There are three types of family that figure in the propaganda and policy of the Roman empire: the family of the emperor, the family of the imperial subject, and the metaphorical family that the emperor and subjects together constitute.
Emperors and public alike had ideals in mind for the various roles within these families; in this paper I will primarily be considering the role of the father in the three types of family. First let us consider the emperor as father not of his country but of his children. The careers of Pertinax and Macrinus, the two non-Severan emperors of the Severan period, reflect two competing ideals of the emperor's role as father within his biological family. Pertinax is commended by Dio for refusing the titles of Augusta for his wife and Caesar for his son, and for sending his son and daughter to live with their grandfather, where he would visit them from time to time as their father, not as the emperor. Dio censures Macrinus, on the other hand, for designating his underage son as his successor, and says that the senate was upset by a letter from Macrinus in which he repeatedly referred to himself as father and Diadumenianus as his son.2 Macrinus tried, unsuccessfully, to play to the desire for a strong dynasty among the populace and the soldiers; Pertinax played to the aristocratic fantasies of the senate. The aristocracy liked a clear boundary between the emperor's roles as father and as emperor, as a sign that he considered his power to have been conferred by the senate, and not his to pass on to his son without their approval. Convincing evidence of this attitude was something they rarely saw, so they were pleased with what they could get: Septimius Severus, who ostentatiously showcased his elder son as heir to the empire from the time of the break with Albinus, pleased the senate by declining to take time off when Caracalla broke his leg in a pony-race.3

In general the emperors did as Macrinus and Septimius and set little or no boundary between their roles as father and as emperor. Augustus had established the precedent by adopting his two young grandsons and rearing them in the imperial residence as sons and heirs. He advertised them assiduously, securing titles for them, issuing coins in their honor, and including them with Livia in public appearances. Marcus had done likewise for Commodus, and after he broke with Albinus and designated Caracalla as Caesar, Septimius consciously imitated Marcus' dynastic policy and distanced himself from the memory of Pertinax. Dynastic propaganda abounded in the official media of coins and monuments. Caracalla and Geta were on display at public events such as the decennalia and the secular games, and Caracalla in particular began to amass titles. The senate resented the blatant denial of their right to any say in the succession, but the message for the citizens of the empire was that they could count on peace and stability, since Septimius had provided for an uneventful succession.

Propaganda about the emperor's family could serve not only to advertise the stability of the dynasty, but also as a model of family life for subjects of the empire. Suzanne Dixon in The Roman Mother says of Augustus that he "stressed the importance of marriage and family life as a moral and sentimental ideal. Apart from legislative measures, he used the example of the imperial house." 4 That Dio understood this to be so is clear from the fact that he attributes to Augustus an injunction to the senators to admonish their wives as he admonished Livia.5 There is no such clear statement attributed to Septimius, but like Augustus he emerges in the sources as a devoted family man. He was clearly concerned that his wife should be perceived as virtuous and loyal and his family as happily united. The family traveled together, an innovation of Augustus' that had become the norm for emperors and governors.6 Septimius was believed to take a keen interest in how his family was portrayed, and to prefer the image of the unified, exclusive nuclear family: the Historia Augusta says that Plautianus fell from favor because he had his own portrait included in sculpture groups of the emperor's family.7 We have already noted how Pertinax deliberately separated his roles as father and as emperor; Septimius, on the other hand, was perceived as mingling the two roles. Herodian says that he made as important a decision as undertaking the British campaign with his sons' education in mind, and in the anecdote about Septimius lecturing his sons with cautionary tales on the importance of concord, it is hard to say where the concern of a father for his sons' future ends and that of an emperor for the empire begins.8

The emperor's pro-family propaganda was supported by policy. Septimius, like Augustus, attempted to promote strong, virtuous families not only by example but also in the courts. He encouraged prosecution of adulterers: Dio says that as consul he found 3,000 of these cases on the docket.9 Caracalla continued his policy of prosecuting adulterers zealously, even condemning some to death.10 Resentment and opposition to family propaganda and policy arose, and were expressed in the form of scandalous rumor. Julia Domna was rumored to be unfaithful to Septimius, and of Caracalla Dio says that "he was a notorious adulterer, as long as he was able."11 Dio reveals the connection between policy and gossip when he says that the senate protested against Augustus' moral legislation by making insinuations about his adulteries.12 One wonders why these emperors were so concerned to promote family virtues by example and legislation, at the cost of personal embarrassment.

In The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Stephanie Coontz argues that in the history of the United States society-wide concern for a strong nuclear family has been inversely related to civic-mindedness.13 When public virtues are perceived as distinct from and superior to private virtues, popular involvement in politics runs high, but when family virtues are considered the primary criteria of good citizenship, political life becomes contracted. Though strong, virtuous families are currently touted by some in the U.S. as the key to re-invigoration of the polity, emphasis on family virtues in the U.S. has historically accompanied a retreat from public life. At such times, "private family relations [are] less a preparation ground or supporting structure for civic responsibility than a substitute for such responsibility."14 When family relationships are idealized, the tendency for people to respond to a leader as to a father figure is exaggerated, and political discourse is greatly limited. Scandal and muck-raking flourish, according to Coontz, as the public, feeling cut off from political processes and unable to make a relevant evaluation of a leader's stand on political issues, limit their analysis to moral issues.15

I would like to suggest that an inverse relationship between family values and civic-mindedness was perceived and exploited by the emperors, at the cost of their own privacy. Thus Augustus' legislation and sermonizing encouraging large families and virtuous marriages among the aristocracy were part of his program for depoliticizing that group. Family men desire stability and make bad counter-revolutionaries, since those who oppose an authoritarian regime have to value their idea of the public good above their private happiness. The emperors, uninterested in creating heroes, promoted domestic encumbrances for their subjects. When the senators commended Pertinax for excluding his children from public life they were not only responding appreciatively to his renunciation of dynastic ambition. They were also praising him for setting a model of family life that they perceived as good for themselves. In the late Republic the aristocracy had romanticized family life as an escape from the dangerous world of politics; as the empire became entrenched they romanticized a life that left a man free to heroically follow the call to serve the state. 16

Augustus limited his efforts to strengthen the nuclear family to the aristocracy, the group that most urgently needed to be wedded to a new status quo if the revolution was to endure. Septimius at first followed his example, and found that the aristocracy responded no more enthusiastically than they had in Augustus' day, but defended their identity as political figures with the weapons at their disposal: slander of the emperor's family and solidarity in silencing scandal concerning their own order. But the aristocracy was harmless now, and the Severans' genius was for bringing the Roman revolution of Augustus up-to-date. Septimius turned his attention to fostering family life among the soldiers, a group that was rapidly becoming increasingly politicized in a way that could threaten the stability of the empire, as his own career showed. Marriages of soldiers of ordinary rank were not legally recognized when he assumed power, but Septimius acknowledged the importance of family life for military men by legalizing their marriages, strengthening their bond not only to their wives but especially to their children, who now became legal heirs. Historians in antiquity, aristocratic in their outlook, took a dim view of the policy. In at least two instances they attribute military insurrection to the soldiers' concern for their families at home, thus linking a perceived decline in discipline to Septimius' policy. It is worth noting that the Illyrian troops and the Alban legion, two groups closely associated with Septimius, come in for this criticism.17 But Septimius' policy had nothing to do with lack of discipline. He was bringing the soldiers' civil rights into line with their raison d'ˆtre. Soldiers of the empire were not to heroically lay down their lives for the common good, but to earn and enjoy a comfortable living maintaining the security of emperor and empire. It is possible that Caracalla legalized even more of the soldiers' marriages with the constitutio antoniniana, which along with citizenship arguably granted coniubium to every free resident of the empire.

According to Coontz, the contraction of public life in the U.S. corresponding to an increase in emphasis on family virtues is accompanied by a tendency to interpret political relationships in family terms. This idea illuminates Julia Domna's title on the Arch of the Argentarii, mater Augusti nostri et castrorum et senatus et patriae, a quadruple genitive that to me has the startling effect of a zeugma. Julia was mater Augusti in a literal sense, but mater castrorum et senatus et patriae in a purely honorific one. Yet surely the expression was not meant to startle, but to express and evoke sentiments that were commonplace. The relationship between the emperor's wife and various sectors of society given formal expression in titles as one of maternity was perceived as very closely analogous with the relationship between a mother and her son. It would be worthwhile to consider what this implies for expectations concerning the Augusta's behavior toward the public. I cannot discuss this at length here, but I would assert that her role vis-a-vis the empire was essentially maternal, and that she was expected to perform essentially the same tasks, for the same motivations, as the mother of a powerful man. The citizens owed her the respect a son owed his mother, whether or not she perfectly realized the ideal.

For the emperor likewise the title pater patriae represented an ideal relationship that might or might not exist, quite apart from the title. Hammond and others say that in the time of Augustus the title pater patriae was a sincere expression of gratitude, but that it had lost its meaning by our period, having become a perfunctory honor.18 I believe that in the Severan period the people thought of their relationship with the emperor in family terms as much as if not more than ever before, so that even if the title was perfunctory it was not meaningless. The meaning would lie in the degree to which it did or did not coincide with reality as the people perceived it. If the emperor was considered worthy of respect and love and thus fulfilled the role of a father, then the title meant that things were to that extent right in the world. Pertinax, for example, probably never even took the title pater patriae, but according to Herodian at his accession "there were scenes of wild rejoicing in which everyone hoped they would have a respected and mild constitutional ruler and father, rather than an emperor," and his death was observed by the senate as the loss of a kind father.19

But what if the emperor was a disappointment as a father figure? In that case the title would be a reminder of his unfitness to rule. To the extent that the emperor did not fulfill his role as father, popular anxiety would be expressed in unofficial media, i.e., wit and rumor. I would like to look closely at some of the scandalous rumors about Caracalla as examples of how the people expressed their disapproval of what we would call his crimes against humanity by interpreting them as family matters.

The official story of Geta's assassination was that Caracalla acted in self-defense when his brother made a treacherous attempt on his life.20 He was declared a public enemy and subjected to an aggressive damnatio memoriae. No legitimate medium for expression of disagreement with the official story existed, but unofficially much could be said with humor to insinuate that Caracalla was guilty of a treacherous fratricide. Helvius Pertinax, for example, suggested a new title for the emperor, Geticus Maximus.21 According to Dio and Herodian, the Alexandrians' humor about the fratricide was fatal to them.22 Caracalla became infuriated by their jokes and went to Alexandria during his tour of the empire, ostensibly to honor the city, but in fact to preside over a massacre of the inhabitants. Dio says that the emperor sent a report to the senate from his headquarters in the Serapeion during the massacre, describing sacrifices he was performing; the barely concealed message was that he was sacrificing the people of Alexandria to their god. In a separate excerpt Dio says that Caracalla dedicated on the altar of the Serapeion the sword with which he had killed Geta.23

This last detail has the ring of rumor. Dio was in the senate to hear the letter sent by Caracalla, so we can trust what he reports as its content. The reference to the dedication of the sword, however, is not excerpted in the same passage as the account of the letter, and it certainly seems improbable that Caracalla would have included it in a formal report to the senate. More telling is Dio's mention of one of the alleged portents of Caracalla's death, a fire that filled the Serapeion at Alexandria but damaged nothing except this sword, which disappeared completely.24 "A little before" the assassination is when this prodigy is said to have occurred, and as Caracalla died less than a year after the massacre, only a short and chaotic period is left during which visitors to the Serapeion should have been able to see the sword. The rumor may only have started after Caracalla's death.

Why this particular rumor? What does it reveal about attitudes toward Caracalla? It imputes to him a logic that sees the murders of the Alexandrians and of Geta as mutually justifying. It imputes a motive to him for the massacre, namely, the vindication of his own interpretation of the death of Geta as the just punishment of a dangerous traitor, a political rather than a family matter. Most immediately, it gives narrative form to the fear that the emperor would treat his subjects the way he treated his biological family. Those who circulated the rumor of the sword in the temple identified with Geta and saw Caracalla in the role of frater patriae.

The next major event after the massacre at Alexandria was the invasion of Parthia, beginning with the defeat of Artabanus at Arbela. Dio and Herodian both say that Caracalla had proposed to marry the daughter of Artabanus; according to Herodian, Caracalla ordered his army to attack the unarmed people of Arbela as they were gathered on the plain in front of the city, drinking and dancing and beautifully dressed, to welcome their princess's bridegroom.25 This historically dubious story is another example of the use of rumor to interpret the emperor's dealings with a large population in the light of his dealings with his intimates. The Parthians play the role of uxor Augusti: as Caracalla had killed his Roman wife Plautilla and her father Plautianus, so he would slaughter a whole city of barbarians.

We have looked at roles in three different types of imperial family: (1) the family of the emperor; (2) the family of the imperial subject; and (3) the family that the emperor and subjects together constitute. Septimius and Caracalla, by contrast with Pertinax, used propaganda and policy to promote all three types of family and, within them, the role of the father; I have attempted to show a connection between these two emperors' emphasis on family and their autocratic, anti-senatorial approach to government. Rhetoric, like rumor, can blur the boundaries of the three types: Dio's Augustus asks the equestrian order how he can properly be called father of his country if they refuse to have children, a conflation of types two and three.26 He was probably about as effective in his attempt to manipulate the public as the candidate for the U.S. presidency who, conflating types one and two, recently asked voters to consider whether they would rather entrust their children to himself or to his opponent. Such murky rhetoric is typical of the low level of political discourse generated by propaganda and policy that promote the family as the foundation of a stable society. When the public distrusts the propaganda or objects to the policy, they tend to respond with an equally impoverished substitute for political discourse. The most elevated response relevant to our period is the historians' indirect attribution of later emperors' military troubles to Septimius' legalization of marriage for soldiers. The accounts of the massacre at Alexandria during the reign of Caracalla show two popular types of response: humor at the emperor's expense, indulged in by the Alexandrians before the emperor's visit, and the horrific rumor of the sword in the Serapeion, circulated throughout the empire afterward.

C Copyright Caroline Bryant 1996

Richmond, Virginia

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 I would like to thank Professor Andrew Riggsby for his helpful comments.
2 Pertinax: Dio 73.7; Macrinus: Dio 78.38.2.
3 Dio 76.7.3.
4 Dixon, 74.
5 Dio 54.16.4.
6 Dixon, 25.
7 HA Sev. 14.5.
8 British campaign: Herodian 3.14.2; cautionary tales: Herodian 3.13.3-4.
9 Dio 76.16.4.
10 Dio 77.16.4.
11 Julia Domna: HA Sev. 18.8; Caracalla: Dio 77.16.4.
12 Dio 54.16.3.
13 Coontz, 97.
14 Coontz, 98.
15 Coontz, 110.
16 Dixon 25 ci