Avera, and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr. Kaylin Davenport,

senior lecturer in Roman history at Macquarie University. This is episode

CXI.I.

Purple by Merit.

With the murder of Caracala, one of the most unlikely men step into power,

and something tells me I'm going to get tired of saying that soon.

McCrinus is unassuming of the wrong position and the wrong class. He'd perhaps argue that he's the best man for the job,

but very few in Rome would agree with him. Here's Kalin Davenport.

All right, so where we left this off last time was with the death, the murder of Caracala.

Murder of the right word?

Probably murder.

I think murder, you know, that he was assassinated by a couple of the guards.

And this was because McCrinus found out through the letters that his neck was going to on the chopping blocks, so he

decided to enlist some soldiers in a conspiracy to get rid of Karakala before he did away with him. But there was no contingency plan after that. The plan was

kill Caracala and then everyone's gone right now what are we going to do?

Yes exactly I mean it was just you know an act of self-preservation on the part of

McCrinus. McCrinus didn't seize power straight away. There's a couple of

days passed by when the soldiers debate what to do. They end up with two possible

candidates to succeed Karakala, one of whom is McCrinus himself, and the other is his colleague as

Pretorian Prefect, a man called Octotinnius Adwentus. Karakala has been in the

East with his true prefix.

...