The Roman empire in 211 had two emperors, the brothers Caracalla and Geta. By the end of that year only one of them was alive, and he set about removing the other from the record as well.
The Horror
The killing is known from ancient writers, and the details differ between them. The date usually given is December 26, 211, which rests on the work of the scholar T. D. Barnes. Other dates have been proposed, including December 19 and 25, and even February 2, 212.
The outline of the story is this. Caracalla had already tried and failed to kill Geta during the Saturnalia, the midwinter festival, on December 17. A week or so later he had their mother, Julia Domna, arrange a meeting that was meant to be a reconciliation. It left Geta without his bodyguards. Centurions burst in and killed him in his mother’s arms. Julia Domna had been a key adviser to both sons, and her influence had helped hold the joint rule together.
The ancient sources do not agree on every point, and the Historia Augusta, one of the main later narratives, is notoriously unreliable and is best treated with caution. Herodian reports that the brothers had considered dividing the empire between them and that their mother opposed it.
What followed the murder is better attested than the murder itself. Caracalla ordered a damnatio memoriae, the official erasure of a person’s name and image from public life. The archaeological record shows that it was carried out thoroughly. Few marble portraits of Geta survive.
Cassius Dio says that about 20,000 men and women were killed or proscribed for their links to Geta. That is Dio’s figure and it cannot be checked. It is unconfirmed whether the true number was anything like it, though the ancient writers agree that the purge was large.
Another popular detail, that speaking Geta’s name was punishable by death, is not in the sources used here and is unconfirmed.
The Modern Relic
Two objects show the erasure better than any text.
The Arch of the Argentarii was completed in 204, put up by Rome’s money-changers in the Forum Boarium and partly built into the west wall of the church of San Giorgio al Velabro. Its inscription honoured Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta, along with Caracalla’s wife Plautilla and her father Plautianus. Plautianus was killed in 205 and Plautilla fell in 211, and both were later cut out. After Geta’s death his portrait was removed from the east relief, Plautilla and Plautianus were chiselled from the west relief, and the dedications to all three were taken out of the inscription. The gaps are still there on the stone.
The Severan Tondo is a small circular painting in tempera on wood, 30.5 centimetres across. It shows Septimius Severus, Julia Domna and their two sons. Geta’s face has been deliberately removed. Most scholars link this to the damnatio memoriae, although a minority have suggested that it was Caracalla’s face that was erased. It is probably Roman Egyptian work from the Fayum, dated about 200 AD, and it was bought by the Berlin museum from a Paris dealer in 1932. Wood rarely survives, and portraits like this were usually thrown away when an emperor fell, which makes the tondo the only surviving example of its kind. It is now displayed in the Altes Museum in Berlin.
