The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Next, Gibbon skips ahead to the aging Emperor Severus and his desire to establish a dynasty. He married Julia Domina, a woman of royal ancestry from the region of Emesa in Syria: “She was the patroness of every art, and the friend of every man of genius” (127). They had twin sons, Geta and Caracalla, whom Severus made co-emperors with him.

However, Geta and Caracalla hated each other and were unprepared for taking control of the empire. To give them experience with actual war, Severus took Caracalla and Geta with him during an attempt to conquer modern-day Scotland. According to Scottish legend, the Roman armies fought the local hero Fingal, although historical proof of Fingal’s mere existence is lacking. During the war, however, Severus became terminally ill.

As Severus was dying in Britain, he prompted the army to declare Caracalla and Geta both co-emperors. Still, the two brothers would only speak with each other in public. The emperors’ advisors convinced them to divide the empire, with Europe and western Africa going to Caracalla and Asia and Egypt to Geta. However, the idea filled Romans with “surprise and indignation” (132). On the pretext of meeting for further negotiations, Caracalla met Geta in his private apartments, where some centurions loyal to Caracalla killed Geta, who died in his mother’s arms.

Afterward, Caracalla rushed to the praetorian guard, who favored Geta as emperor. Caracalla claimed that Geta had attempted to kill him and had Geta buried honorably. Yet, Caracalla ordered the executions of Geta’s allies, even threatening to kill his own mother for publicly mourning Geta. To appease the public, Caracalla imposed heavy taxes to pay for entertainments and new theaters and palaces. Meanwhile, he punished unrest in the Egyptian city of Alexandria by having thousands of people massacred. Despite this, Caracalla was popular among the army because he raised their pay even further, dressed and acted like a common soldier, and “encouraged their insolent familiarity” (137).

Fearing that he was going to be executed because he was suspected of plotting against Caracalla’s life, the praetorian prefect Opilius Macrinus convinced a soldier named Martialis, who was refused a promotion, to assassinate Caracalla. Martialis was then killed on the spot. The Senate and the provincial legions acclaimed Macrinus the new emperor. Macrinus became the first emperor to not come from the senatorial class, but instead from the equestrian order. Macrinus promptly named his son Diadumenianus as his co-emperor.

Macrinus planned to gradually reverse the changes Caracalla made to the army. Unfortunately for him, Macrinus made the mistake of keeping the army together in Syria. Realizing their strength and what Macrinus was planning, they waited for an opportunity to choose a new emperor. They found one in Elagabalus, who was the son of Julia Domna’s sister, Julia Maesa. The rumor spread that Elagabalus was actually the son of Caracalla, whose popularity among the army was still remembered. Macrinus’s army battled the forces that defected to Julia Maesa and Elagabalus and lost. After fleeing the battle, Macrinus and Diadumenianus were soon caught and killed.

Elagabalus took the name of a Syrian sun god of the same name, since he was its hereditary high priest. With a great religious procession, Elagabalus introduced the cult of his god to Rome. Gibbon believes that the stories of Elagabalus’s sexual excesses are difficult to believe, so Gibbon argues that such behavior was more common among the empire’s elites because the nobles of Rome “lived without restraint in the patient and humble society of their slaves and parasites” (147).

Disgusted by their new emperor, the army started to turn to Elagabalus’s cousin Alexander, the son of Julia Maesa’s sister, Julia Mamaea. After Elagabalus enraged the troops by spreading a false rumor of Alexander’s death and trying to punish a mutiny, the soldiers killed both Elagabalus and Julia Maesa. The Senate dutifully proclaimed the “modest and dutiful” (149) 17-year-old Alexander as emperor.

Gibbon writes that Rome was not like the monarchies of Europe in his time, where the “gallant spirit of chivalry, and the law of succession” (149) allows women to become monarchs while at the same time women are barred from civil and military service. Due to these circumstances, Julia Mamaea had a difficult time claiming imperial power as regent. Still, she enacted a law that barred women from entering the presence of the Senate, but she took the “substance, not the pageantry, of power” (150). In other words, she was subtle about directing politics in her son’s name. However, Gibbon admits that she ruled wisely, establishing an advisory council out of the Senate and removing Elagabalus’s favorites from the government administration. Meanwhile, Alexander was given a philosophical upbringing, in which he was taught that “the service of mankind” was “the most acceptable worship of the gods” (151).

While Mamaea and Alexander were able to clean up the administration, they were afraid to deal with the army. Instead, Alexander tried to inspire a “faint image” of “discipline” (153) by personally visiting sick and injured soldiers and showing gratitude toward the army’s accomplishments. One minister who tried to reform the army, Ulpian, was murdered by the soldiers in Alexander’s presence. All he could dare do was have the officer responsible, Epagathus, reassigned far away from Rome. Another time, mutinous soldiers threatened the emperor himself and the emperor had to sternly order the soldiers to disband. Gibbon writes, “The administration of Alexander was an unavailing struggle against the corruption of his age” (155).

Commodus’s tyranny, the civil wars following Commodus’s downfall, and the fact the dynasty of Severus had enlarged the army and increased their pay made the military more dangerous. Gibbon also points to Caracalla extending Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire (157). Reflecting on earlier Roman history, Gibbon argues that, after Rome expanded into resource-rich or wealthy territories like Spain and Egypt, Augustus established a system where the riches of the provinces went to Italy but “a considerable part of it was restored to the industrious provinces by the gentle influence of commerce and arts” (161). Romans paid an excise tax on goods, especially luxuries, from the provinces. The money from this tax along with property and inheritance taxes were used to fund the military (162-63).

By extending citizenship to all Roman provincials as well, this also extended those tax obligations. These reforms also broke the old association between citizenship and service in the military. As a result, Italians began to work mostly as magistrates and lawyers while the ranks of the military were filled with provincials from the borderlands “who knew no country but their camp, no science but that of war, no civil laws, and scarcely those of military discipline” (166).