t off for burial at Rome. With his last breath he is said
solemnly to have warned "my Antonines" that upon their own conduct
depended the peace and well-being of the Empire which he had so ably
won for them.[306]

G. 2.--The warning was, as usual, in vain. Caracalla and Julia were
now free to work their will, and, having speedily got rid of her son
Geta, entered upon an incestuous marriage. The very Caledonians, whose
conjugal system was of the loosest,[307] cried shame;[308] but
the garrison of the Wall which kept them off was, as we have seen,
officered by Julia's creatures, and all beyond it was definitely
abandoned,[309] not to be recovered for two centuries.[310] The guilty
pair returned to Rome, and a hundred and thirty years elapsed before
another Augustus visited Britain.[311]

G. 3.--They left behind them no longer a subject race of mere
provincials, but a nation of full Roman citizens. For it was
Caracalla, seemingly, who, by extending it to the whole Roman
world, put the final stroke to the expansion, which had long been in
progress, of this once priceless privilege; with its right of appeal
to Caesar, of exemption from torture, of recognized marriage, and of
eligibility to public office. Originally confined strictly to natives
of Rome and of Roman Colonies, it was early bestowed _ipso facto_
on enfranchised slaves, and sometimes given as a compliment to
distinguished strangers. After the Social War (B.C. 90) it was
extended to all Italians, and Claudius (A.D. 50) allowed Messalina
to make it purchasable ("for a great sum," as both the Acts of the
Apostles and Dion Cassius inform us) by provincials.

G. 4.--And they could also earn it by service in the Imperial armies.
A bronze tablet, found at Cilurnum,[312] sets forth that Antoninus
Pius confers upon the _emeriti_, or time-expired veterans, of the
Gallic, Asturian, Celtiberian, Spanish, and Dacian cohorts in Britain,
who have completed twenty-five years' service with the colours, the
right of Roman citizenship, and legalizes their marriages, whether
existing or future.[313] As there is no reason to suppose that such
discharged soldiers commonly returned to their native land,
this system must have leavened the population of Britain with a
considerable proportion of Roman citizens, even before Caracalla's
edict. Besides its privileges, this freedom brought with it certain
liabilities, pecuniary and other; and it was to extend the area of
these that Caraca