Geta
Cruel, tyrannical, militarily obsessed, Emperor Caracalla was never cut out to be the sole ruler of the Roman world. Then again he was never meant to be. Upon his father Septimius Severus’s death in 211 AD, Caracalla inherited the throne along with his slightly younger brother, Geta. The two had a toxic relationship, however, constantly bickering to the extent they considered dividing the Empire in half; Caracalla ruling the West, Geta the East.
On December 26 211 Caracalla met Geta in a reconciliatory meeting organized by their mother. There he ordered his Praetorian Guard to assassinate Geta, stabbing him fatally and leaving him to bleed out in his mother’s arms. Murdering apparently 20,000 of his brother’s remaining supporters, he then enforced a damnatio memoriae, ordering all images and inscriptional mentions of Geta across the entire empire to be erased and all coins bearing his name or profile to be melted down.
It wasn’t just his brother against whom Caracalla waged a war of memory. At the age of 14, he was made to marry a young aristocrat, Fulvia Plautilla, who for reasons lost to history he passionately hated. Eventually, he was able to charge and execute her father on the conspiracy of treason. He had Plautilla killed soon after, once his own father and controlling influence had died, strangled along with their young daughter while away in exile on Lipari. We know that while Plautilla enjoyed a prominent position in the imperial family (between about 202 – 205 AD) she had numerous portraits commissioned. Many have survived, but have been victims of attacks, chiselling gouging, and water damage.
Caracalla ultimately met the same sticky end as his brother. While away on campaign, preparing to launch a military offensive into Parthia, he stopped off to urinate along the road. He was suddenly approached from behind by a disgruntled soldier whom Caracalla had denied a promotion and stabbed to death. His assassination marked the end of his short-lived dynasty: the man who replaced him as emperor just three days later, Macrinus, was the former prefect of his Praetorian Guard.