6b - The age of the Severans

Summary

IMPERIAL DESIGNATION AND LEGITIMATATION: THE PROBLEM OF SUCCESSION

The victorious contender of the civil war that followed Commodus' assassination, Lucius Septimius Severus, the governor of the province of Pannonia Superior and an African of Lepcis Magna, found it expedient to present himself as Pertinax's legitimate successor and hence assumed his name. Later, shortly after his first Parthian victory, when the decisive conflict with Albinus was imminent, in order to establish dynastic continuity (and also, as has been claimed, to justify laying hands on the imperial dynasty's patrimonium), he went one step further. He had himself adopted into the Antonine family, after which he proclaimed himself son of the god Marcus and brother of Commodus, who was duly rehabilitated and also made a god. He even gave his eldest son Bassianus (known to the troops by his nickname Caracalla) the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, as well as the title of Caesar, thus designating him as imperator destinatus and successor. In the situation of civil war after Commodus' death, such expedients were clearly expected to legitimize power – especially for an exponent of the ‘African clan’ and of the new provincial families that had recently joined the empire's ruling class. Dynastic legitimation served to cement the patron–client relationship binding the emperor and his troops. For the same reason the patron–client relationship was extended to other members of the imperial domus, such as Julia Domna, who became known as mater castrorum, a title previously held by Faustina the Younger. At the beginning of 198, after the conflict with Albinus, Caracalla was acclaimed as Augustus and his younger brother Geta as Caesar.