Geta Antoninus

189 – 211 · Generation XII · Co-emperor (r. AD 209–211) · Severan

Geta (AD 189 – AD 211). Co-emperor (r. AD 209–211). His name was chiselled off monuments across the empire after his murder — damnatio memoriae. The younger son of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna, he was made caesar in 198 and raised to augustus late in 209, during the British campaign in which imperial propaganda advertised a family happily sharing rule — Caracalla as their father’s second-in-command, Geta charged with administration. The reality was hatred. Once the brothers ruled jointly the palace was split into sealed halves, neither admitting the other’s servants, and they met only in their mother’s presence under heavy guard. Herodian says they considered dividing the empire itself, until Julia Domna’s opposition killed the idea. After a failed attempt at the Saturnalia, Caracalla lured him, unguarded, to a supposed reconciliation in their mother’s apartments, where centurions cut him down in her arms. Cassius Dio reckons some twenty thousand of his followers were killed or proscribed afterwards; scarcely a marble portrait of him survives.

One of 9 people of Severan (145–235) in this archive. Septimius Severus’s line, held together by the Syrian priestly family of his empress Julia Domna.

Parents

Septimius Severus (145 – 211)
Julia Domna (160 – 217)

Siblings

Caracalla Antoninus (188 – 217)