Frere argues that these awards were made by the emperor Caracalla (M. Aurelius Severus Antoninus, r. 211-17), in order to secure the British regiments' loyalty after the assassination of his brother and co-emperor Geta, who enjoyed wide popularity in the army.
When Severus arrived in Britain he charged his youngest son, Publius Septimius Geta with the task of administering some aspects of Roman Britain although as viceroy rather than as a formal governor.
he was a famous physician and polymath, who was put to death with other friends of Geta in December 212, at a banquet to which he had been invited by Caracalla shortly after the assassination of his brother.
He was succeeded by his sons Caracalla and Geta, who reigned under the influence of their mother, Julia Domna.
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Upon his father's death, Caracalla was proclaimed co-emperor with his brother Geta.
Philip Hardie, "Polyphony or Babel? Hosidius Geta's Medea and the poetics of the cento," in Simon Swain, Stephen Harrison and Jas Elsner (eds), Severan culture (Cambridge, CUP, 2007).
German philologist Gottfried Bernhardy attempted to prove from Spartianus that this and other trifles of a similar description were composed by the contemporaries of the emperor Geta, the son of Septimius Severus and the brother of Caracalla.
The emission of coins from Nicopolis ad Mestum has been dated to the year 211, more precisely to the period between the death of Septimius Severus in February and the murder of Geta in December, by the German scholar Holger Komnick, author of the only comprehensive study of the coinage of this city (in the series Griechisches Münzwerk of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities).