Bust of Septimius Severus (Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki) |
3.15: Death of Severus in York
[211]  Now a more serious illness attacked
the aged emperor and forced him to remain in his quarters; he
undertook, however, to send his son out to direct the campaign.
Caracalla, however, paid little attention to the war, but rather
attempted to gain control of the army. Trying to persuade the soldiers
to look to him alone for orders, he courted sole rule in every possible
way, including slanderous attacks upon his brother.
 Considering his father, who had been ill for a long time and slow to
die, a burdensome nuisance, he tried to persuade the physicians to harm
the old man in their treatments so that he would be rid of him more
quickly. [4 February 217] After a short time, however, Severus died, succumbing chiefly
to grief, after having achieved greater glory in military affairs than
any of the emperors who had preceded him.
 No emperor before
Severus won such outstanding victories either in civil wars against
political rivals or in foreign wars against barbarians. Thus Severus
died after ruling for eighteen years, and was succeeded by
his young sons, to whom he left an invincible army and more money than
any emperor had ever left to his successors.
 After his father's
death, Caracalla seized control and immediately began to murder
everyone in the court; he killed the physicians who had refused to obey
his orders to hasten the old man's death and also murdered those men
who had reared his brother and himself because they persisted in urging
him to live at peace with Geta. He did not spare any of the men who had
attended his father or were held in esteem by him.
 He undertook secretly
to bribe the troop commanders by gifts and lavish promises, to induce
them to persuade the army to accept him as sole emperor, and he tried
every trick he knew against his brother. He failed to win the backing
of the soldiers, however, for they remembered Severus and knew that the
youths had been one and the same to him, and had been reared as equals
from childhood; consequently they gave each brother the same support
and loyalty.
 When the soldiers
refused to uphold him, Caracalla signed a treaty with the barbarians,
offering them peace and accepting their pledges of good faith. And now
he abandoned this alien land and returned to his brother and mother.
When the boys were together again, their mother tried to reconcile
them, as did also men of repute and the friends of Severus who were
their advisers.
 Since all these opposed his wishes, Caracalla, from necessity, not
from choice, agreed to live with Geta in peace and friendship, but this
was pretended, not sincere. Thus, with both of them managing imperial
affairs with equal authority, the two youths prepared to sail from
Britain and take their father's remains to Rome. After burning his body
and putting the ashes, together with perfumes, into an alabaster urn,
they accompanied this urn to Rome and placed it in the sacred mausoleum
of the emperors.
 They
now crossed the Channel with the army and landed as conquerors on the
opposite shore of Gaul. How Severus came to the end of his life
and how his sons succeeded him in the imperial power, I have described
in this book.
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