Caracalla
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Caracalla. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
Son of the emperor Septimius Severus, was notorious for his cruelties. He killed his brother Geta in his mother's arms, and attempted to destroy the writings of Aristotle. After a life made odious by his vices he was assassinated, A. D. 217, in the forty-third year of his age. The historian Gibbon calls him "the common enemy of mankind." Carthago (Carthage). A celebrated city of Africa, the rival of Rome, and for a long period the capital of the country, and mistress of Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia. The time of its foundation is unknown, but it seems to be agreed that it was built by Dido about 869 years before the Christian era, or, according to some writers, 72 or 73 years before the foundation of Rome. It had reached its highest glory in the days of Hamilcar and Hannibal. Casca, P. Servilius. Tribune of the plebs, в. c. 44, and one of Caesar 's assassins. Caspium Mare (The Caspian Sea ). A great saltwater lake in Asia . Probably at some remote period the Caspian was united both with the sea of Aral and with the Arctic Ocean. Both lakes have their surface considerably below that of the Euxine or Black Sea , the Caspian nearly 350 feet , and the Aral about 200 feet, and both and both are still sinking by evaporation.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS, eldest son of the Emperor Severus, was born in Lyons, A. D. 188. On the death of his father he succeeded to the throne with his brother, Antoninus Geta, whom he speedily murdered. To effect his own security upward of 20,000 other victims were butchered. He was himself assassinated by Macrinus, the pretorian prefect, near Edessa, in 217. Among the buildings of Caracalla in Rome, the baths-Thermæ Caracallæ - near Porta Capena, were most celebrated, and their ruins are still magnificent.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts dwell on the murders — Geta killed "in his mother's arms" in 211, and, as Collier's put it in 1921, "upward of 20,000 other victims" — and modern historians have not softened that picture. What neither mentions is the act that now dominates every account of his reign: the Constitutio Antoniniana of A.D. 212, which extended Roman citizenship to almost every free inhabitant of the empire, a measure whose text survives on a papyrus from Giessen and which scholars today debate as much for its tax motive as for its generosity. One small correction: the 1900 entry has him die "in the forty-third year of his age," but if he was born at Lyons in 188, as Collier's says, he was about 29 when Macrinus had him killed in 217. The ruins of his baths are indeed still magnificent, and since the 1930s have served as an open-air opera stage.
Written for this edition, 2026.