Ethnicity:
Severus had Italian Roman ancestry on his mother's side and descended from Punic - and perhaps also Berber - forebears on his father's side.
Lucius Septimius Severus was born on 11 April 145 at Leptis Magna, Roman Libya (in present-day Khoms, Libya); the son of Publius Septimius Geta and Fulvia Pia.
Severus spoke the local Punic language fluently, but he was also educated in Latin and Greek. Presumably Severus also received lessons in oratory and studied law at Rome.
Severus rose through the regular course of Roman offices - at twenty-six Severus attained the quaestorship and a seat in the senate, and proceeded as quaestor militaris to the senatorial province of Baetica, in the Peninsula. While Severus was absent in Africa in consequence of the death of his father, the province of Baetica, disordered by Moorish invasions and internal commotion, was taken over by the emperor, who gave the senate Sardinia in exchange. On this Severus became military quaestor of Sardinia.
His next office, in 174 or 175, was that of legate to the proconsul of Africa, and soon after he was tribune of the plebs.
In 178 or 179 Severus became praetor by competition for the suffrages of the senators. Then, probably in the same year, he went to Hispania Citerior as legatus juridicus; after that he commanded a legion in Syria. After the death of Marcus Aurelius he was unemployed for several years
He became consul in 190, and was serving as governor of Upper Pannonia in 193, when Emperor Pertinax was murdered by the praetorian guard. Severus's command of 12 legions and proximity to Rome made him a favored contender for the throne. He appeared in Rome as the dead emperor's avenger and won the senators' approval by promising them respectful treatment, by disbanding the praetorian guard, which he replaced with elite from the legions, and by naming his Western rival, Albinus, his caesar (successor-designate).
The rest of Severus' reign is in the main occupied with wars. The power wielded by Pescennius Niger, who called himself emperor, and was supposed to control one-half of the Roman world, proved to be more imposing than substantial. The magnificent promises of Oriental princes were falsified as usual. Niger himself, as described by Dio, was the very type of mediocrity, conspicuous for no faculties, good or bad. This character had no doubt commended him to Commodus as suited for the important command in Syria, which might have proved a source of danger in abler hands. The contest between Severus and Niger was practically decided after two or three engagements, fought by Severus' officers.
After defeating his more formidable rival, Pescennius Niger, in 194, Severus started a successful campaign against the Parthians. But fear of the activities of Albinus in the West led Severus to break off his campaign and hurry back to Gaul. Albinus was better born and better educated than Severus, but in capacity far inferior. As Severus was nearing Italy he received the news that Albinus had been declared emperor by his soldiers. The first counter-stroke of Severus was to affiliate himself and his elder son to the Antonines by a spurious and posthumous adoption. The prestige of the old name, even when gained in this illegitimate way, was evidently worth much. Bassianus, the elder son of Severus, thereafter known as Aurelius Antoninus, was named Caesar in place of Albinus, and was thus marked out as successor to his father. Without interrupting the march of his forces, Severus contrived to make an excursion to Rome. Here he availed himself with much subtlety of the sympathy many senators were known to have felt for Niger. Though he was so far faithful to the decree passed by his own advice that he put no senator to death, yet he banished and impoverished many whose presence or influence seemed dangerous or inconvenient to his prospects. Of the sufferers probably few had seen or communicated with Niger.
The collision between the forces of Severus and Albinus was the most violent that had taken place between Roman troops since the contest at Philippi. The decisive engagement was fought in February of the year 197 on the plain between the Rhone and the Saône, to the north of Lyons, and resulted in a complete victory for Severus.
Now firmly established, Septimius began to show more candidly his sentiments toward Roman traditions. He had 29 senators executed on suspicion of favoring Albinus, and their property was confiscated. Famous cities, such as Byzantium, Antioch, and Lyons, were humiliated or destroyed. And his elder son, Bassianus (Caracalla), was renamed Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, in pretense that Septimius had been adopted into the prestigious Antonine family of emperors.
A Parthian attack in 197 brought the Emperor back to the East. He captured the Parthian capital at Ctesiphon and reestablished a province of Mesopotamia.
From 199 to 202 the Emperor visited various Eastern provinces, where he established frontier outposts and improved the living conditions of the soldiers.
For the next 6 years Septimius remained chiefly in Rome. His administrative activities included pay raises for the troops, whom he also allowed for the first time to marry while in service. Veterans were given rapid advancement in the civil service, and the bureaucracy became militarized. Italy's formerly preferred status in the empire was lessened, while favored status was given to many places in his native Africa and his wife's homeland in Syria. Severus appointed prominent jurists to high administrative posts; and the appearance of a number of Rome's greatest legal names on the Emperor's council brought a humane approach and increased protection for the humble in the legislation of the Emperor.
From 208 to his death at York in 211 Septimius was in Britain fighting the Caledonians. Whether or not he really advised his sons on his deathbed to enrich the soldiers and disregard all others, the anecdote is a just estimate of the direction he gave the Roman world.
The 18-year reign of Septimius Severus meant a whole series of important reforms that significantly advanced the transition from the Principate to the Unity.
Severus was also distinguished for his buildings. Apart from the triumphal arch in the Roman Forum carrying his full name, he also built the Septizodium in Rome and enriched greatly his native city of Leptis Magna (including another triumphal arch on the occasion of his visit of 203). The greater part of the Flavian Palace overlooking the Circus Maximus was undertaken in his reign.
At the beginning of Severus' reign, Trajan's policy toward the Christians was still valid, that is, Christians were only to be punished if they refused to worship the emperor and the gods, but they were not to be sought out. Therefore, persecution was inconsistent, local, and sporadic. Faced with internal dissidence and external threats, Severus felt the need to promote religious harmony by promoting syncretism, and by possibly issuing an edict that punished conversion to Judaism and Christianity.
A number of persecutions of Christians occurred in the Roman Empire during the reign of Septimius Severus and are traditionally attributed to Severus by the early Christian community. This is based on the decree mentioned in the Augustan History, an unreliable mix of fact and fiction. Early church historian Eusebius describes Severus as a persecutor, but the Christian apologist Tertullian states that Severus was well disposed towards Christians, employed a Christian as his personal physician and had personally intervened to save several high-born Christians known to him from "the mob". Eusebius' description of Severus as a persecutor likely derives merely from the fact that numerous persecutions occurred during his reign, including those known in the Roman martyrology as the martyrs of Madaura and Perpetua and Felicity in the Roman province of Africa, but these were probably as the result of local persecutions rather than empire-wide actions or decrees by Severus.
Severus broke with the decent conventions of the Augustan constitution, ignored the senate, and based his rule upon force. The main support of the emperor was the army, so their salary was increased, the centurions were ranked among the riders, the veterans received different privileges, and the soldiers were allowed to marry during the service. His policy of an expanded and better-rewarded army was criticized by his contemporaries Cassius Dio and Herodianus: in particular, they pointed out the increasing burden (in the form of taxes and services) the civilian population had to bear to maintain the new army.
While the policy of Severus was primarily a family policy, he was by no means careless of the security and welfare of the empire. Only in one instance, the destruction of Byzantium, did he weaken its defenses for his own ends -- an error for which his successors paid dearly, when the Goths came to dominate the Euxine. The troublesome Danubian regions received the special attention of the emperor, but all over the realm the status and privileges of communities and districts were recast in the way that seemed likely to conduce to their prosperity. The administration acquired more and more of a military character, in Italy as well as in the provinces. Retired military officers now filled many of the posts formerly reserved for civilians of equestrian rank. The praefect of the Praetorians received large civil and judicial powers, so that the investment of Papinian with the office was less unnatural than it seems at first sight. The alliance between Severus and the jurisconsults had important consequences. While he gave them new importance in the body politic, and cooperated with them in the work of legal reform, they did him material service by working an absolutist view of the government into the texture of Roman law.
The emperor himself was a devoted and upright judge, but he struck a great blow at the purity of the law by transferring the exercise of imperial jurisdiction from the forum to the palace. He sharpened in many respects the law of treason, put an end to the time-honored quaestiones perpetuae, altered largely that important section of the law which defined the rights of the fiscus, and developed further the social policy which Augustus had embodied in the lex Julia de adulteriis and the lex Papia Poppaea.
During his reign the senate was powerless; he took all initiative into his hands. He broke down the distinction between the servants of the senate and the servants of the emperor. All nominations to office or function passed under his scrutiny. The estimation of the old consular and other republican titles was diminished. The growth of capacity in the senate was checked by cutting off the tallest of the poppy-heads early in the reign. The senate became a mere registration office for the imperial determinations, and its members, as has been well said, a choir for drawling conventional hymns of praise in honor of the monarch. Even the nominal restoration of the senate's power at the time of Alexander Severus, and the accession of so-called "senatorial emperors" later on, did not efface the work of Septimius Severus, which was resumed and carried to its fulfilment by Diocletian.
Severus had a clear head, promptitude, resolution, tenacity and great organizing power, but no touch of genius. That he was cruel cannot be questioned, but his cruelty was of the calculating kind, and always directed to some end.
Stern and barbarous punishment was always meted out by Severus to the conquered foe, but terror was deemed the best guarantee for peace. He felt no scruples of conscience or honor if he thought his interest at stake, but he was not wont to take an excited or exaggerated view of what his interest required. He used or destroyed men and institutions alike with cool judgment and a single eye to the secure establishment of his dynasty.
As a soldier Severus was brave, but he can hardly be called a general, in spite of his successful campaigns. He was rather the organizer of victory than the author of it. The operations against his enemies were carried out entirely by his officers.
His first marriage was to Paccia Marciana, a woman from Leptis Magna. It appears that the marriage produced no surviving children. Marciana died of natural causes around 186.
He then married an Emesan Syrian named Julia Domna. Her father, Julius Bassianus, descended from the royal house of Samsigeramus and Sohaemus and served as a high priest to the local cult of the sun god Elagabal. Bassianus accepted Severus' marriage proposal in early 187, and the following summer the couple married. The marriage proved happy. They had two sons, Lucius Septimius Bassianus (later nicknamed Caracalla, born 4 April 188) and Publius Septimius Geta(born 7 March 189).
He is known from several inscriptions, two of which were found in Leptis Magna, Africa (East of Tripoli in modern Libya).
Geta was a Roman emperor who ruled with his father Septimius Severus and his older brother Caracalla from 209, when he was named Augustus like his brother who had held the title since 198.
Julia was a Syrian (Domna being her Syrian name) and was the daughter of the hereditary high priest Bassianus at Emesa (present-day Ḥimṣ) in Syria and elder sister of Julia Maesa.
During the reign of Septimius Severus, Julia Domna had played a prominent public role, receiving titles of honor such as "Mother of the camp", but she also played a role behind the scenes helping Septimius administer the empire.
While Caracalla was mustering and training troops for his planned Persian invasion, Julia remained in Rome, administering the empire. Julia's growing influence in state affairs was the beginning of a trend of emperors' mothers having influence, which continued throughout the Severan dynasty.
Paccia Marciana was the first wife of Septimius Severus, who later became Roman emperor. They married around 175 and she died of natural causes around 186.
