Editing Caracalla (section)

=== Military policy ===
During his reign as emperor, Caracalla raised the annual pay of an average legionary from 2000 [[Sestertius|''sesterces'']] (500 ''[[denarii]]'') to 2700–3000 ''sesterces'' (675–750 ''denarii''). He lavished many benefits on the army, which he both feared and admired, in accordance with the advice given by his father on his deathbed always to heed the welfare of the soldiers and ignore everyone else.{{sfn|Dunstan|2011|p=405}}<ref name=":7" /> Caracalla needed to gain and keep the trust of the military, and he did so with generous pay raises and popular gestures.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Grant|first=Michael|title=The Severans: the Changed Roman Empire|publisher=Psychology Press|year=1996|pages=42}}</ref> He spent much of his time with the soldiers, so much so that he began to imitate their dress and adopt their manners.{{sfn|Dunstan|2011|pp=405–406}}<ref>{{cite book|last1=Southern|first1=Patricia|title=The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine|date=2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-49694-6|pages=68–69}}</ref>{{sfn|Scott|2008|p=21}}

After Caracalla concluded his campaign against the Alamanni, it became evident that he was inordinately preoccupied with emulating [[Alexander the Great]].{{sfn|Goldsworthy|2009|page=[https://archive.org/details/howromefelldeath0000gold/page/74 74]}}<ref name=":92">{{Cite book|last=Brauer|first=G.|title=The Decadent Emperors: Power and Depravity in Third-Century Rome|year=1967|pages=75}}</ref> He began openly mimicking Alexander in his personal style. In planning his invasion of the Parthian Empire, Caracalla decided to arrange 16,000 of his men in Macedonian-style [[phalanx]]es, despite the [[Roman army]] having made the phalanx an obsolete tactical formation.{{sfn|Goldsworthy|2009|page=[https://archive.org/details/howromefelldeath0000gold/page/74 74]}}<ref name=":92" /><ref name=":292">{{Cite book|last=Christopher|first=Matthew|title=An Invincible Beast: Understanding the Hellenistic Pike Phalanx in Action|publisher=Casemate Publishers|year=2015|pages=403}}</ref> The historian Christopher Matthew mentions that the term ''Phalangarii'' has two possible meanings, both with military connotations. The first refers merely to the Roman battle line and does not specifically mean that the men were armed with [[Pike (weapon)|pikes]], and the second bears similarity to the 'Marian Mules' of the late [[Roman Republic]] who carried their equipment suspended from a long pole, which were in use until at least the 2nd century AD.<ref name=":292" /> As a consequence, the ''phalangarii'' of [[Legio II Parthica]] may not have been pikemen, but rather standard battle line troops or possibly ''[[triarii]]''.<ref name=":292" />

Caracalla's mania for Alexander went so far that he visited Alexandria while preparing for his Persian invasion and persecuted philosophers of the [[Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]] school based on a legend that [[Aristotle]] had poisoned Alexander. This was a sign of Caracalla's increasingly erratic behaviour.<ref name=":92" />