He Read the Warning Before the Emperor Did: Macrinus | The Caesars Ep. 24

Visuals are AI-generated reconstructions, except the real images credited below. In spring 217 CE a letter warned the emperor Caracalla that his guard prefect, Macrinus, was after the throne, and Macrinus saw the warning first. Soon after, Caracalla was murdered on the road from Edessa to Carrhae, and Macrinus became the first emperor of Rome who had never been a senator. A lawyer from Caesarea in Mauretania (today Cherchell, in Algeria), he made his young son Diadumenianus his heir, fought the Parthian king Artabanus near Nisibis and then paid for peace, and stayed in Antioch instead of going to Rome. In May 218 soldiers near Emesa hailed a new emperor, the teenage grandson of Julia Maesa. On 8 June 218 Macrinus fled the battle, shaved his head and beard, and raced for Rome in disguise. He was caught at Chalcedon and put to death, after ruling for a year and two months. In the film Gladiator II (2024), Denzel Washington plays a character named Macrinus, loosely inspired by the real prefect-turned-emperor; the film's Macrinus owns gladiators, while the real one, Cassius Dio says, was a lawyer from Caesarea in North Africa who rose to command the emperor's guard. The Caesars · Season 4: The Severans and the Crisis · Episode 24 (Macrinus) Watch the whole series in order: The Caesars playlist on this channel. ◀ Previous: Ep. 23 — Caracalla & Geta (see the channel) Next ▶ Ep. 25 — Elagabalus (see the channel) Chapters 0:00 Cold open: The Warning (217 CE) 0:49 The Moor from Caesarea 1:54 Never a Senator 2:35 The Empress in Antioch 3:13 Nisibis 4:07 The Beard 4:51 The Boy from Emesa 5:39 The Run Our sources disagree in places, and we say so. Cassius Dio sat in the Senate through these years and disliked Macrinus, not least for taking the throne without being a senator; his account of this reign survives only in part. Herodian also lived through these years but is less careful. The Historia Augusta's Life of Macrinus is the least reliable of the three, and nothing in this film rests on it alone. On the warning letter, Herodian says Caracalla handed the dispatches to Macrinus himself; Dio says the warning was held up while another letter reached Macrinus directly. On Nisibis, Dio says the Romans were beaten; Herodian describes three days of fighting with no clear winner, and the camels, the iron spikes and the heaps of the fallen come from Herodian alone. On his end, Herodian says Macrinus was killed at Chalcedon; Dio says he was taken back east and killed in Cappadocia; the Historia Augusta puts his death in a village in Bithynia. Quotations follow the Loeb translation of Dio and Echols's translation of Herodian. Sources Cassius Dio, Roman History 79 (Loeb) Herodian, History of the Empire 4.12–5.4 Historia Augusta, Lives of Macrinus and Diadumenianus Further reading: Parissa DJangi, "Who was the real Macrinus, Rome's North African emperor?", National Geographic (2024). Maps follow the Ancient World Mapping Center (Map 11.1, Campaigns of Marcus Aurelius and the Severan Emperors, 2011) and the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (via Pleiades). Real images (Wikimedia Commons; author, license) Bust of Macrinus, Capitoline Museums, Rome (José Luiz, CC BY-SA 4.0); Denarius of Diadumenianus (Classical Numismatic Group, CC BY-SA 2.5); Drachm of Artabanus IV, Hamadan mint (Classical Numismatic Group, CC BY-SA 3.0); Aureus of Macrinus, RIC 79 (Classical Numismatic Group, Public domain); Portrait of Julia Domna, Torlonia Collection MT 573 (Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart, Public domain) AGEWAKE from the Rendlow Network. #Macrinus #RomanEmpire #History 💬 Discuss every episode with other viewers: https://rendlow.com/community More from Rendlow 🎧 Our podcast, Unto the Land: https://open.spotify.com/show/3znsIq3... ▶ Unto the Land on YouTube:    • Unto the Land   ▶ Rendlow, the company channel:    / @rendlow   ▶ AI Flash Visions:    / @aiflashvisions   🌐 https://rendlow.com · All links: https://linktr.ee/rendlow