Commodus’ reign was soaked in blood. It was one long flex.
He murdered rivals, purged enemies, and treated mass killing as a policy tool rather than a last resort. The historian Edward Gibbon describes him as having a “disgraced human nature.”
The unsettling thing about Caracalla is that he wasn’t obviously insane. He wasn’t flailing around in a haze of vanity or delusion.
There was a chilly logic to him. He approached power like a problem to be solved. If someone posed a threat, or might someday pose a threat, he removed them.
He was also a poor military leader despite endless campaigns and martial posturing. By the end of his reign, he had left trouble brewing across multiple fronts.
To be fair, Caracalla did leave behind a few notable achievements, including his monumental baths in Rome. Named after him. Modesty had left the room long ago.
Still, constructing an architectural masterpiece only gets the defense so far when the emperor in question had one of the highest body counts in Roman history.
Mini Biography Of Caracalla: Rome’s Murderous Emperor
Early Life
Caracalla, born Lucius Septimius Bassianus, was the son of Emperor Septimius Severus and Empress Julia Domna. The family came to power in the aftermath of the Praetorian Guard’s assassination of Emperor Pertinax.
Severus seized power in a chaotic year known as “The Year of the Five Emperors.” He marched to Rome and offed the replacement emperor, Didius Julianus, who had bought Rome at auction from the guard.
When his first wife died, he knew he needed heirs. He learned of a Syrian beauty who soothsayers predicted would marry a king. He wasted no time. Severus sought her out and quickly married her.
They had a happy marriage. What wasn’t happy were the offspring.
They had two sons, Caracalla and Geta, who hated each other from the get go. They were oil and water, different in every possible way.
The two bratty boys did nothing but shout and argue with each other. They stopped talking to each other. They moved into separate wings of the imperial palace.
Co-Emperor
Severus’ goal wasn’t just to rule but to found a new imperial dynasty.
To that end, he made his older son Caracalla a co-emperor at age 10. Not to help him rule, but to get the public used to the idea that he would succeed.
But Severus knew the job might be too much for one person. So he made his younger son Geta a third co-emperor.
When Severus died, two sons would be on the throne. This was anathema to Caracalla.
Already, Caracalla was tired of sharing power with the old patriarch. One day at battle, he rode up to him with sword drawn.
Severus lectured him. Caracalla remained entirely unimpressed. Besides, he likely knew the old man was on his last legs.
Murder of Geta: Fratricide
When Severus died, two men were left standing. Julia realized this might guarantee civil war. And indeed both men were already plotting to kill the other.
She tried to intervene and held a peace conference at dinner to clear the air. Just the three of them, no bodyguards.
It was a trap. Caracalla immediately saw the dinner as an invitation to eliminate Geta once and for all. His soldiers burst into the room and butchered Geta in his mother’s arms.
What Caracalla didn’t seem to realize, though, is that the people despised fratricide. Geta was not some disposable rival. He was an emperor’s son and a co-ruler.
The troops loved him. People liked him. He was affable and charismatic compared to his brother the scoundrel.
Geta also had plenty of supporters and adherents across the empire who were furious at the loss of their beloved. Caracalla was on thin ice. So what did he do?
The Cover Story
Well, like all liars, he invented a cover story. He claimed that Geta was trying to kill him.
He told the troops that he had survived Geta’s plot and acted in self defense. Then showered them with pretty words and promises of wealth and glory.
While pretty laughable, the troops fell in line. And, more confident in his power, Caracalla stuck to his foiled plot story. He forced the Senate to pass a decree of damnatio memoriae to damn Geta’s memory.
His name was erased from history and statues of him were smashed. Even images of him on the Arch of Septimus Severus were chiseled off.
Naturally, mourning was prohibited. Even his mother couldn’t shed a tear or face the sword.
Killing Sprees
That achieved, Caracalla began flexing his new imperial muscles even more. Executions began almost immediately.
Senators, political enemies, his own wife, and her family all found themselves in the crosshairs. Just think of that. He murdered the empress of Rome.
Then came the ruse. Caracalla announced amnesty for political opponents and recalled exiles back to Rome.
Clemency, however, was not on his mind. He was making a list and he wasn’t checking it twice. Caracalla wanted Geta’s supporters where he could see them.
And once he was ready, the killing began in earnest.
Ancient sources claim that 20,000 people died in the purges that followed. The exact number is impossible to verify. But even allowing for exaggeration, the scale was staggering.
Caracalla did not merely order executions. He transformed the Praetorian Guard into a roaming killing machine. They hunted perceived enemies, settled scores, searched for anti-Caracalla conspirators, and increasingly operated as instruments of terror.
This was a new level of brutality. Previous emperors had at least pretended executions served justice, however flimsy the charges. Caracalla now skipped such formalities entirely.
Cruelty was not incidental. It was his governing style.
Martial Obsession
Caracalla did not merely admire soldiers. He wanted to become one. Or at least become what he imagined a conqueror should look like.
He followed his father’s advice to keep the army happy. He raised their pay lavishly and honored them. Imperial taxes increasingly flowed from ordinary Romans straight into the hands of soldiers.
The arrangement suited everyone involved except the people paying for it.
With that accomplished, Caracalla marched his armies all over the known world. Most emperors used armies for conquest, defense, or territorial expansion.
Caracalla did too. But increasingly, war itself seemed to become the point.
He marched with troops, shared their hardships, and cultivated the image of a rough soldier-emperor. He wanted admiration. He wanted loyalty. He wanted to be seen as a warrior-king.
And Caracalla’s armies often behaved accordingly. Ancient sources describe troops turned loose with shocking brutality, given broad license to plunder and terrorize populations.
Following his illness, they increasingly resembled a greedy plague of locusts.
For Caracalla, military power was not simply a tool of empire. It was identity. The funny thing was that, for all his bravado, he was a subpar general.
Alexander the Great Obsession
Was this martial behavior simply military imitation? Most likely.
Caracalla had a lifelong obsession with his long-dead hero, Alexander the Great, the ancient world’s greatest conqueror.
He emulated Alexander in every way he could think of. He copied infantry formations and military tactics. He adopted his style and sometimes wore Greek clothing and period armor.
But admiration gradually drifted into something stranger.
Caracalla organized troops in imitation of Alexander’s Macedonian army and reportedly assembled special units modeled on his hero’s forces. He wanted people to see the parallels. Or at least not miss them.
He stopped short of declaring himself a god. Officially, at least. But he smiled snugly at the idea that people might see him as Alexander reborn.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Alexander conquered most of the known world before age 33. Caracalla mostly conquered people already unlucky enough to live under him.
And so deep was his cosplay that, upon hearing rumors that Aristotle may have had a hand in Alexander’s death, Caracalla reportedly placed followers of Aristotelian philosophy on his hit list.
Rome had seen emperor cults before. But this was no harmless historical fascination. It was an identity crisis with teeth.
Slaughter of Alexandria
In 215, the peripatetic Caracalla arrived in Alexandria. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this city to Rome. Alexandria supplied much of the empire’s grain and stood as one of the great intellectual and commercial centers of the ancient world.
Like everyone else in the Roman world, the Alexandrians laughed at Caracalla’s absurd self-defense story after Geta’s murder. And they laughed loudly enough for the emperor to hear.
Caracalla never tolerated mockery. Not from senators. Not from rivals. Not from anyone.
So his visit to Alexandria was never going to be cordial. It was only going to be sinister.
He staged a grand performance, announcing that he wished to recruit the flower of Alexandrian youth into the Roman war machine. Given his well-known devotion to the army, many proudly assembled their sons.
It was a trap.
Still seething over the city’s insults, Caracalla gave the signal and his soldiers descended. Thousands died in an instant.
Not content with slaughter alone, he turned his army loose on the city itself. They looted whatever they could carry and ravaged much of what remained. Caracalla later described the destruction as an act of “purification.”
Caracalla’s Impotence Problem
In 213, Caracalla fell ill. Ancient sources claim that during his sickness he was haunted by visions of his predecessor Commodus. Around the same time, writers also suggest that he developed sexual dysfunction.
Then things became stranger.
He accused Vestal Virgins of adultery and burned them alive. Men entering brothels were reportedly seized. Even carrying objects deemed offensive to imperial dignity could prove dangerous.
Ancient writers imply these actions reflected displaced rage. Others saw divine punishment, illness, or psychological decline.
Or perhaps they were simply doing what Roman biographers often did: building a neat story around a man who had already become a monster.
Because Caracalla was already deep into violence long before the illness arrived. And that matters.
By this point he had already murdered Geta, carried out purges, empowered the Praetorian killing machine, and ruled through fear. The illness may have made him stranger. But it did not create Caracalla.
No Interior Life
Apart from violence and military matters, Caracalla displayed little interest in intellectual pursuits.
Caracalla wasn’t a fool. He could be calculating and politically shrewd when it suited him. He was also a talented propagandist.
But he was limited. Perhaps if he’d spent more time feeding his brain, he might’ve made a better general.
Instead, he possessed almost no curiosity beyond armies, Alexander, and killing. His world was startlingly small for a man who ruled the largest empire on earth.
No philosophy. No culture. No law. No reform impulse. No intellectual appetite. No broader project beyond expansion and intimidation.
Crickets.
Not even a private life. After he murdered his first wife, he never remarried. He just scowled.
Why? He may not have cared at all. He no longer needed the dynastic politics that required empresses. Or, he was so paranoid that he didn’t trust anyone.
After you’ve murdered your brother, purged supporters, and watched conspiracies everywhere, adding an ambitious in-law network starts looking less attractive.
And in all this emptiness and mono-focus, he broke sharply with his hero. Alexander did not merely conquer. He explored. He absorbed cultures. He founded cities. He carried philosophers and scholars with him.
Caracalla mostly carried grudges.
The tragedy was not a lack of intelligence. It was a lack of interests. Unlimited power in the hands of a man with a tiny inner world is a dangerous thing.
Assassination
The puffed-up conqueror didn’t die a noble death. Quite the opposite; it was ignoble. Thanks to Mother Nature.
Caracalla was on the battlefield. And his imperial bodyguard, Macrinus, was with him. Macrinus had realized that, when you keep company with a genocidal lunatic, your time could be up at any moment.
So Macrinus preemptively plotted to kill him with several other conspirators. They just had to wait for him to be alone, a brief moment of vulnerability.
History had seen this before. Powerful men rarely die surrounded by armies. More often, they die alone. Ask Agamemnon or Commodus.
Then fate intervened. Caracalla ventured off the road to relieve himself. An assassin rushed forward and plunged a blade into the emperor.
For a man who spent years cultivating the image of an invincible warrior, it was a humiliating end. Caracalla died stabbed in the back with his pants around his ankles. He bled to death on the road.
The Defense: Citizenship & Baths
Even Caracalla’s prosecution must concede a few things.
In 212, he issued the Constitutio Antoniniana, extending Roman citizenship across the empire. On paper, it was one of the most sweeping acts of inclusion in Roman history.
Was this generosity? Not exactly.
New citizens meant new taxpayers. And taxes meant more money for armies, wars, and Caracalla himself.
Then there were the Baths of Caracalla. Unlike the emperor, they were grand, ambitious, and built to last. Massive and luxurious, they became one of imperial Rome’s greatest public works projects.
The irony is hard to miss. Caracalla may have lacked curiosity, restraint, or humanity. But he built excellent baths. Very practical.
However, these achievements do not erase Caracalla’s erratic life and frightening career.
He brought a reign of terror down on Rome, its enemies, and even its allies. He murdered a co-emperor, executed an empress, purged supporters, and ruled with the emotional maturity of a Roman hand grenade.
Plenty of emperors killed people. Caracalla simply took things further. He transformed murder into policy and cruelty into a governing style.
But even industrialized violence was not enough to earn him the title of Rome’s worst emperor. That dubious honor still belongs to Commodus.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my mini biography of Caracalla. You may find these other Roman histories interesting:
- History of the Rise and Fall of Rome
- History of the Roman Emperors
- Historical Facts about Rome
- Top 10 Worst Emperors Ranked
- History of Augustus
- History of Nero
- History of Caligula
- History of Julius Caesar
- History of Hadrian
- Tiberius, the Reluctant Emperor
Pin it for later.
