Caracalla was assassinated on April 8 2017 AD, while traveling with a small group of soldiers. He wanted to visit the Temple of the Moon outside Carrhae. The ancient historians tell us that the man behind it was the praetorian prefect Macrinus, who would briefly succeed Caracalla. The Emperor was fatally stabbed from behind during a sanitary stop by a centurion named Julius Martialis. The fleeing killer was caught and killed by one of Caracalla's bodyguards.
Coin minted in Carrhae.
Portrait of Caracalla with the text [ANTW]NEINO[C].
Moon crescent and star with the text KOΛ(onia) MHTPOΠ(olis) KA[rrhae].
Photo: British Museum.Caracalla was cremated in Osrhoene. The urn was placed in the Mausoleum of Hadrian, Castel Sant'Angelo. He was deified (Cassius Dio 78,9: "he was actually enrolled among the demigods, the senate, of course, passing the decree").
Denarius from the mint of Rome.
Portrait of Caracalla with the text DIVO ANTONINO MAGNO.
Eagle on a globe with the text CONSECRATIO.
RIC IV,2, p. 128 nr. 717. Reign of Elagabalus or Alexander Severus.
Photo: cngcoins.com.The last words of the biography in the Historia Augusta are:
Habet templum, habet Salios, habet sodales Antoninianos. Qui Faustinae templum et divale nomen eripuit, certe templum quod ei sub Tauri radicibus fundaverat maritus, in quo postea filius huius Heliogabalus Antoninus sibi vel Iovi Syrio vel Soli - incertum id est - templum fecit. He has a temple, he has Salii, he has Antonine sodales, this man who took away the temple of Faustina and the divine name, certainly the temple, which her husband founded at the foot of Mount Taurus, on which afterward his son Heliogabalus Antoninus built a temple either to Syrian Jupiter or to the Sun - it's uncertain to which. Historia Augusta, Caracalla 11,6-7. The city with the temple at the foot of Mount Taurus is Halala in Asia Minor. This is where Faustina the Younger, wife of Marcus Aurelius, died. It was renamed to Faustinopolis by her husband:
Fecit et coloniam vicum in quo obiit Faustina et aedem illi exstruxit, sed haec postea aedis Heliogabalo dedicata est. Marcus Aurelius made the village where Faustina died a colony, and built a temple in her honour, but this temple was afterwards consecrated to Elagabalus. Historia Augusta, Marcus Aurelius 26,4-9. We learn that a temple was dedicated to the deified Caracalla. The rest of the text is rather problematic. The ancient historian says that Caracalla took away a temple and the divine status of Faustina, but an inscription from Rome dated to 227 AD still speaks of the divae Faustinae, the deified Faustina the Elder and the Younger (EDR004983). Caracalla's biographer then explains that the temple of Faustina is in Halala, but Claudia Cecamore has noted that this part ("certainly ...") looks very much like a gloss, an explanation that was inserted in the text later, based on the biography of Marcus Aurelius. Both biographies state that the Emperor Elagabalus (218-222 AD), who pretended to be a son of Caracalla, dedicated the temple of Faustina to a deity that must be Heliogabalus (Sol Invictus), after whom the Emperor was named.
Cecamore also notes that the passage in the biography of Marcus Aurelius does not state where the temple was. She then argues convincingly that a temple of the deified Faustina should be looked for in Rome. In other words, the conclusion of Caracalla's biographer that it was in Halala is wrong. Then, using fragments of the Forma Urbis (the Severan plan of Rome) and taking into account the material found during excavations, she argues that the Temple of Faustina was the so-called Vigna Barberini-temple on the Palatine, the remains of which can still be seen near the Arch of Titus and San Sebastiano. This temple is known to have been a temple of Heliogabalus (Sol Invictus), dedicated by Elagabalus (the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian took place on the gradus Helagabali, the "steps of Elagabalus").
The conclusion seems inescapable that the Temple of Faustina was re-dedicated as a Temple of the Deified Caracalla (without taking away the divine status of Faustina), to be re-dedicated once more, a few years later, as Temple of Elagabalus.
The remains of the Temple of Elagabalus and the Church of Saint Sebastian on the Palatine.
Photo: Wikimedia, Lalupa.
