Caracalla

These migrations, driven by economic and social factors, played a crucial role in the formation of Jewish communities that later contributed to the emergence of Ashkenazi Jews as a distinct cultural and religious identity.

For much of the Roman period, many Jews did not have access to full citizenship, a situation that only changed in two hundred twelve CE when Emperor Caracalla granted this right to all free peoples of the empire.

Until the reign of Julian in three hundred sixty-three CE, Jews were also required to pay a special tax.

By the end of the Roman Empire, there was some freedom for Jews to form cultural and religious networks and engage in various local economic activities.

So how do we get then from ancient ethnos to religion? This was not a theological development, but a legislative one.

In 212, the Emperor Caracalla makes every free inhabitant of the Roman Empire a fully fledged citizen.

A single civitas, a single city, now stretches from Syria to Hadrian's Wall.

If one city determined one's gods, what happens when the whole empire is, in effect, a single city? The answer comes in 250, when the Emperor Decius devises a loyalty test.

And they put the...

Is it Emperor Caracalla? Anyway, puts the sword to his neck and cuts his neck a little bit, which is a real power play.

And he's like...

And he pushes it away.

I'm not bothered.

The opening text after that beautiful introduction is, 16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius, his dream of Rome has been forgotten.

Under the tyranny of twin emperors, Gaeta, I thought it was Gaeta, Gaeta and Caracalla, corruption flourishes.

Their ruthless aggression spreads like a plague throughout the empire.

Because of the dryness of the sands, things survive in this completely dry conditions, yeah

There is a, a, a unique, absolute unique panel portrait of Septimius Severus and his family, his wife, Julia Domna, and his children, uh, Caracalla and Geta.

Um, uh, it's now in Berlin, but it was found in Egypt, and it's a, a, a fantastically precious survival.

And there must have been thousands of these things originally, but they've just gone

No, it's a wonderful, wonderful thing, not least because the figure, the face of the, of the son, Geta, is, is, is, has been rubbed out, scratched out.

And that is because after Septimius Severus dies, those two boys, Caracalla and Geta, become joint emperors.

But then there's a power struggle.

Caracalla wins the power struggle.

In 200, Septimius Severus ordered the tomb sealed to the public and placed sacred books of magic within it to protect its secrets.

The last recorded imperial visit came in 215 AD with Caracalla.

Fancing himself Alexander reborn, he removed his tunic, ring, and belt, placing them on the coffin as a tribute.

Disturbingly, he would later massacre the Alexandrian populace in a fit of paranoia sparked by their mockery of his obsession.

And with that massacre, Caracalla forever proved that he was a reasonable person and ruler.

These visits confirm that the tomb was intact and identified at least until the early third century.

After that, things were going to start to get quite murky.

St. John Chrysostom, writing around 400 AD, posed the rhetorical question, asking where the tomb of Alexander was.

Mm-hmm

... because obvio- obviously there's other things that caused the currency to collapse faster, like Severus' son, Caracalla, is in a real need for money, so he's in a, in 212, he's gonna take about 30 million people and make them citizens overnight because now it changed the way they were taxed.

He could also tax their inheritance, so he's, he's really in a, in a need for new money.

But then also, if you look at how the military changes, that's, that's a really key component, too, because why would this military come back and say, "Hey, we're not happy with this money"? And that's because, for the most part, they had become less and less Roman.

What did he do to fix the currency? What was the, um, what was the benefit of that?

So I, I guess to, to kind of go a little bit before him, too, is, is kind of important because emperors realized that currency was a problem, and there, there's a numer- number of attempts to actually fix that.

You know, I mentioned Caracalla before.

He, he, uh, mints a coin called the double antoninianus, which is basically- About one and a half size of the denarius.