Rome's African Emperor: Septimius Severus

We dive into the life and legacy of the North African-born ruler who rose through the ranks to seize the imperial throne. We discover how Severus transformed the Roman military, led daring campaigns across continents, and left a mark that shaped the empire for generations. Joining us is Simon Elliott, author of 'The African Emperor: The Life of Septimius Severus'. We weigh his achievements against those of other legendary emperors and ask: Does Severus deserve the title of Rome’s ultimate warrior emperor? Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

• 1:08Dan Snow?

  Augustus, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Diocletian, Constantine, Roman emperors built and ruled over an empire forged in blood, gold, conquest and ambition. Rome was sustained by powerful men who marched at the head of legions, waged wars across continents, and they turned Rome into a superpower of the ancient world and maintained it as one. Today, I'm going to have a bit of fun. Today, I'm going to ask that question that we all want to know. Who was the greatest warrior emperor of them all?

• 1:50Dan Snow?

  Was it Trajan, who crossed the Danube and reached the Persian Gulf? Constantine, who dragged the Roman Empire back from the brink in the 3rd century, fighting, well, everyone, everywhere? These were men who led from the front, they either expanded the empire's borders, or they ruthlessly reinforced it, they crushed internal opposition with overwhelming force. Yet, there is one man who I think often slips through the cracks of popular memory, Septimius Severus. He's a North African senator, a North African general who seized power in a brutal

• 2:28Dan Snow?

  civil war. He reformed the army, he fought across three continents, he rebuilt Rome, and he died while still on campaign, still chasing the dream of trying to outdo every other emperor. Was Septimius Severus the greatest warrior emperor of Rome? Or was he just a contender? In this episode, we're going to dive into the life and the battles and the legacy of Rome's North African empire. Joining us is Simon Elliott. He's a historian, he's an archaeologist, a broadcaster. He is the author of The African Emperor. He is a friend of this podcast. You've seen him on here before. You've listened to him on the podcast before. He's been on many times. But today, we're all about Septimius

• 3:11Dan Snow?

  Severus, and we're going to ask whether he was truly Rome's greatest warrior emperor. Enjoy.

• 3:37Dan Snow?

  Simon, good to have you back on the podcast.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me back, Dan. I always love coming on your podcast.

• 3:42Dan Snow?

  Well, this is that thorny question. Who is the great warrior emperor? Is it Trajan? Is it Constantine? Is it, or is it Severus?

• 3:49Speaker 01

  For me, it's Severus. So if you were to look at the great warrior emperors of the Roman world, clearly you have Trajan, Septimius Severus, Constantine, early Diocletian, etc. But for me, for me, it's Septimius Severus. Remember, Septimius Severus commanded more legions than any other Roman emperor, 33.

• 4:09Dan Snow?

  What? On his way up to the purple?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  So when Severus was emperor, he created three new legions, Legio I, II, and III Parthica, for his two Parthian campaigns. So it increased the number of legions from 30, which he inherited. To thirty-three. So that's more than any other emperor before or after.

• 4:27Dan Snow?

  Interesting, interesting. So in terms of the kind of military complex, that was Rome at its greatest extent.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  And also physically as well, because Severus extended the territory of the Roman Empire to its greatest extent as well. Trajan, very briefly, created provinces all the way to the Persian Gulf. But Severus himself extended territories not only in Syria and into modern Iraq, but also in North Africa. And also Severus, when he died, thought he'd conquered the far north of Britain.

• 4:53Dan Snow?

  That's right. So this whole Romans never got further than Hadrian's Wall, not true, as we will discuss.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 4:59Dan Snow?

  Scotland briefly, very briefly incorporated the Roman Empire by some definitions. Right, let's just do his backstory quickly before we get into his emperorship. Quite interesting as well, because North African unusual.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Severus was the North African emperor. And when you look at his impact when he became the emperor, he effectively reset the empire in sort of a North African style, with North Africans replacing Italians in many key postings as governors, or proconsuls, or procurators, or legates in charge of legions. So Severus was very proud of his North African heritage. He was born in Lepus Magna in 145, which is in Tripolitania. So today, that is in western Libya.

• 5:38Dan Snow?

  Does that mean he, would he have looked different? Did Romans think about ethnicity the same way we do? Or was it a colonial Roman family in North Africa?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  It's a very good question. So, remember, the Roman world is a Mediterranean empire, with the bits that we're in now, northwestern Europe, bolt-ons. But broadly, it's a Mediterranean empire. We've got multiple ethnicities, multiple languages, people from lots of different cultures. If you're in the Roman world, you're part of the Roman world. So Severus himself was notably dark-skinned. He's often called the Black Emperor, or the African Emperor. Well, he was African, and he did have dark skin. You've got the Severan Tondo in the Alters Museum in Berlin, which is a portrait of him and his second wife, Julie Domna, and Caracalla, and a memoria damnatio face of Gita on there as well. That's what they look

• 6:26Speaker 01

  like, and he's very dark-skinned. And he spoke with a North African accent. Now, if you were to dig into his actual ethnicity, his father was Punic. So Severus probably had more in common with Hannibal than with Scipio Africanus.

• 6:40Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  As an example, his mother was Italian, okay, but he was so proud of his African heritage and he kept it with him all the way through his life, through his empership until his death.

• 6:49Dan Snow?

  And do you get sort of gossips or people in Rome going, this guy, he's African? Or was that just not a distinction in the Roman league?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  He's one of those guys where you would certainly, not within his hearing, say anything negative whatsoever because you would be quickly removed from the scene. It will be in the arena to meet the lion.

• 7:07Dan Snow?

  Right, okay, so he didn't face too much of that?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:10Dan Snow?

  His father, is his father important? Is this a multi-generational rise to power? Does he make it all by himself?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  The most important person actually in the lineage before Severus is actually his grandfather, who was also called Septimius Severus, who was the big man. Elepus Magnum is the first person in the family to become a senator. He's the first person in the family to travel to Rome. His great-grandfather, by the way, was called Septimius Mesa, which is the Punic name. So it's his grandfather, Septimius Severus, the same name as Severus, who actually changes the Punic mesa to Severus and says, we're now part of the Roman world. We're embracing Romanitas, we're all Roman now. And he was the big man. Severus's father, for some reason, had a very quiet life, isn't a question. And many people think that he was ill, so he didn't make his mark. But then Severus, Severus, the youngest son, by the way, because he had an elder brother called

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Geta, who was the first of the Severan people of his generation to come to Britain, because he actually was the legate in charge of legio to Augusta in Cæleon. So his elder brother almost made it, but Severus really made it.

• 8:09Dan Snow?

  How do we make it in the Roman world at this time? Is it a web of connection? Was his grandpa able to hook him up with important people in Rome? Is it a rough meritocracy of just being a good soldier? How do you climb up those ranks?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Bit of all of that. So firstly, he's a senator, so he's at the very top of the pile in terms of Roman society, sort of like the top 0.005% of Roman society. So in that sense, anyway, he's made it. And then from that point on, he's got his cursus inorum, so his aristocratic career path, which he follows. But to get the plum postings from the senate or the emperor, he's got to have good connections as well. And Severus is very good early in his life networking. Here's the interesting thing with Severus. In his early career on the Cursus Honorum, he's actually very good at not fighting. So this great warrior emperor is a leading lawyer, is a leading magistrate.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  He's got posts in Rome where he's looking after some of the key facets of the Roman world, but he's not fighting. So this great warrior emperor at the beginning of his career seems to have been very canny, picking and choosing the posts he wants to and.

• 9:13Dan Snow?

  Not unlike Julius Caesar, weirdly.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Very clever. Yeah, yeah. Very, very clever like Caesar.

• 9:17Dan Snow?

  Early, you'd thought, actually politician. It turns out unfortunately they're as good a general as they are a politician.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Exactly right. They're very good parallels there. So a very good politician, a brutally good politician, and they were both brutally good politicians. And a brutally good military leader as well. And indeed Severus's first major posting where he makes his name is in command of a legion. And he gets sent to Syria to command Legio for Scidica, which is one of the elite legions holding the eastern frontier against the Parthians.

• 9:46Dan Snow?

  Okay. So how old is he approximately at that point?

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Uh, probably mid thirties. An intriguing thing there is the governor of Syria at the time is Pertinax. Who in the Roman world was as famous as Julius Caesar because he was the son of a manymitted slave who, as we'll discuss later, becomes the Roman emperor. And Pertinax from that point becomes the mentor of Severus. And it's what happens to Pertinax later which then drives Severus to become emperor.

• 10:13Dan Snow?

  Well, that's often the way. So he gets this great patron.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:15Dan Snow?

  Pertinax is on the rise.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:17Dan Snow?

  Because the Roman Empire is about to experience one of its, um, well, reasonably regular bits of civil turmoil.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Well, so Severus in Syria is married to his first wife, Pacia Matiana, who doesn't last very long. His next big posting on the way to becoming the emperor, which we'll touch on in a second. Is to become the governor of Galia Lugdonensis, which is a really important province. It's the big, rich strip through the centre of Gaul. Running from the Channel Islands to Lyon, Lugdonum. And that's where Severus is based. And that's where he then calls right to a lady he's met in a messer in Syria called Julia Domna. Who is. The daughter of the chief priest of the sun god Helia Gabulus. So fabulously, fabulously rich. And there's an undercurrent in the whole Severan story about acquiring wealth.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  So she's fabulously rich and apparently Severus writes to her and says, would you be my wife? And she comes all the way to Lyon. They get married in Lyon. That's where Caracalla is born as well. And then Geta is born as he travels back to Rome. Geta is born in Milan, so they're their two sons. And suddenly he finds himself in 190 in Rome.

• 11:27Dan Snow?

  And why is that important?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Because we're coming to the end of the reign of the mad and bad Commodus. So Commodus portrayed very well, I think, by Joaquin Phoenix in the first movie Gladiator. His behaviour is increasingly erratic.

• 11:43Dan Snow?

  And Commodus is himself the end of this sort of bit of a golden age of good emperors. So Severus's young career, he's rising up through Marcus Aurelius. It's stable, it's strong, it's powerful.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  In the background here, by the way, you also have what I call a band of brothers. So you have these individuals who fought with Marcus Aurelius and later under Commodus in the Markmanic Wars on the Danube. And they're all friends while they're fighting together. So you have Pescennius Niger. You have Claudius Albinus, you have Severus, and you have Pertinax. All of whom end up fighting each other in one way, shape or form, and here the five emperors we'll come on to. But towards the end of 190, Severus gets a really important posting, which sets him up to later become emperor. He becomes the governor of a really important province, Panonius Superior, which is on the upper Danube. And basically it holds the Danubian frontier from anybody like the Markmane or the Quadi,

• 12:38Speaker 01

  or even the Sarmatians who are to the north of the Danube, from getting into north eastern Italy. So that is very important and it's

• 12:45Dan Snow?

  Big deal.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  And its capital to show it's a military province is Conantum, which is a legionary fortress. That's where he is at midnight on New Year's Eve, 192.

• 12:55Dan Snow?

  And why is that important?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  That's important, Dan, because Commodus is assassinated.

• 12:59Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  So the bad Commodus. Basically, he's having all these prescription lists drawn up about who is going to throw into the arena and be fed to the lions. And in one of them, he lists the Praetorian prefect, his court chamberlain, and his mistress Marcia. And they find out, they panic, so they put together a plot to assassinate him. And it's one of these plots where there's various layers to it. So the first attempt, it's on New Year's Eve, 192. So around midnight, he's been boozing all day, right? And Marcia feeds him some poisoned sweetmeats. That should have killed him, but he's been boozing all day. And then he goes and has a bath and he sweats a lot of it out.

• 13:35Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Or he's ill.

• 13:36Dan Snow?

  Don't try that at home. That's, yeah, it's not a traditional remedy.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  So it's failed. The plot's failed. And everyone's terrified. But they have a plan B. The plan B is hiding behind a curtain, Commodus's wrestling trainer Narcissus, who pops out and strangles him to death.

• 13:51Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  So he's dead. Doesn't help Narcissus, by the way. He ends up going into the arena in about a year's time and being fed to the lions. There's a lot of feeding to the lions in the story of Severus. So Commodus is dead. So just after midnight, the Praetorian prefect and court chamberlain go and find the prefect of Rome, the mayor of Rome, who's Pertinax at this point.

• 14:11Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  So Pertinax is made emperor, and he's emperor for three months. He's the first emperor in the year of the five emperors.

• 14:20Dan Snow?

  Yeah. And we all get excited about Pertinax because he's the son of a man who had been a slave and was given his freedom.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And he's a good guy, the way he's portrayed in all the historical sources. Wants to be a worthy emperor. He wanted to stall himself on Mox Aurelius. Commodus had bankrupted Rome, the empire, basically. So one of the things that Pertinax does is he has a fire sale of all of the fine clothes and the chariots, slaves and free men who Commodus had owned, to put some money in the imperial fiscus.

• 14:47Dan Snow?

  He doesn't give enough of that cash to the Praetorian guard, does he?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  No, it's a huge mistake for a Roman emperor, especially at this stage with the Praetorian guard. So at the end of the first month in January, the guard go to him and say, can we have some money? And Pertinax says, no.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  So all right, at the end of month two, end of February, they come to him and say, can we have some money or we'll kill you? And he says, no. So at the end of month three, they kill him. Hey presto, they've killed him. But this triggers sort of a brutal round of civil wars. So Severus fears because his mentor's been killed. Yeah. And he's got an important post in north of Italy, so he's nearby. He's got the crack legions of the empire on the Danube and frontier behind him. So there are three candidates in play now. There is Claudius Albinus in London, who's declared emperor by the British legions, Pescennius Niger, who's in Antioch in Syria, who's declared emperor by the Eastern legions, and Severus has declared emperor by Legio 14 Germania.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  My favourite legion, Dan, Legio 14 Germania. Who hasn't got a favourite legion? It's a crack legion. The 14 Germania is one that defeated Boudica. Ah. Paulinus's legion. So it's an A-game legion, and all the legions on the Danube and also on the Rhine declare for Severus. So you really see the three different, well, three of the big chunks of the Roman Empire now at each other's throats. And here's where Severus has the advantage. If you look at how long it would take to get a message from Rome to Conantum, it's probably about four days, using the imperial post service and as fast as travel possible, killing horses to get the message there as quickly as possible. To get it to Britain, it's going to take you two weeks to three weeks. To get it to Antioch, two weeks to three weeks. So Severus is the first in play,

• 16:26Speaker 01

  and he's the nearest. So he descends like a sword of Damocles onto Rome, bringing five legions, camps out in the Forum Romanum, etc. By this time, the second emperor in the year of the five emperors, Didius Julianus, is dead. Right. Very briefly, ill-favoured senator. So Severus marches into the senate house, the Curia, with sword drawn, with his legion, and says, I'm the emperor. And the senators say, absolutely you are, not a problem. Sure thing. So he's the emperor. So he beats everyone to it, which is important, first mover advantage. Yeah. Does he fight his two great mates, his old campaigning buddies? So it's 193, and we're going to go all the way through to 197 before he's absolutely secured on the throne. So he's the emperor. The family all do settle in the Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill, start rebuilding Rome

• 17:11Speaker 01

  in their their image in actual fact. The North African takeover, the reset, or the hostile takeover begins. But you've still got in place Albinus in London and you've still got in place Nigah in Antioch in Syria. So the very clever, very canny Severus makes Albinus his Caesar junior emperor. So he's out of play at the moment. And then he concentrates on the east. So he mounts a campaign in 194, 195, defeats and kills Nigah and then begins, remember, this is a, by this point in his career is a seasoned veteran warrior. And he never forgets that the military got him into power. So he's always on campaign from this point. So he invades Parthia. But he receives word that Albinus has found out

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Severus has been playing him and has declared himself emperor again. So you end up with Severus having to hot foot it through Anatolia, along the Danube gathering legionaries, along the Rhine gathering legionaries, going all the way along the Rhine, while Albinus is now in Gaul, going to Lyon, because he knows that if he goes to Lyon where Severus married Julie Domna and Caracalla was born, Severus can't ignore that. So Severus and Albinus have this Titanic battle, the Battle of Lugdunum in 197, where Cassius Dio says there are 300,000 troops involved. That's a lot, Dan. That's only 30,000 less than the entire military establishment of the Roman world. So you're probably looking at maybe 100, 150,000 in total. But it's the biggest-

• 18:39Dan Snow?

  Bigger than the Battle of Cannae, for example.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, it's the it's the biggest civil war battle in Roman history. And it's a two day affair.

• 18:44Dan Snow?

  They were lucky the old Germans weren't interested or the Huns weren't busy attacking across the Danube or the Rhine at the time, weren't they?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  They were being bought off, probably. And always the arena beckons. And the lions, remember, in the Severus story, the lions play a big part. So it's a two day battle. Severus almost loses. He actually falls off his horse twice. And the second time, apparently badly damages his leg. And many people believe, based on the primary sources, that he suffered from very bad gout, certainly towards the end of his life. But the chances are actually, he may well have actually very badly damaged his leg then, and it wasn't set properly. So that's what the injury was he carried for the rest of his life. But he won. That's the key thing he won. And so of course, Albinus is beheaded. Severus gets on his charger and sort of prances over him, saying, I'm the boss, et cetera.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Then Severus does something very, very important for where we are right now, recording this pod. So he needs to bring Britain back into the imperial fold. Okay. So he sends, this is one nine seven, he sends some of his leading generals to Britain. And remember the three British legions at that time, two Augustus, six Victorix and twenty Valerius Victorix. They've been fighting in Gaul, so they've been butchered in this battle they've lost. So they start rebuilding the legions because they're certainly back in play by the time Severus comes 10 years later. But they also need to send a message to the provincial capital, London, who the boss is. So it is those generals who order the Londoners to build the first land wall of London.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  The Severan Land Wall, which is the Roman Wall of London, which becomes the medieval wall of London. To this very day delineating the city of London, the financial powerhouse of the modern world.

• 20:25Dan Snow?

  And why does Severus build a wall around London? I thought that was because there was some external threat.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Because it's monumental.

• 20:31Dan Snow?

  Oh, is that right?

• 20:32Speaker 01

  It's a statement saying, if I can do this, you think what's going to happen to you if you misbehave again. It's always there as a reminder to them. And we know it's not a defensive circuit because the river wall's not built for another hundred or so years. So it's there basically as a statement. There's no external threat there. It's a statement. And I just love the idea. You have this dark skinned emperor from North Africa, speaking with a Punic accent, who physically demarcates modern London, the financial powerhouse of Europe. Fantastic.

• 21:05Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.

• 21:14Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by Decagon. If you've ever been trapped in phone tree hell, pushing zero 50 times while a voice robot pretends not to hear you, you know true psychological warfare. It's brutal, folks. Thankfully, that kind of horror is now confined to the history books. Customer service has evolved. Decagon helps companies create personalized, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24/7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own, so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Plus, because workflows can be updated using natural language, teams can make changes themselves.

• 21:57Dan Snow?

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• 22:25Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery. A detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us: mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 23:09Speaker 02

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• 23:40Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipscombe, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty. From Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 24:19Dan Snow?

  So we've dealt with Niger, we've dealt with Albinus.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:21Dan Snow?

  He's now the Emperor.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  He is the Emperor.

• 24:23Dan Snow?

  Is he on campaign? He's trying to expand the empire. Why are we remembering him as a great warrior if not just for this victory at London?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Firstly, he hates Rome.

• 24:30Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  And he also hates the senators. In fact, he's famously on his deathbed when he dies in York. Later, we'll discuss. He tells his sons, Caracalla and Geta, like each other, be nice to each other, like the military, be nice to the military, and ignore everybody else. So sod everybody else, basically. So he's a military man through and through. He hates the senators. And when he defeats Albinus and he defeats Niger, about 100 each time are executed without trial.

• 24:56Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Because they've supported the loser. And then he appropriates their wealth. And a lot of it's not sent to the Imperial Fiscus Treasury, but goes... Into the Severan back pocket.

• 25:06Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  And he doesn't care, doesn't care who knows it, doesn't try to hide it. And he's only in Rome as emperor four times and then only for a matter of months. But the bizarre thing is, if you go to Rome today, the physical presence of the classical world in Rome today, a third of it's Severan.

• 25:23Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  So the Palatine Hill with the Imperial Palace, that's Severan.

• 25:26Dan Snow?

  That's Severan. And then there's obviously the monumental arch.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  That's Severan, celebrating his victory, we'll come to in a minute with his second campaign in Parthia. The arch of the Argentari in the Forum Borium is Severan. Interestingly, by the way, has an image of Severus and Julie Domner on it. And they would have seen this and Julie Domner's a lot taller than Severus. So she's probably a lot taller than Severus. And we filmed in the Colosseum, haven't we? And if you go to the top layer of the Colosseum, that's a Severan rebuild. The Forum Urbis marble map of Rome, which is on the Chilean Hill in the museum now, that's Severan.

• 25:56Dan Snow?

  So Rome is benefiting or certainly being beautified by all this money by Severus, but he's not necessarily going there.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  This is a man who's become the emperor at the point of a sword, who's fought off all comers tooth and nail. He's not going to let go and everyone wants to demonstrate their loyalty to him. Because if they don't, they're going to get chopped or sent to the arena, right? So everywhere he goes, he's monumentalised, not just with the walls in London, not just in Rome, literally everywhere he goes.

• 26:25Dan Snow?

  So he doesn't like Rome, he likes being on campaign. Does he feel like a shark needing to keep some oxygen going through the gills? He needs that constant flow of military victories to justify, to solidify his position.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Severus is a great white shark, I love that.

• 26:37Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely spot on, devouring anybody who gets in his way. I'm often asked when I'm doing tours and I'm talking about Severus, why I like him. And actually, I find it difficult to answer the question because actually, he's not only one of the mightiest Roman emperors, but he's also very brutal and he's avaricious as well. But being a military historian, I can just look at his career and I can see a great, great military leader there. And the next thing he does, of course, is one of the few Roman emperors to do something that is really mighty and extraordinary. He takes on the huge Parthian empire.

• 27:08Dan Snow?

  Graveyard of great Romans in the past.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely. People who failed there spectacularly, Crassus spectacularly, Mark Antony.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Et cetera. Many Romans have tried to campaign against the Parthians and failed.

• 27:17Dan Snow?

  And roughly speaking, what's this modern day sort of bits of Iraq and Iran? Where is the?

• 27:22Speaker 01

  So you're looking at probably eastern Syria, Iraq and parts of southern Iran.

• 27:26Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  And symmetrically, it's on a par with the Roman military. So when the Parthians fight the Romans, it's not a guaranteed win. It's one of the reasons why when you get a new Roman dynasty and they want some martial glamour, like, um, let's say Vespasian and the Flavians. Where do you pick a fight? You could pick a fight with the Parthians because they're always there, but you might lose. So they always pick northern Britain.

• 27:45Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Because they can guarantee they're going to get a win. But Severus wins. He picks a fight with the Parthians and he wins. He's massively successful. He sacks the capital on the Tigerus Tessifon, one of the few Roman emperors to do this. So for him, in his head, the martial emperor, that's a tick. Job done.

• 28:03Dan Snow?

  So he defeats Imperial Rome's most intransigent enemy on the eastern frontier. It's extraordinary.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  If you want to look for a nemesis for the Romans at any time throughout the entirety of the Roman Empire, it's the Parthians and later in the same space, the Sassanid Persians, and he's done it. So it's a tick. So the next thing he does is he decides to have a parade through his home territory. Spends time in Antioch, spends time in Egypt, and that's when the Severan Tondo, this portrait is actually created when he's in Egypt. But then he goes through North Africa and I extensively travel in Roman North Africa. And nearly every place you go to, all the cities have again a monumentalized Severan presence. So if you go to beautiful Jamila in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria, the forum is Severan, there's a Severan arch to Karakalla. The temple to the imperial cult is Severan, et cetera. It's all Severan.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  And what you can see is word goes round to all these places as he goes from east to west that the boss is on the way. And they'll go, Christ, we better get some stuff done. Let's get cracking. Oh, right. Get all the slaves out there. Ching, ching, ching, ching, ching. And then Severus arrives and, oh, this is nice. This is nice. And there's also with Severus himself, a type of monument which is named after him called a septizonium. So the Romans like running water wherever they go. And one of the features that they have in their world, we don't in ours, is an infiam. So it's a nice place with tinkling water on various levels.

• 29:21Dan Snow?

  Public drinking fountain doesn't even do justice. It's a gigantic public water.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Severus has his own versions called septuzoniums done. There's a huge one about 10 storeys high, which he builds at the foot of the Palatine Hill in Rome, where the Via Appia, which goes past the bas of Caracalla, another sovereign building, is the first thing you see as you approach the Palatine Hill. It's this 10 storey high

• 29:42Dan Snow?

  10 storey

• 29:43Speaker 01

  nimphaeum called the septuzonium. Lot of medieval Renaissance Rome is built from stone from it, because various popes used it as a sort of a quarry. But also you find septuzoniums across North Africa where he's been, because obviously word gets round. There's even a reference to a septuzonium in Roman Leicester.

• 30:00Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 30:01Dan Snow?

  Well, if that survives.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 30:03Dan Snow?

  If that survives.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:03Dan Snow?

  What a beauty.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:05Dan Snow?

  So you're going through North Africa, you're travelling around the empire, Lake Hadrian. I mean, emperors did a lot of travelling in this period. He's defeated the threat in the east. What's next on his agenda?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Well, Severus has done one of two things, which the poet Horace says that if Augustus, the first emperor, the really big guy in the Roman world, Augustus, not Caesar in the Roman world, it's Augustus. The senior emperor is called an Augustus, the junior emperor is a Caesar, right? So this is about Augustus now. Horace at the turn of the first century AD writes a poem in which he says, Augustus will only be a god if he conquers the pesky Persians and the Brits.

• 30:39Dan Snow?

  Ah, on either side, Persians on one side, Brits on the other.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  And Severus, job done. One tick. He's already dealt with the Persians, the Parthians.

• 30:47Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  So no other Roman emperor could claim to have achieved this. So Severus knows that if he can do the other thing, the pesky Brits, then he'll have achieved something which even the great Augustus didn't achieve.

• 31:05Dan Snow?

  At this stage, there is a Roman province in Britain, covering much of what is today England and Wales, but what we call Scotland today, unconquered.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Let's be absolutely clear to the listeners. The Romans never fully conquered the far north of Britain. Except very briefly on two occasions. The first occasion was under Agricola, fighting for the Flavians, and he was called back having conquered the Far North all the way to the Moray Firth by Domitian. So the Romans come back and the line goes on to the Solway Firth time, comes Hadrian's War. And then Severus also, as we'll discuss, also at the point he died, thought he'd also achieved it. But again, we'll discuss, because he died in York in 211, it was never firmly set in place. So apart from very briefly on those two occasions, the Far North is never conquered in Britain. Which means that Britain, especially the North and the West, is a real place of difference

• 31:57Speaker 01

  in the Roman world, because it has a very large military presence. I estimate about 12% of the whole military establishment in what's only 4% of the geographic area of the Principate Empire, which bends the economy in the North, particularly where the military, most of the military are based, to supporting the military. That's why I don't think there's any love lost between the the Romano-Britons living in the North of modern England and the Romans, and certainly not in the Far North above Hadrian's War. This feels like a frontier province. Absolutely, yeah. I always call it the Wild West. It's the Wild West of the Roman Empire. And Severus determined to do something about that. He is, and this is Severus. I call it the Severan Surge. So we're in the year 207, and in 207 Severus gets word from Senesio, the governor in Britain, that there's trouble.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  And the wording of the message Severus gets is in Rome at the time. He's very specific. He says the province, the whole province, the whole province is about to be overrun. Wow. Not the North, the whole province. We need you all reinforcements. And Severus doubles down. He does both. So I call it, as I say, the Severan Surge takes place. So Severus goes to York in 207, 208, and turns York into the imperial capital of the Roman Empire for the last three years of his life. He takes the imperial family with him, so Julie Domna's with him, Caracalla and Geta are with him, takes part of the Senate, takes a huge chunk of the Fiscus Treasury. So York truly is, for the last three years of his life, the capital of the Roman world.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  That's where the empires are ministered from. Make sure his territories are secure. For the final time, he replaces anybody who is a provincial governor or a legate who he doesn't trust with a North African. Family members are all North Africans. So by this time, the Severus reset to the Roman Empire, Severan reset really has taken place. And he's now in York and then he accrues an army of fifty thousand men. So that's the largest force to ever campaign on British territory. You know, this is an emperor who is all about superlatives. The largest army to campaign in Britain, the largest civil war battle in the Roman world, largest amount of territory in the Roman world, more legions than anybody else. And everything is monumentalised as well, and we see it today. To the extent where, when he repairs Hadrian's Wall before the campaign,

• 34:12Speaker 01

  there are so many inscriptions recording it for Severus that until the nineteenth century, it was called the Severan Wall. And it's only later that people realised it was Hadrian's Wall. So he's there, he's in York, he's ready. And it just shows how tough the North of Britain is, that it's not easy. I've come to the view that there's something more to the reason why the Romans didn't conquer the far north than the cost and the fact it wasn't economically viable. I think certainly the lowlands of Scotland would have been economically viable. If you go to Fife, some parts of the Scottish Borders, upper Midland Valleys, beautiful agricultural territory, et cetera. So I don't think it's that. The Romans had provinces, not because it was nice, but because they wanted to rinse them dry of every single penny they could get and stick it in the imperial treasury. Or, in Severus's case,

• 34:58Speaker 01

  into the Severan back pocket, okay? To do that, the local elites had to buy into the Roman world to run the show for the Romans. And in the far north, in the far north, they weren't interested. I just think the people in the region we call today Monarch Scotland just weren't having it. They were not interested at all. So that cost the Romans a huge amount in terms of manpower and cost to do it. That's why Severus wanted his second tick to beat Augustus, because he could be the first one to actually sort them out.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  This is Dan Snow's History here, more after this.

• 35:42Speaker 02

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• 36:13Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  And how did he go about doing that? He fights mile by bloody mile, doesn't he? It's an absolutely brutal campaign. Firstly, actually, reading the primary sources, it was terrible weather. And one of the reasons why the people in the far north may have been causing problems is they may have had a harvest shock, so they may have had a famine or something like that. So it's terrible campaigning conditions. But nevertheless, in 209, Severus launches his first campaign. He and Caracalla, with Geta and Julie Domner staying in York to run the empire. I always think Julie Domner and Severus are a real power couple, by the way. She plays a huge role in this story. So Severus and Caracalla take all 50,000 men through the Scottish borders, and they eviscerate everything before them. It's 50,000 men. The largest marching camps ever built in the Roman world are the seventy hectare ones,

• 37:36Speaker 01

  which are in the Scottish borders. And if you look at the Severan phase of one of the Stangate Frontier forts, Findelander, the very famous one, you have the Antonine Fort removed and the platform used to create a street grid around which you get round, Iron Age British houses built. And one theory there is that that's a concentration camp for captives or it's a holding camp for people being forced to work on the reconstruction of Hagen's Wall or captured from the Scottish borders. And the force gets to the fourth. It gets to the firth of fourth. Absolutely. Which is modern Edinburgh, Glasgow. People know that's a central belt. And then they build a bridge of boats. Do they? Yeah. So if you look at Trajan's Column and you see the bridge of boats over the Danube,

• 38:20Speaker 01

  that's exactly what we're looking at here. I estimate it's probably 700 boats are needed and they're all made afresh. Don't forget the navy, the Clatus Britannica is playing a key role in this campaign as well. So their ships aren't used for the bridge of boats. These are newly built boats, 700 to cross the fourth. Severus has got this brilliant campaign strategy and it's almost unstoppable. There's no meeting engagement in this campaign as you get with Mons Grapius and Agrippa. There's none. So no big pitched battle. It's all guerrilla warfare because I don't think the natives are allowed to coalesce. Severus sends Caracalla with two thirds of the army, including, I think, probably the three British legions because they know the territory well. And they go along the Highland Line and seal off all the Glens, building Glenblock forts, and eventually they reach

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Stonehaven. The Clatus Britannica is raiding around the coast. So anybody in the Midland Valley and Fife is now trapped, trapped. And then at that point, Severus launches his own strike with a third of the force. And this is the elite force. It's got the Praetorian Guard. Severus recreated the Praetorian Guard when he became the emperor with his own veterans from the Danube. Yeah, I bet he did. Twice his strength. So again, monumentalizing, in this case manpower, 5,000 Praetorian Guards becomes 10,000. He's got the Praetorian Guard, he's got his own pet legion, Legio II Parthica, one of his three legions that follows him around. That's his pet legion. He's got the Imperial Guard Cavalry and equivalent number of auxiliaries. So that force crosses the bridge of boats and that goes through Fife and that reaches the Tay. And when they

• 39:45Speaker 01

  get to Carpu on the Tay, they build another bridge of boats and that allows them to launch themselves into the soft underbelly of native British resistance. And it's brutal but effective.

• 39:57Dan Snow?

  And so it takes a couple of seasons, but you're saying by the end of that, he does successfully conquer what we call Scotland.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  At the end of 209, he thinks he's won, right? So the natives agree a piece. He and Caracalla take the name Britannicus because they've won. Coins are minted to show that they've been victorious. Severus goes back to York, he leaves the garrisons in place. He thinks he's conquered it, certainly the Scottish Lowlands as we call them today. Severus doesn't go, by the way, into Aberdeenshire, doesn't go north of Stonehaven because he doesn't think he needs to. But over the winter, the native Britons, and by this time, two confederations called the Mitaei and the Caledonians. They realise the Romans aren't going home. It's not a raid, this is the real deal. So they rebel and it's a big mistake. Because Severus goes potty, right?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  And he launches his 210 campaign under Caracalla because he's too ill to go on it. And before he does, Cassius Dio has him tell his soldiers to kill everybody you come across. Even the babies in their mothers' wounds. And the whole campaign's repeated, it's equally successful. But it does appear as though a genocide occurred because the archaeological record shows that for the next sort of like few decades, there's a huge depopulation event in the region of the modern Scottish Lowlands. And Scotland, the region of modern Scotland, the far north of Britain, more or less disappears from the historical record for about 70 odd years and you're going through to probably the Carousing Revolt in 286 before you get it sort of appearing again as a part of the narrative.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  So at the end of the second campaign in 210, that is job done.

• 41:34Dan Snow?

  Well, in the words of Tacitus, he made a desert and called it peace. I mean, if you think depopulated, just destroyed landscape and well, yeah, genocide taking place.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely, but it didn't really help him, did it? Because he's back in York over the winter in 210. And if you look at any Roman engagement in the far north of Britain, to succeed, it needs a political imperative to drive it. So a grittler with the Flavians until Domitian lost interest. Here, Severus dies in the freezing cold of a British winter in northern Britain in York.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  If you look at Roman York, it was originally the legionary fortress built by nine Hispana and later occupied by six Victorix. In the centre of any Roman legionary fort or fort, you have the Principia commanders, headquarters and the Praetorium house. So almost certainly, the Imperial Palace was the Praetorium, which today is the undercroft in York Minster. So if you stand in the undercroft of York Minster, you may well be standing next to where Severus died. Certainly in February 211, this mighty Roman emperor, born in the blistering heat of a North African spring to the richest family in the richest part of the Roman Empire, dies in the freezing cold, freezing cold of a British winter in York. And he dies thinking he's done it. He dies thinking he's beaten Augustus, because he's beaten the Parthians, tick, and he's

• 42:49Speaker 01

  beaten the Britons, tick.

• 42:51Dan Snow?

  And he looks like he's leaving a line of succession as well. He's that other tricky Roman imperial problem.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Dan, it all goes wrong very quickly. Right? So I'll very quickly run through what happens, and then we can talk about Caracalla and Geta. But if you look at all the other Severan emperors, they're all killed. So he dies in his bed. Caracalla is about to kill Geta. Caracalla is assassinating in 217, having a pee against the tree in the east.

• 43:15Dan Snow?

  So Caracalla, the next emperor, is assassinated.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  And then Macrinus, who was the Praetorian prefect, who was behind Caracalla being killed, he's assassinated. And then you have Elia Gabulus, who's assassinated with his mum. And then you have Severus Alexander, who's assassinated with his mum. So it's also not a good thing to be a mum with an emperor for the later Severans. And then you have the Christ of the third century. The Roman Empire almost implodes, and it's only drag kicking and screaming back into a fulfilling existence by the great Diocletian 284. And you have the dominate empire then. So Severus is the peak of the Severan dynasty, and it all goes wrong. And it all goes wrong because Caracalla and Geta hate each other.

• 43:54Dan Snow?

  Yeah, that's interesting. So Severus, yes, he extends the empire. He's the last Roman empire to add new territory to the empire. As you say, everything's supersized, all the superlatives. But is there something in that reign? Is there something, is that decline of Rome that lots of people trace to that point of his death? Did he do something to bring that about as well? Or is it just bad luck? His kids were incompetent and hated each other?

• 44:14Speaker 01

  I actually think, actually, there is something in that. He's a hard man emperor who has his fist.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Over the Roman Empire and he's physically controlling it and he's reset it in a North African way. He's got his own place men in power across the empire and in Rome, to the extent, by the way, where it stays all the way through the Severan period, quite stable apart from the emperors being assassinated. But you need him as a person, he must have had an incredible physical presence, almost terrifying actually, to hold it together. And as soon as he's gone, there's no one to hold it together. And Caracalla and Geta, so Severus is cremated, his ashes are put into a blue urn. Intriguingly, that means he must have bought the urn with him, so he knew he was ill and might die in Britain. And then Caracalla and Geta separately race themselves back to Rome because Severus has tried very hard to get the two of them to actually be

• 45:06Speaker 01

  diarch emperors like Molch or Eulius and Lucius Verus, but they hate each other. And they get back to Rome, squabble a lot. The Roman administration is glued up. And at the end of the year, Caracalla allegedly has Geta assassinated or kills him himself in the Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill with Geta bleeding to death in Julius Domna's arms, bleeding to death in Julius Domna's arms. So Caracalla becomes the emperor, but even when Geta was alive, neither had any interest in the far north of Britain or Britain, full stop. So exactly the same as with Agricola at the end of the first century, once the political imperative is gone, the line of the northern frontier drops again, and in this case, back onto the line of Hagen's

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Wall again. That's the last time the Romans tried to conquer the far north of Britain.

• 45:52Dan Snow?

  So in your opinion, you'd put Severus up against any other warrior emperor and he'd come out with victorious?

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Well firstly, that's a tough question, okay? But the answer is yes.

• 46:03Dan Snow?

  Tough question. Yes. We always get a stray answer on this podcast. No shilly shallying around.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, Severus.

• 46:11Dan Snow?

  Oh, Trajan versus Severus, Rome's ultimate showdown.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  I think Severus was definitely, for me, Severus was definitely the greater military commander yet.

• 46:19Dan Snow?

  Simon, thanks for coming on the podcast. In fact, you've got a book all about this if people want to find out more, don't you?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's coming out in September, called The African Emperor, through Icon Books and through Belinda Audio. Thank you for having me on, Dan. Always love talking to you.

• 46:30Dan Snow?

  Always a pleasure.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Thanks, mate.

• 46:42Speaker 04

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• 47:33Dan Snow?

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