Dio Cassius, “Caracalla’s
Extortions”
The reign (211-217) of Caracalla gives an example of the demands imposed by the
state on the citizens of
[Caracalla] was fond of spending money upon the
soldiers, great numbers of whom he kept in attendance upon him, alleging one
excuse after another and one war after another; but he made it his business to strip,
despoil, and grind down all the rest of mankind, and the senators by no means
least. In the first place, there were the gold crowns that he was repeatedly
demanding, on the constant pretext that he had conquered some enemy or other;
and I am not referring, either, to the actual manufacture of the crowns—for what
does that amount to?— but to the vast amount of money constantly
being given under that name by the cities for the customary “crowning,” as it
is called, of the emperors. Then there were the provisions that we were
required to furnish in great quantities on all occasions, and this without
receiving any remuneration and sometimes actually at additional cost to
ourselves—all of which supplies he either bestowed upon the soldiers or else
peddled out; and there were the gifts which he demanded from the wealthy citizens
and from the various communities; and the taxes, both the new ones which he
promulgated and the ten per cent tax that he instituted in place of the five
per cent tax applying to the emancipation of slaves, to bequests, and to all
legacies. . . . But apart from all these burdens, we were also compelled to
build at our own expense all sorts of houses for him whenever he set out from
Rome, and costly lodgings in the middle of even the very shortest journeys; yet
he not only never lived in them, but in some cases was not destined even to see
them. Moreover, we constructed amphitheatres and race-courses wherever he spent
the winter or expected to spend it, all without receiving any contribution from
him; and they were all promptly demolished, the sole reason for their being
built in the first place being, apparently, that we might become impoverished.
The emperor himself kept spending the money upon the soldiers, as we have
said, and upon wild beasts and horses; for he was forever killing vast numbers
of animals, both wild and domesticated, forcing us to furnish most of them,
though he did buy a few. One day he slew a hundred boars at one time with his
own hands.
…In everything he was very hot-headed and very fickle, and he furthermore
possessed the craftiness of his mother and the Syrians, to which race she
belonged. He would appoint some freedman or other wealthy person to be director
of the games in order that the man might spend money in this way also; and he
would salute the spectators with his whip from the arena below and beg for gold
pieces like a performer of the lowest class. . . . To such an extent was the
entire world, so far as it owned his sway, devastated throughout his whole
reign, that on one occasion the Romans at a horse-race shouted in unison this,
among other things: “We shall do the living to death, that we may bury the
dead.” Indeed, he often used to say: “Nobody in the world should have money but
me; and I want it to bestow upon the soldiers.” Once when Julia [Domna, his mother] chided him for spending vast sums upon
them and said, “There is no longer any source of revenue, either just or
unjust, left to us,” he replied, exhibiting his sword, “Be of good cheer,
mother: for as long as we have this, we shall not run short of money.”
Moreover to those who flattered him he distributed both money and goods.