Domner the one who, at least in one colourful story, her younger son Getter is murdered in her arms? And now she's actively supporting her other son who killed her other son. I mean, it is absolutely brutal stuff where sometimes you have things like Game of Thrones where it's fictional stuff, but the actual history of certain events is more interesting than fictional stories, and this feels one of them. It is absolutely mad. It really is, and it's brutal to think about. Our sources talk about it a lot. How does she cope with this? We are told that she's pushed out of the public eye, and I've never really

known how I feel about that description of her sort of disappearance from the public face of the imperial family following Gaeta's death. I don't know if it's that Caracalla says, mom, you got to get the hell out of Dodge because I don't want you here and I need to do this myself. I'm a big boy now. Or if it's really that she needs time to grieve. And we get a little bit of both from the source tradition. But in the end, she kind of steps up and does what she has to, I suppose, for her last remaining son. Yeah, I mean, family dynamics are complicated in the Roman imperial period. I mean, I suppose you could make the argument for any monarchical or autocratic system.

What goes on within the family dynamic is an absolute mystery. And that, for me as well, is one of those big mysteries. If Daiwa is correct that she was in the room at the point of Geta's murder, then it is to our modern sensibility absolutely unthinkable that she could then go on and be the faithful servant and the administrative figurehead of this regime for another four and a half, five years. It is utterly, utterly remarkable. I mean, Daiwa paints her in a very particular way, as I'm sure Matilda will talk about later. He depicts her as being kind of power-hungry in her own right.

So there's a little bit of a complicating factor in how our ancient literature talk about Julia Domna in as much as she's a powerful imperial woman and she can't really shake that baggage from some of these rather conservative men. But it is, to this day, one of these big mysteries. How on earth did they work that out? It's a very difficult dinner table situation thereafter.

Well, let's move on to the figure of Macrinus and how he fits into this dysfunctional family and this time of Caracalla in the East. Alex, first of all, who was Macrinus? That is the million-dollar question, isn't it? I think our sources give us a very particular version of who this individual is, but often he is a foil either to the violent extremity of Caracalla or he is just the pre-runner to the later Severan era. I mean often when you read even textbooks about this era you'll have the Severan era and Macrinus will barely get a mention such as the kind of limited amount that we know of him. In terms of his background we know that

he was born in the Roman province of Mauritania so on the North African coast and he was something this is something that will become important for his story later. He was not from a senatorial family. He was not from a highly aristocratic family. He was a member of the equestrian order. So that second property class of Rome. And I don't want listeners to think that, you know, this is a kind of middle class for want of a better description. These people are still often obscenely wealthy. It's just that they don't have the family bloodlines of the senatorial order. The equivalent, some said they're like the knights or something. Is that right? Absolutely. I mean, the name, the Ordo Equestria, the Equites, it really all has that kind of

equestrian knightly vibe to it. And historically, it was, you know, these people could afford horses to engage in warfare with, but certainly it's by Macrinus' time, it is just a large social class within Roman society. And so this is the kind of context into which he's born. Dio and Herodian are fairly in much in agreement that he is trained as a lawyer and he i think it's daio tells us that he's maybe not the most inventive legal mind out there but he is quite diligent in his following of the law and this seems to bring him into the orbit of the praetorian prefect in the early third century plotianus infamous for his attempted coup later on against the severans yes we talked about him in the last episode didn didn't we? Yes.

We did, yep. So sort of the internal problems that the Severan household faces in the third century, a lot of it comes down to this Plotianus figure. And according to Dio, Macrinus is quite lucky, not to be tarred by association and gotten rid of after the Plotianus affair. But it seems that for a while he holds junior magistracies thereafter. I think the one office that Dio tells us Septimius Severus allows him after is kind of like a traffic superintendent on the Via Flaminia. So it's a little bit of a kind of step down from working in the Praetorian prefect's office. Waving flags, like red and green flags, which wagons can go kind of thing on the street side.

Well, that's how I like to imagine it. I'm sure it was probably much more administrative, but I do like to imagine him as a kind of glorified traffic cop for a few years in the wilderness. But he eventually, as Severus's reign goes into Caracalla, his career seems to steadily increase again. He occupies a number of procuratorial posts and ends up as Praetorian Prefect himself. The one thing that I guess I would add is just my quick review of the sources this morning. Macrinus is really pushed as the legal nerd Praetorian Prefect along with his co-prefect who is sort of the military commander. So even under Caracalla, he's viewed as this kind of pencil pusher, dorky lawyer, which stands very much in stark contrast from

the Macrinus figure that I've seen in these Gladiator trailers. And I just can't get enough of it. It's been cracking me up. But yeah, I mean, that legal history, that's really what we know of him. And I think the thing that has been interesting to me thinking about sort of the interaction with women is whether this bureaucratic role that he's always had puts him in any contact with the imperial women earlier in the reign. And there's no way that we can tell, but it would make sense if they sort of ended up working on some of the same objects, maybe. They certainly would have known one another. They're helping with the bureaucracy and all of that. So funny, like the legal nerd of the two and of course you've highlighted there's you know there are two praetorian prefects aren't there which is a nice interesting other factor to highlight well let's get on to the main kind of well the first big main event in macrinus's story

is rise to power so what is the situation in the east in early 217 that ultimately results in the fall of caracalla and the rise of this pencil-pushing Praetorian prefect, Macrinus. So in early 217, Caracalla is in the midst of a military campaign against Parthia, against the Parthian Empire. This is something that he had started in 216. That's Iraq area today, isn't it? Yes, that's correct. And under the Parthian royal household, we've not quite got to the stage in history where this becomes the much more aggressive Sassanid Persian regime. We're still in the final years of the Arsacid Parthian royal household. Now, the campaign that Caracalla wages has been rather inconclusive to everybody's frustration. The first campaigning

season, 216-17, appears not to have produced a single meaningful clash between Roman and Parthian forces. I think its Herodian gives us this rather convoluted idea of Caracalla trying to outsmart the Parthians at a wedding reception, which is, I think, a lot of historical bunk. But in reality, it's been a frustrating year of campaigning. Caracalla wages another campaigning season immediately because that's basically his style. That's him. He is a soldier emperor at that point. And it's quite clear, I think, reading between the lines of our sources, particularly Cassius Dio, that this is not going well. The soldiers themselves are starting to get a little bit frustrated, I think, with the lack of any kind of decisive outcome. And importantly for Caracalla,

we've seen a real diminishment in his imperial concilium. That is to say, the group of senators or people that would usually surround an emperor and offer day-to-day advice. The account that Dye offers us is very fragmentary, but it suggests that basically there's only one senator left in that circle at all, this consular guy called Aurelianus. So Caracalla is in the field, mired down in a campaign which doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Macrinus is there as Praetorian prefect, but it seems that there is a much smaller circle around Caracalla at this point as well, as everybody seems to be getting increasingly fed up with him as an Emperor as much as a Commander. His mum's not there at the moment either, so his family members aren't there.

He's in the midst of the campaign. The campaign's not going well. Soldiers getting more angry. I feel like we've seen this type of scenario again and again in history. I'm guessing then the soldiers, they just decide to take matters into their own hands and Macrinus takes advantage. I would say about that much. My favorite, I can't remember which source it's in specifically, but we get this very detailed narrative of Caracalla's ultimate demise. There's a lot that kind of begins to boil under the surface. In Dio, we get a letter from Rome is sent to Julia Domna reporting a prophecy that Macrinus and his son, Diadumenianus, will take the purple. And another letter simultaneously sent by Julianus from Rome to Macrinus. So we have these two letters speeding across the empire. And Domna, who was sorting the mail,

like a good mother administrator in Antioch, opens this letter and goes, my God, my son is going to get assassinated and she is too late. Caracalla meets his fate. He's traveling and I believe this is in the dio. Alex, you'll have to correct me here. He stops and says, I need to relieve myself, and then gets stabbed in the back, which is a hell of a way to go.

Yeah, yeah. Caracalla has been in the midst of this rather frustrating campaign. It seems visiting a number of local sites and towns and religious sites and he's been to a lunar deity near the site of carai which you know those of you that maybe know roman republican history know that that is a kind of disastrous area for rome generally crassus yeah crassus meets his gold-plated finish near carai and it's on the way back from that visit that he stops to empty his bladder and his guards, or at least an officer within the guard, descends upon him and stabs him brutally. And yeah, like Matilda, I just love this idea of these two letters coming across. It's highly dramatic. It's very daio in as much as the whole thing is kicked off by this portent or this prophecy. There's no real

insight into the nitty-gritty of what's going on. Actually, it's all down in our literary sources to this prophecy that Macrinus will seize power and his son will be named an emperor as well. It would be interesting to know exactly what was really going on in the military camp around that point. But one way or another, Macrinus feels vulnerable and it seems that he doesn't waste any time to take action, lest the letter from Antioch get to the front and reach Caracalla's eyes before he can do anything. I mean, well, it certainly makes for good television, I must say that. What a way to go for Caracalla. That's terrible. What happens next? Is there an immediate reaction? If Macrinus has not killed Caracalla himself, how does he then take advantage? Does he know that

he's got these powerful figures, and let's say the assassin as well, that they're very much on his side? Has he got a plan as to what happens next? There's different narratives. My favorite one is Herodian tells us he weeps over the body and is so sorrowful. Good acting, yep. All the while has organized this from the get-go and then sends the ashes of Caracalla back to his mother in Antioch where she promptly says both sons are gone and ends her own life. Alex, I'll let you get into the intricacies of the better narrative. Yeah, it does seem, no matter who you read, that there seems to be a brief interregnum because Macrinus can't step forward and say, right chaps, we did a good job here. It's my turn now. There's no way that that would be acceptable even with just the army surrounding

them. So Macrinus, I think Matilda's right to say that's probably what he does. He makes this great show, oh my goodness, there's been a murder, and the assassin is hunted down by some of Caracalla's loyal bodyguards and is killed. So in a way that helps Macrinus, because there are no loose ends to implicate him at that point in the murder, even if later on the kind of story creeps out that he's been implicated in some way. And so it seemed that there are at least a couple of days between the murder of Caracalla and the accession of Macrinus where the army, those who are around from the imperial court, are more or less compelled to put somebody on the imperial throne. The army is hundreds of miles into enemy territory at this point. The Parthian king seems to be

raising forces to counter the Roman army in this region. An army, an empire without a commander at this point is unthinkable. And so Macrinus, as one of the most senior magistrates of the court, is apparently installed at this point. And this in itself is a remarkable chain of events because, as I said earlier, Macrinus is an equestrian. That does not happen. Macrinus is the first man of equestrian status to achieve the purple. This is a real watershed moment for who gets to be in charge of the Roman Empire.

So Macrinus is taking advantage of being there in the east, and the soldiers are deciding who the next emperor is, and making this unprecedented change. I mean, so, militarily, I guess he's now, straight away, he's got to deal with continuing that campaign. But, Matilda, at the same time, you've already mentioned how Julia Domna, so Caracalla's mother,

she's now lost both her children, she commits suicide. But I'm guessing there are also other members of the royal family that surrounded Caracalla, have royal blood. I mean, how does Macrinus then decide, how do I treat these figures? Especially if I'm in the East, what do I do with these other figures? So we need to go back because the first narrative that I told you, that's the one that's in Herodian. Dio tells us a totally different story. Julia Domna learns of her son's death, according to Cassius Dio. She's in Antioch. And Macrinus sends her a letter and he says, you can retain your title as Augusta, you can stay empress, you can retain your Praetorian guard,

so she keeps the imperial bodyguard, can do whatever you want just stay there and she does and she according to dio she considers ending her life and then she sort of gets it together a little bit and starts scheming with the soldiers who are around her and then eventually dies of breast cancer before anything can be taken anywhere. But this is an incredibly important moment. If what Dio is reporting is true, this is really unprecedented, or nearly unprecedented, for Roman empresses. The only precedent that we have is Domitia, Domitian's wife, who is reported, rumored to have been involved in his assassination and may have had more new imperial portraiture created under Trajan and left up around Trajan's forum.

She continued to be celebrated as an empress and sort of retired in luxury with her brickworks in Italy. That is the only precedent we have. So why Macrinus would decide to, you know, keep this woman on with a title, which did not happen for Domitia. She retired without the title, we know this from the inscriptions from her brick works. She keeps the title, she keeps the Praetorian Guard. She is still, you know, for all intents and purposes, Empress of the Roman Empire. still, you know, for all intents and purposes, Empress of the Roman Empire. And this is something that's very perturbing. I think to anybody who looks closely at this period, there's this huge question of why. And Alex and I were talking about this prior to sitting down with you, and we kind of, we still have not really been able to wrap our minds around it. It is part of why I

kind of wanted to bring up, you know, is it just that they know each other because they've been in these bureaucratic circles? Is it that Macrinus is like, well, I just like this woman. Does he already know that she's dying from cancer? I've just overseen the murder of her son, but I quite like the woman. So I'll leave her alone. Does he know that she's dying of cancer? And so he wants to, he presents himself as an, he adopts the name Severus to present himself as a continuator of the Severan dynasty. He elevates himself on Septimius Severus's birthday. Is he trying to use her to create this continuity with the

Severans sort of artificially knowing that she's really not going to last that long? It's a big question mark. It's really, really interesting. This doesn't happen with any other empress at any point, especially for one who is so incredibly influential and involved in the running of the empire. And Macrinus really shoots himself in the foot here because he, you know, allows Julia Domna to survive. And she eventually, you know, dies, I think, a couple of months after her son, probably in the summer of 217. And all around her are her family, her older sister, and her older sister's two daughters, each of whom have a son. And she sends this family back to Emesa, the familial sort of home place, which is sometimes described as sort of a backwater in Syria, but has a massive temple

to the deity, the solar deity Elagabal. And Julia Maesa promptly enrolls both of her grandsons in this priesthood, which is the ancestral priesthood that her family has belonged to and has tons of money and tons of property at her disposal. And Macrinus, thinking that this won't be an issue for him, allows them to kind of retire. And Maesa immediately starts scheming and brings in nearby legions and starts bribing them and sort of fomenting a new Severan dynasty at Coup to put her grandson, Elagabalus, on the throne. I think we'll get back to that in a second. But I mean, you've mentioned that.

I mean, it is a really interesting part of the story. But Matilda, just to clarify, because you said a few names there. So Julia Domna dies, but she lays the seeds for fomenting rebellion against Macrinus very early on. Julia Maesa, this is a new name. That is Julia Domina's elder sister, is it? Yeah, it's her big sister. And quickly introduce, who are these children of Julia Maesa who are also part of this family? We'll just introduce their names now and then come back to them a bit later.

Sure. Her elder daughter is named Julia Soamius. These are all women with the name Julia, and so it gets very confusing. Her elder daughter is named Julia Soamias, and she has a son who is the future Emperor Elagabalus. And then her younger daughter is named Julia Mamea, who also has a son who is the future Emperor Severus Alexander. And at this point, all of the men in the family, the husbands of Julia Soamius and Julia Maesa certainly have died. And so, you know, one reason that Macrinus would not view them as a threat. These are women without sort of any male familial support. And the husband, it appears that Julia Mamea has a

second, she's in her second marriage to somebody who has not really had a formidable career that would make him a threat to Macrinus's fledgling reign. All right, well, there you go. Well, you've got those lots brewing in the background and we will come back to them. But if we focus back on the figure of Macrinus, Alex, so he's spared Julia Domna and Matilda's just given that story of the other Julias as well. But of course, this is on the eastern part of the empire and he's been elected and he's unprecedented. He's not one of the most elite figures of the Roman empire, not belonging to the royal family either. As news starts filtering back to the heart of the

Roman empire and places like the Senate, really Macrinus must be a little bit worried about if his title as the new emperor will be confirmed. I mean, what's going through his mind as he's also got this military venture that he's now got to deal with at the same time? What do you think is going through his mind? What does he have to do to try and consolidate his position really quickly? It seems a difficult position. Oh, it's undoubtedly a difficult position. And it's ironic, though, you say that he would be worried about news getting to Rome. It seems that Rome is probably the safest environment that he could have been in. Certainly Dio and Herodian a little bit less. They say it's questionable why he didn't just disband the army immediately upon ending the Parthian campaign, which we'll get onto in a

moment, and just hightail it back to Rome. Why he dallied in the East and why he himself ended up in Antioch for a while, it seems that he himself wasn't sure how to respond to the kind of myriad problems and myriad little situations that he was facing as emperor, and that would ultimately cost him his life. In the immediate sense, he does send letters to the senate in Rome and it's interesting the way he tries to kind of seize the initiative but also pander to the senate as well in his first letter he apparently just claims a bunch of imperial titles and this is where his imperial nomenclature changes and he adds Severus to his naming tradition the senate are a little bit confused by how presumptuous this new de facto

emperor is being, I think, by claiming all of these imperial titles. But at the same time, they're just tremendously happy that somebody has gotten rid of Caracalla. And so in the very short term, they're just kind of happy to let things roll and let him be the emperor. Now, his second letter follows after he concludes the Parthian campaign. He initially tries to negotiate with the Parthian king because the Parthian king's bearing down on the Roman army at this point. The Parthian king's having none of it. He wants Rome out of the Mesopotamian region. He wants them to rebuild all of the forts that they've destroyed at their own cost and basically to apologize to everyone on their way out. And so, you know, rebuild the wall, I suppose you could use a modern political parlance.

Now, Macrinus refuses. I mean, he's in no position to accede to that kind of demand. And indeed, it would have been political suicide with the army around him to be seen, I think, to surrender everything. So he has to fight, initially at least, and that doesn't go very well. The Roman army is defeated in the field at Nisibis, and he has to come to another negotiated conclusion. Now, in historical terms, he doesn't give away as much as the Parthian king seems to have wanted. So it's not a completely dishonorable peace. And yet, in his communication, he's trying to big this up, that he has secured peace with honour. And this is where the threads start to unravel, because not everybody accepts this narrative. And certainly the army, while they may have been frustrated by Caracalla's campaign,

this slightly ignominious end to their campaigning does him no favours either. And so I think it's very easy to see with hindsight how Macrinus, his regime, comes unfurled within the space of months, but it would be a mistake to class him as inactive. I think he gets an unfair rap. I think he is dealing with a very difficult and unprecedented situation. He's having to set a new political narrative in motion at the same time as having to inherit a campaign of his predecessor, which is less than stellar. And I think this whole move about keeping the Severan women alive, yes, sure, we know it's a strategic tactical error.

But if he is trying to paint himself as the Severan continuator, as a way of kind of glossing over his equestrian heritage, it seems to me at least a sensible move. I mean, I would hate to sort of put myself into McRinus's shoes, but I think it's coherent as a set of policy. So I think there's a reason why he doesn't retreat to Rome immediately. But I think ironically, that may have been the one course of action that could have saved his regime long term. He aligns himself with the Severans, but also his son as well. He's got a young son at this time. Is he a very young son or teenage? Do we know much about that? So he's barely 10 years old. Is that right, Matilda? Yeah, born around 208. So he would be about 9, 10 years old.

And he's initially named as Caesar. And that is the extent of his formal acclamations that get agreed by the Senate. Macrinus will later name Diogenes and his son as a co-Augustus in the kind of frantic last few weeks of his regime. But the Senate barely even hear about this by the time he's assassinated. How does it all start to unravel for the poor of Macrinus? So he's made the critical mistake of underestimating Julia Domna's big sister, who he's sent back to her power base. This family are the descendants of the priest kings of Emesa, so they already have

tremendous regional influence. Also, Julia Domna had, at the very beginning of the reign of Septimius Severus, already been aligned with the military pay on the coinage issued in the East. We see the very first coinage issued with liberalitas, military distribution reverses struck in her name. So when Julia Maesa comes in and she says, I'm going to give you guys money, I think that it probably makes a lot of sense to people that she really will pay up. They're used to the women in this family giving the military lots of money. So she comes in and she says, I have these two grandsons, and they have both been enrolled in the Temple of Elagabal. And from what we hear, the Third Gallic Legion,

which is stationed near Emesa at Raphanea, are really big fans of the cult of Elagabal and they love to come to the temple and watch the ceremonies. And they think that the beautiful young Elagabalus, the head priest, is really doing a fantastic job. And she says, oh, well, by the way, he also is the illegitimate son of Caracalla. And I'm going to give you a hell of a lot of cash if you put him on the throne. And so it works. And on the 15th, the evening of the 15th of May, 218, Maesa and Elagabalus's mother, Maesa's older daughter, Julia Soamius, and her younger daughter, Julia Mamea, and Julia Mamea's son, Severus Alexander, all get snuck into the fortress of the Third Gallic Legion at Raphanea. And then the next morning on the 16th, they bring Elagabalus up onto the ramparts and they say, here he is, the son of Caracalla. He is

the legitimate emperor of Rome. and things kick off immediately. Do they actually think he was the son of Caracalla? Do historians think he was the son of caracalla do historians think he was the son of caracalla today no we have no uh we have his father's gravestone that was set up by julius to amias we know that he had a sibling at some point from that gravestone though we have no record of the sibling in the literary evidence. However, we do have provincial coinage that has Elagabalus on one side, his face, provincial coinage struck in the east, and then the face of Plautilla, Caracalla's executed and exiled wife on the other side. So clearly people are really running with this in the Eastern Empire and it seems to be working. He very much is accepted by a lot of

these Eastern legions. It takes a little while, it takes a couple of months, but Macrinus' forces respond pretty quickly. And his Praetorian prefect, Julianus, who's the one who, you know, throwback, sent the letter to Macrinus saying, by the way, there has been a prophecy that you are going to become emperor. We throw back to the beginning of this episode, he immediately marches on Elagabalus' forces and things with the second Parthian legion, I believe. Again, throwback to that legion. The one outside Rome, yeah. Yes, it's been brought east. Things go very poorly. There is an immediate coup outside of Raphaneia. His soldiers say,

we are going to join the Third Gallic Legion. We're joining Team Elagabalus. And they execute him and they behead him. And they send to Macrinus in Apamea, his head wrapped up with his ring, and they deliver it to him at a dinner. Yeah, it's kind of gruesome stuff. I mean, just to go back a second, I'm a little bit more cynical on the whole Elagabalus as the son of Caracalla thing. I think everybody knew this was complete hokum, but we're being offered so much cash that it was an easy conceit to accept. And also, I think it was probably a very thinly veiled statement by this quote-unquote Severan cause

that they have more bloodline claim to being the Severans than Macrinus with his new Severan name coming out of nowhere. And yeah, events at Raphina, I think, kind of show that the ground is ripe for the Severans to stage this counter-revolution. It's interesting that Macrinus, I think it's in Herodian's telling of this episode, sure, Julianus has been sent with detachments to try and secure the third legion. Macrinus is at Apamea because that is the legionary fortress site of the second Parthica

when it is in the east. So he is actively trying to court that legion at the point where Julianus is murdered. Herodian tells us that Macrinus gives this long speech and offers a bunch of money and a ton of honours and the troops at Apamea take the money, accept the honours and then one of them pulls Julianus' head out the basket to show Macrinus and Macrinus is just penniless defeated and that's it has to go back to Antioch empty-handed but at least with his head yeah pretty grim stuff I think it's also this is the point where as soon as Macrinus learns about Elgabalus's coup that he declares his son the young Diadumenianus to be Augustus and he also sends a letter to the Senate where he officially declares war on

the usurper and his mother and grandmother. And that comes from Dio, who we think would have heard this letter read out in the Senate. So that's a pretty incredible moment here where we have the emperor of Rome declaring war on a woman and child. That's the political faction that he's up against. It's quite something. It feels like this is the big test room, isn't it? It's all or nothing. I feel a bit sorry for his son who's basically been told, yeah, you're now co-emperor with me, which also means if it goes wrongly for me, it's going to go wrongly for you. Sorry. So all that feels missing from this tale to make it a Hollywood epic in its own right, like the real history of the story of Macrinus, is a big battle. Is that what we're getting to next? Is this the big climax of the story?

Oh yeah, there's a big battle, all right. The big battle takes place just outside Antioch, actually. The sources disagree a little bit on the location of the battle. Some want to see it situated further east, but it seems that in all of Macrinus's attempts to secure a power base, he really doesn't have a tremendously large force around him. It's mainly comprised of his loyal Praetorians and some other local formations that he has brought with him to fight this battle. And all of the defected forces that are now Team Elagabalus are on top of him and a large battle ensues. The account of the battle shifts and changes between our sources. In one telling, Macrinus' forces just don't put up a fight. They're steamrolled by the Elagabalan forces. But, and I think this is where Matilda can offer insights,

there is another telling where Macrinus' forces actually put up some kind of stiff resistance and Elagabalus' forces, all of these cheats and defectors, on the verge of breaking and retreating. Yes, this is one of my favorite moments of Roman history. We have Elagabalus' forces who are about to give up. They're really lagging and Elagabalus is there and he's trying to cheer them on. And what actually succeeds in getting them to put up a fight and ultimately defeat Macrinus and bring Elagabalus to the throne is the presence of Julia Maesa and Julia Soamius on the battlefield. Oh, fantastic.

And they step out of a chariot and with their cries and lamentations, according to Cassius Dio, they manage to kind of rally all of these soldiers and get them you know back in the game and that is how Elagabalus ultimately wins. Wow and so they win the day. Macrinus is he killed on the field? I mean what happens to Macrinus and his son after that if he's he's lost his army and now it looks like his game is up? It seems like both of them, Makrinus and Diogenes, actually survive the conflict itself and they make to flee. They are caught in different locations. It seems that Makrinus is caught in Bithynia, so that modern Turkish coastline.

That's quite far. That's near Istanbul. Okay, so that's pretty far. It seems like he's trying to make for a port to actually get out of Doge and maybe even go towards Rome. Maybe he's realised at this point that he has to get to the capital in order to raise any kind of significant resistance. I think it's Herodian's telling, although it might be Dao, it might be Dao actually because it's kind of supernatural. He gets in the boat and the boat starts to make progress. And then a contrary wind comes and forces that boat back into port. And Macrinus is captured thereafter.

And his captors don't really know what to do with him at first. But it seems like on the road back to Antioch, they make the decision just to assassinate him. And he is killed or beheaded en route. Now, he sent his son, I think, at some point in that escape, he's actually sent his son, so the sources tell us, towards the Parthian border.

He sent his son to follow on the good graces of the Parthian king after their negotiated settlement, which suggests that maybe, if there's any truth to it, maybe the settlement was a little bit more substantial than our sources want to accept.

But in any event, it's a futile effort. his baggage train or whatever his his cortege is caught and he is murdered in the middle of that escape route as well it's such a short story isn't it but like but full of so many different extraordinary events you've got it all and and it's like the dynasty of macrinus but it it didn't last very long. But still, for him to actually have got there in the first point from his pen-pushing Praetorian background and his non-senatorial background, and from Mauritania to North Africa, Morocco area today, it's an extraordinary story. Is it a story that continues to be popular with Cassius Dio and story that continues to be popular with Cassius Dio and senators and people in the Roman Empire following his execution? Or do the winners of this conflict decide to try and remove his name almost? In terms of his immediate political legacy, it's almost non-existent. He's condemned. He is a road hump, it seems, or a bump in the road, rather, in the otherwise uninterrupted Severan story.

it seems, or a bump in the road, rather, in the otherwise uninterrupted Severan story. His legacy is condemned by the new Severan regime, and that's really pretty much the end of it. As you say, it is so short, he's not really had enough time to lay down any more significant roots or create any kind of significant legacy. And certainly certainly while the senators seem to have been happy enough to accept him in the short term equestrian as he was Dio's account is just characterized start to finish by a rank snobbery as a senator against this this absolute upstart now Herodian's account is interesting because it's written slightly later it's written probably in the 240s maybe even into the 250s AD, at which point who gets to be a Roman emperor is slightly different. So we find a little bit more

emphasis in Macrinus' identity and Macrinus' apparent attempts to explain that identity in Herodian's account, but that's probably because Herodian was writing under the Emperor Philip the Arab, who himself was of equestrian descent and had risen to imperial power through military strength and through a coup that way. So that's quite an interesting way that Macrinus's identity is squared away by one writer owing to history repeating a little bit later down the line. Only a couple of decades, mind you, but still, the divergence in the sources there is quite obvious. Dio of his time, arch senatorial. Even though he's glad Caracalla's dead, he just cannot swallow this lower class person. Again, still obscenely wealthy, holding the imperial throne. Well, we'll wrap up the story of what happens next, the third century crisis and

the later severance. I know both of you find it really interesting, particularly you, Matilda. We've done a couple of episodes in the past about the sisters, Soemius, Moesa, Mame your, what are both of your thoughts on Makrinos, your overall thoughts on Makrinos and how he's regarded today? I mean, having done this chat and having studied this figure as part of your wider research over the past few years. Matilda, I'll let you go first. You know, I kind of feel bad for the guy. The Severins were not a terribly, for lack of a better word, nice family. And he seems like he really just kind of wanted to do right by the Roman Empire. And it seems like he kind of was doing right by the Roman Empire during his brief reign. I think he terribly underestimated the later Severan women and made a massive mistake in underestimating what these

women could do and the importance of the Severan bloodline coming through these women. But perhaps he deserves more attention than he really got because maybe if we had kept Macrinus, we wouldn't have seen the third century crisis. I don't know, Alex, what do you think? Oh, that's a bold statement. I think we're kind of heading in that direction, maybe regardless, but it is a really interesting counterfactual. I tend to agree with Matilda. I think Macrinus deserves a lot more attention. I think he is completely overwhelmed by the circumstances that he inherits. I think that's really the defining feature of him. Now, I'm somebody who would like to go back and revisit his rise to power, though, because this whole prophecy declaring that he will be an emperor seems a very neat way to explain it in narrative

terms and to kind of almost give him a blank slate or a green light towards this. I would like to know whether he was a little bit more calculating, you know, the protégé of Plotianus at one point. Has that kind of ambitious Praetorian identity rubbed off on him? The scheming bureaucrat. Yeah, well, indeed, that pencil pusher is there more than meets the eye to the pencil pusher, perhaps. But I think, yeah, I would tend to agree that he may even have had good intentions towards the imperial government certainly he wants to make that argument but just he entirely underestimates the the situation that he faces immediately militarily in the east politically with the the remaining severans and in kind of social class structure about just how acceptable somebody with his background will be wearing the purple

well what a legacy and it's nice see, as we mentioned at the beginning, how at least the name Macrinus is coming back into the public eye with Gladiator 2. His story, I don't think he would have ever thought that his story would go from the likes of contemporary Roman Senator Cassius Dio and the like, all the way down to the 21st century and Ridley Scott. But hey, here we are. And what a time period it's been. Guys, it is such a pleasure to have you both in the same room literally for this podcast episode I mean huge

flashbacks for me as well they said it could never happen it has and it's been fantastic and it's just for me to say thank you both for taking the time to come on the podcast thank you so much Tristan it's been a blast as always always. Thank you. It's been such fun. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Alex Imrie and Matilda Brown talking through the story, the rise and fall of the Roman Emperor Macrinus, the real history behind Denzel Washington's character in the new movie, Gladiator 2. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Thank you for listening to it. Please follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. You can also follow me

on social media. I'm on both Instagram and TikTok. Just search Ancients Tristan. You will find me doing lots of different ancient history videos. And don't forget, you can also listen to The Ancients and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe. As a special gift you can also get 50% off your first three months when you use code ANCIENTS at checkout.