Caracalla

Caracalla was Roman emperor from AD 198 to 217, murdered his brother, and extended citizenship to almost every free inhabitant of the empire. Born in Lugdunum in AD 188 as Lucius Septimius Bassianus, he was the elder son of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna, and was renamed Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to attach the dynasty to the Antonines. Caracalla was a nickname from the hooded Gallic cloak he wore and popularised. He was made co-emperor as a boy and campaigned with his father in Britain, where Severus died at York in 211 advising his sons to enrich the soldiers and despise everyone else. He and his brother Geta ruled jointly and hated each other, reportedly proposing to partition the empire before their mother refused. In December 211 Caracalla had Geta killed in Julia Domna's arms, then ordered a damnatio memoriae — Geta's face was chiselled from reliefs and painted out of portraits, and thousands of his supporters were executed. The Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 granted Roman citizenship to nearly all free men in the empire. Its motives are disputed: Cassius Dio attributed it to extending the inheritance tax base, which Caracalla had also doubled, and it certainly served that, but it also completed a long process of assimilation and ended the legal distinction between Roman and provincial. He raised army pay heavily and debased the coinage to fund it, introducing the antoninianus. He built the enormous baths in Rome that carry his name. He massacred a large number of inhabitants of Alexandria in 215 after they mocked him. He was stabbed while urinating by the roadside near Carrhae in April 217, at the instigation of his prefect Macrinus.

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