The Severus Dynasty : Septim(i)us Severus

Imperator Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pertinax Augustus 193–211AD

Born: 11th April 145 AD at Lepcis Magna
Date of Accession: 9th April 193 AD
Died: 4th February 211 AD at Eboracum (York)

Governors of Britannia during his reign:

• Virius Lupus 197 – 201 AD
• Marcus Antius Crescens Calpurnianus   202 AD (Acting)
• Gaius Valerius Pudens                      202 – 205 AD
• Lucius Alfenus Senecio 205 – 207 AD
• Unknown 207 – 208 AD
• Geta (assumed role) 208 – 211 AD

Septimius Severus was born in Lepcis Magna (Libya) in North Africa. He achieved the position of governor of Upper Pannonia and was in this post as the events of early 193 AD were played out; first the murder of Commodus and then the short ill-starred reigns of Pertinax and Didius Julianus.

Amongst the chaos the Danube legions hailed their governor – Severus – Emperor. With the die cast Severus marched on Rome to face Julianus, the first of several opponents that would see him campaign across the breadth of the empire.

The forces Severus could call upon were the largest any single Roman governor could, an advantage he was to make the fullest use of while his later reforms to parts of the empire – effectively splitting up potentially problematic provinces into smaller packets – were aimed to ensure the same advantage would not be used against his planned dynasty.

The resistance Julianus ordered the Praetorians at Rome was sketchy at best, not least in the face of the army Severus brought with him and the Senate gave in to the inevitable and in April 193 it granted him Imperial powers. Julianus was executed on the 1st of June 193 and nine days later Severus entered Rome and famously disbanded the Praetorian Guard, its reconstituted form manned entirely from his own men.;

He had earlier married his wife – the Syrian Julia Domna – after hearing her forecast that she would marry a King. Severus as well as being deeply superstitious was also extremely ambitious. The Syrian governor – Niger – and the British governor – Clodius Albinus – were early considered threats and Severus moved to deal with both of them.

He secured the allegiance of Albinus by bestowing upon him the lower rank of Caesar. Once the west was thus under control Septimius moved against and overwhelmed Niger’s hold in the east in 194 AD, his men murdering the fleeing Niger in Antioch. Severus then led his forces into Parthian territory in retaliation for the succour they were perceived to have given Niger’s cause.

The main threat in the east neutralised the Imperial gauntlet was subsequently thrown down to Albinus in 195 AD when Severus had his elder son (later known as Caracalla) given the title Caesar. To the previous incumbent of the position – Albinus - this was an unequivocal message and threat; positions of authority were for Severus’s family, upstarts would be squashed.

Albinus – also of North African origin – concentrated his British forces and in 196 AD went over onto the continent to take the field against Severus. Initially successful the final hard fought showdown at Lyons in France in 197 AD saw the British legions - and those continental ones who had sided with Albinus - bloodily overthrown. Albinus and his family were all executed and Severus had Albinus’s body laid out for him to trample under his horses hooves.

The vicious streak in Severus nature was evident for all to see and record for posterity yet no more (serious) challenges remained to his position as Emperor.

However Severus is recorded having undertaken a purge of his now-dead foes former supporters in Rome upon his return – so brutally was this pursued that he was termed the “Punic Sulla”; a saw that suggests Severus’s ethnicity. Rome however was clearly not to his taste for he took to field again in a campaign against the Parthians in late 197 AD.
The Parthian capital Ctesiphon was captured and sacked. Its population - rumoured to be around 100,000 - murdered or sold into slavery. Severus remained away from Rome in the east for 5 years, with only enigmatic Hatra holding out against his ambitions.

Apart from the brief Plautianus affair, a building programme such as he undertook in his north African birthplace of Lepcis Magna – or more often a restoration of existing buildings – took up much of Severus’s attention till the unsettled conditions in northern Britain drew his attention.

It remains unknown how quickly or how slowly Severus allowed the defeated provincial garrisons of Britannia and Syria to be brought back up to strength again. What is clear is that since Albinus’s departure from Britain the strength of the Roman garrison and its ability to resist raids from north of Hadrian’s Wall was no longer fit for the task.

It has been suggested that Albinus had stripped the garrison bare in 196 AD and that to deter raids he will have entered into treaties with the tribes of what is now Scotland. With Albinus dead - on Severus’s order - the tribes will surely have felt little compunction about holding any further truck with these treaties.

There was however no cull of Roman units in the British garrison over the period of the battle of Lyons, records and inscriptions tell us that the garrison units probably beaten at the battle were later back in Britain though apparently no longer in the strength they had in Albinus’s day.

The chroniclers Herodian and Cassius Dio - both contemporaries of the time - recorded Severus’s last campaign in some detail (link).

In 208 AD the (un-named) governor of Britain pleaded for help from the Emperor, beleaguered by unabated raids from north of Hadrian’s Wall (link to Timeline 208AD). Severus, apparently itching for action and keen to instil some military discipline in his bickering sons Caracalla and Geta, was keen to oblige and crossing to Britain in 208 AD undertook extensive preparations for the forthcoming campaigns – not least in recognising the (overland) supply problems apparently encountered by the Romans in Scotland in the latter half of the preceding century.

The fort at South Shields was converted in a most unusual manner, its buildings in the main replaced with granaries. These supplies would be needed; Severus is recorded bringing not only a huge amount of money but also substantial reinforcements – including not least his Praetorian guard.
His army, when it at last advanced in the summer of 209 AD is unlikely to have numbered less than 50,000. We can only guess this number however Cassius Dio may assist, his text states that Severus lost 50,000 men in the campaign. This may perhaps be a corruption of the original text (it was rewritten by Xiphilinus) and as again there is no great cull in Roman army units around this time then the original text may perhaps have read something along the lines that he lost “many (or) a great number of his 50,000 men”.

Before the storm broke however the tribes of ancient Scotland – the sources do not tell us which ones – sent an embassy to negotiate with Severus - now ensconced in his temporary capital of York/ Eboracum. We are told nothing further of the embassy other than it was turned away. Severus it would appear was intent on war and apparently confident that his massive army – the size of force he would use to take on a superpower like Parthia - would be sufficient to the task.

Severus – as he was suffering from gout he was carried in a litter - separately campaigned against the Maetae of southern then the Caledonians of northern Scotland, losing in the process the large number of men noted above to the guerrilla warfare successfully conducted by the tribes of Scotland. By contrast he apparently gained little in return.

Severus eventually concluded a peace treaty with the Caledonians – nearly stabbed in the process by his son Caracalla – and took hostages such as the Caledonian chief Argentocoxus (and his outspoken wife) south with them, possibly billeting them in the Roman-built roundhouses constructed at Vindolanda around this time.

Matters can not have been securely concluded however as Severus remained at York. Historians claim he did this as he superstitiously believed he would die in Britain and was loath to foil his fate however the more pressing matter of unresolved affairs in Scotland is a more plausible explanation for the ongoing transplantation of the seat of imperial power in Britannia’s most northerly fortress in 210 AD.

To date little consideration has been given to the almost single minded prosecution of military activity that Severus undertook against the “enemies” beyond the frontiers of his former competitors; Niger and Albinus.

This suggests either Severus’s manic approach to threats and a desire to be seen defeating those enemies his former opponents could not, or conversely tacit admission that he feared the former provinces of Niger and Albinus and had in the intervening years deliberately kept them under-strength to discourage any repeat insurrections by their garrisons – a happy state of affairs that the tribes of Scotland and the Parthian empire could and would have made the most off.

Further reinforcing this, Severus undertook to split the province of Britannia into two; Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior (i.e. lower and upper like the Rhine frontier)- though it was 213 AD under Caracalla before the plan came to fruition. This clearly points to a British garrison brought at last back up to strength yet split so that no one man could again (in theory) harness its entire not inconsiderable military manpower and resources to rise against Severus and his dynasty.

The tribes of ancient Scotland were not to disappoint him, the Maetae rose in armed resistance and Severus suffered an apoplexy when the Caledonians made common cause with them – a state of affairs the Romans had since Pius’s time apparently sought to prevent.

As Severus’s health was failing then Caracalla was ordered north on a murderous foray against the tribes in the winter of 210 AD. Severus’s megalomaniac blood chilling instruction (quoting Homer direct) was;

…“let no one escape sheer destruction, no one our hands, even if it be a babe in the womb, if it be male; let it nevertheless not escape sheer destruction”

We are not specifically told which tribes Caracalla was sent against. However the unusual time of year for campaigning coupled with the poor verdict on his performance recorded by both Cassius Dio and Herodian - Caracalla is judged to have spent greater effort gaining the support of the army while actively attempting to have his now deeply ill father poisoned - argues against any vigorous penetration into the north of Scotland.

Efforts therefore were likely aimed against the truculent Maetae of southern Scotland, the tribal confederation specifically recorded rising against Rome. The possibility also exists that the genocidal order given by Severus perhaps related to the hostages taken in 209 AD and possibly billeted at Vindolanda. No more is certainly heard of these unfortunates after this time and the skull currently (tastelessly) displayed in the modern museum there which was recovered from the ditch of the Severan fort there could perhaps belong to one of them.

Severus expired on the 4th of February at York and his sons were likely by his side by this time.
He had initiated the construction of a vexillation fortress at Carpow - probably (H) Poreoclassis - near Perth on the River Tay and close to the old Mons Graupius battle site suggesting York was located too far to the south of the centre of gravity of imperial focus and of military operations.

With an air of finality and defeat however Hadrian’s Wall was given a thorough reconstruction - to the extent that the number of inscribed centurial stones relating to his reign found there for long had antiquarians holding Severus as the original builder of the - stone part - of the mural barrier.

Severus’s campaigns in Scotland receive varied interpretation. Some of his original histories were in Greek and copied severally however no great success comes across in the sources, while Dio goes further and suggests his losses in campaign were (at best) inordinate – so much for modern analysts keen to dismiss the tribes of ancient Scotland as a mindless rabble!!

The sources mention land surrendered, however debate continues, was it land ceded by the tribes to Rome or the converse? The likelihood remains that the weighty treasure chest Severus brought with him seems the most likely tool of success at the negotiations held in the north in 209 AD.
It is in this chests contents and the likely frequency with which its largesse was offered to the tribes - yet however the probable paucity with which any such payments were ultimately made - that we can better see and understand the likely reality of Severus’s failure to maintain a peaceful pact with the tribes of ancient Scotland.
From a military perspective Severus’s behemoth sized army certainly never found an opponent foolish enough to square up against its numbers on the conventional battlefield.
The tribes therefore had – it appears - amply learned the lessons of Mons Graupius and used the hard experience of Agricola’s campaigns to great and stinging effect against Severus.

Severus’s would not be the last Roman army to campaign in strength in Scotland by a long chalk however matters within the Roman military would subtly change from hereon and the differences in Roman armies after this period would increasingly outnumber any similarities with Severus’s – probably the last of the Principate style Imperial Roman armies seen in Scotland.

Such armies - the size of which could humble eastern superpowers - could not bring matters to a conclusion in Scotland.
Like humble Hatra in the near east, Roman military conquest of ancient Scotland – as underlined yet again by a retrenchment attitude behind a reconstructed Hadrian’s Wall - had failed and would never in such narrow terms be attempted again.

The manner in which Rome would politically deal with Scotland would also evolve under Caracalla. A fundamental see-change in the nature of Romes’ relation with ancient Scotland had been reached.

 

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©2011 Roman Scotland. All Rights Reserved
First Published February 2011