100 - Black and White and Severus All Over

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 100, Black and White, and Severus All Over. On June 1, 193 AD, Septimius Severus was officially recognized as emperor by the Senate and people of Rome. In theory, he now controlled the whole empire, but in practice he was only master of its western half. Unlike the Danube legions and the British legions, who both at this point backed Severus, the troops in Syria and Egypt recognized Pescenius Niger's claim to the throne, and would have scoffed at any attempt by Severus to order them around. There were high hopes all around, though, that political tensions between east and west could be resolved without bloodshed, but it was not to be. The basic fact was that Severus was convinced that he had every right to the throne, and Niger was also convinced that he had every right to the throne. Keeping the aftermath of Julianus' rise and fall bloodless meant that one of the two generals was going to have to back down and take a subordinate role to the other. Claudius Albinus had already allowed himself to be so subordinated, but neither Niger nor Severus had any intention of following his example. And so, unfortunately, civil war.

But Severus was savvy about optics, as evidenced by the care he took in keeping his initial coup a bloodless one—well, relatively bloodless. Julianus and the men who had murdered Pertinax were dead, but no one liked them anyway, so they don't really count. In all his public posturing, Severus intimated that Niger was his friend and colleague, and that they couldn't possibly have any real quarrel with one another, since they were such good friends and such good colleagues. Their two armies had both acted nobly in rejecting Julianus and independently hailing their leader's emperor, but now that Pertinax was avenged, it was time for them to act nobly again and reject discord in favor of Concord. Despite his public front of hopeful hope and friendly friendship, though, Severus and his lieutenants were diligently preparing for war. They well knew that, barring a miracle, the only place Severus and Niger would be able to conclusively settle the issue of who was emperor would be on the battlefield.

Thus, thirty days after he arrived in Rome, Severus ordered his forces to break camp and head east. He told the Senate and the people that he was merely on his way to tour and inspect the eastern provinces, and pointedly made no mention of Niger or his rival claim to power. But those in the know knew that Severus was on his way to demand the approaching Syrian legions recognize him as their emperor or face destruction.

We know basically how things are going to turn out in the contest between Severus and Niger, and we'll get to the details in a second. But before we get into the particulars, I should point out that things didn't have to turn out this way. Indeed, to many at the time, the ascension and subsequent victories of Severus came as quite a shock. You see, a pretty good chunk of the political class simply assumed that the job was naturally going to pass over to Pescanius Niger. From the moment Julianus bought the throne, they expected Niger, not Severus, to be the man who would ride triumphantly into the city, cow the Praetorians, and restore order. All the Syrian governor had to do was get on his horse and ride. But then a funny thing happened. A presumed successor to Julianus never showed up for his coronation ceremony.

There is not a ton in the historical record about Pescanius Niger, but we do know that he was born in the late 130s AD, around about the time that power was being transferred from Hadrian to Antoninus, making him the eldest of our three claimants to the throne. Like Severus, he had come from an upper middle class family of equites and, also like Severus, saw his career advance rapidly during that age of upward mobility made possible by the Parthian War, the Marcomannic Wars, and the Antonine Plague. Early in Commodus' reign, he had been made a senator and then appointed to a military command in Dacia, where he served alongside Claudius Albinus and helped settle a brief Sarmatian uprising. After that, he was enough in Commodus' confidence that when the Deserters' War broke out in it was Niger who was ordered into Gaul to put the rebel army down. Probably as a reward for his success in this endeavor, Commodus appointed Niger to the all-important governorship of Syria. Arriving in Antioch, he endeared himself to the population by taking a liberal attitude towards local custom, and for encouraging the kind of games Marcus had outlawed, and endeared himself to the legions by maintaining discipline without being overly harsh or strict about anything. He remained happily situated in Syria until the chaos of 193 led him to pack up his things and lead his armies toward Rome. Very slowly pack up his things and very slowly lead his armies toward Rome. Not to Rome, mind you, just toward Rome. He never would get there.

The problem with Niger, and the thing that most especially led to his fall, was the fact that he did not feel the fierce urgency of now. When Septimius Severus decided to make his bid for the throne, he spent every waking moment preparing to march on Rome, and when preparations were complete, he spent every waking moment actually marching on Rome, and when he arrived, he spent every waking moment figuring out exactly how he was going to keep the power he had grabbed. Pescanius Niger, on the other hand, was far more lackadaisical about everything. Even a more vigorous response, he might have, like Vespasian before him, leveraged his position as de facto leader of the eastern empire into de jure leader of the whole empire. But he dillied and he dallied, and when he finally got around to making his move, it was too late. Two months had passed since the death of Julianus, and Niger was just now barely leaving Antioch. He wouldn't even make it to the Hellespont before being met by Severus' Danube legions, who, in the same amount of time, had marched from Pannonia to Rome, ousted Julianus, sat around for a bit catching their breath as Severus planned their next move, and then crossed the Adriatic, marched across Macedonia and Thrace, all the way to the Hellespont. It is quite obvious, then, which general was feeling said fierce urgency of now, and which was feeling the fierce urgency of whenever.

Up until the very end, Severus and Niger maintained an officially friendly correspondence that pretended war was not imminent, but finally the charade was called off when the two armies met in battle, seeing as how it's kind of hard to pretend you have nothing but the most peaceful of intentions when you're simultaneously ordering your cavalry in to ride and hack your rival to pieces. The advance guards of both armies found each other in the province of Bithynia, and fought two separate engagements in the late summer of 193, which, though too large to be considered skirmishes, were also too small to be decisive. In both fights, though, Niger's eastern troops looked badly overmatched against the veteran Pannonian legions, and were beaten handily. The ascension of Niger, which at first had seemed so right, so logical, and so inevitable, was now turning out to be so very clearly a pipe dream.

Winter overtook the contest, though, and when the new year dawned, Severus cemented his alliance with Albinus by sharing a consulship with the British general. He further let it be known that while he was prosecuting the war in the east, that he fully trusted Albinus to maintain the peace and tranquility of the west. His other rival now fully complacent, Severus wasted no time trying to land the final blow against Niger when spring arrived.

In the meantime, Niger had withdrawn his forces almost all the way back to Syria, and had set up a fortified position near the village of Isis, at a location known as the Cilician Gates, a narrow east-west passage wedged in between the southern coastline of Turkey and the sharply rising Taurus Mountains to the north. When you google the battle of Isis, though, your first hits will not point you to the decisive battle between Severus and Niger, but rather to the decisive battle between Alexander the Great and the Persians, fought over five hundred years earlier on exactly the same spot. But Niger, as they say, was no Alexander. Though the two forces were roughly equal in size, three legions apiece plus some auxiliaries, the Danube troops, tempered in the fires of the Marcomannic Wars, were simply superior to the Syrian troops, who had been tempered in the fires of, well, not much really. The Parthian War was already thirty years past, and as a result, none of the soldiers in the east had any real experience with any real fighting.

Niger's men made a go of it, but they were already beginning to fall back when Severus's cavalry, sent around on a secret mission prior to the battle, suddenly appeared at their rear. Chaos and slaughter ensued, and Niger was forced to flee the battlefield. His army now completely destroyed, the Syrian governor was apparently making for Parthia, where he hoped to find asylum and perhaps the resources to make another bid for the throne one day. But he was caught before he reached the Euphrates, and like Julianus before him, was unceremoniously beheaded. The head was sent back to Severus, who forwarded it on to the smallish but well-fortified city of Byzantium, where what was left of the Niger loyalists had holed up.

Though their leader's head now sat atop a spike in front of the city gates, Niger's remaining lieutenants obstinately refused to surrender. At first they held out simply to refuse Severus the satisfaction of victory, but eventually they came to believe that Claudius Albinus would eventually heed the various calls for him to get into the ring, and that maybe, just maybe, they could live long enough to see Severus's head on a spike too. But after a two-year holdout, a famine got the better of them, and the last of Niger's soldiers finally surrendered Byzantium in 196. Severus ordered all the walls and fortifications of the city be toppled, reducing Byzantium to just another open village, which is exactly how Constantine found it more than a century later.

In between the occupation and surrender of Byzantium, Severus busied himself in the east. Still hoping to maintain some thin veneer of clemency, Severus did not simply go around to the various provinces killing those leading men who had supported Niger, but he did do the next harshest thing he could think of. Anyone associated with the fallen Syrian governor, no matter how tenuously, was purged from political office and their property confiscated. The ill-gotten, but not murderously so, gains were then directed by Severus to his faithful soldiers. The soon to be undisputed emperor had no illusions about where his power was derived from, and no desire to beat around the bush in his plans to hold on to that power. For the entirety of the Severan dynasty, starting with Severus himself, it would be the army first, last, and always. Indeed, as he lay dying, he gave his sons one last piece of advice, summing up his whole political philosophy in one short sentence. Be harmonious with each other, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men.

Severus's position was crystallizing, but since you can't return home to a triumph if your victory comes against your fellow Romans—literally, it was against the rules—Severus embarked on a brief campaign against the Parthians, to give himself a nice foreign victory to point to. Following a series of practically non-contested victories in the Parthian borderlands beyond the Euphrates, Severus was finally confident enough in his grasp on power, that he decided to drop the pretense that he was going to make Albinus his heir, and announced that his young son Caracalla was now to be known as Marcus Aurelius Septimius Bassianus Antoninus, and would be next in line for the throne. This news came as something of a nasty surprise to Albinus in Britain, whose support for Severus, after all, had been premised on being named Severus's heir.

The announcement also put an incident from the previous year in a new light. After defeating Niger, Severus had sent a note to Albinus proclaiming the triumph, but when the messengers arrived and requested a private audience with Albinus, they had whipped out daggers and tried to kill him. The assassination attempt had been unsettling, but it had also been difficult to believe, premised on every other thing he had ever said or done, that Severus had been the one who ordered the attack. But now that Albinus was getting the old double cross, the random assassination attempt by some rogue soldiers took on a much more sinister light, because Severus had obviously tried to kill him.

In 196, now fully aware that he had been duped into complacency for the last two and a half years, Albinus finally accepted all that his troops wanted him to accept. He allowed himself to be hailed Imperator, kept the name Caesar, and prepared himself for war with Severus. He crossed over the English Channel into Gaul with three legions and a host of auxiliaries, the Cassius Dio estimated to be some 150,000 total men, though, like all ancient figures, this is likely an exaggeration. He was met initially by a smaller force led by one of Severus' generals, who had been tasked with halting the invasion, or, at the very least, slowing it down. Albinus dispatched Severus' welcoming party with ease, though, and the setback gave some on the Severan side pause. Maybe we should come to some sort of agreement with Albinus. It turns out that fighting him isn't exactly going to be a walk in the park, you know. But Severus himself seemed undaunted, and readied himself for what he was confident would be his final test. Beating Albinus meant that the empire would be his, free and clear.

Albinus was able to occupy Lugdunum, the capital of Roman Gaul, but he was unable to do the one thing he really needed to do to win. Severus now had British legions accepted, the whole of the empire behind him. There was no way Albinus would be able to match Severus' reserve of men and material, unless he was able to convince the Rhine legions to join his cause. Thus far a non-factor in the war, the Rhine legions had remained essentially neutral, though they had leaned heavily toward Severus against Niger. Albinus hoped he could coax them into his camp, but all his entreaties were spurned, as the Rhine troops instead dug in their support for Severus, pegging him to be the eventual winner in any contest that they themselves did not get involved in. Having failed to sway the Rhine troops, Albinus still persisted in his preparations for battle, but now his mission seemed to be working itself up to be a romantic last stand, rather than a stunning victory against the growing tyranny of Severus.

Like Septimius Severus, Claudius Albinus had been born in Africa, though unlike Severus, Albinus was the son of a wealthy senatorial family, and was by far the most pedigreed of the three rivals for power. He earned the cognom in Albinus shortly after his birth in 147, when his father commented on the boy's unusually pale skin, though he was not an albino per se, as it is sometimes thought. From the very beginning he was set on a military career, and as a young man quickly established a reputation as an excellent soldier. He served in various capacities throughout the first half of the Marcomannic Wars, and was, at an early age, promoted to the governorship of Bithynia for the year 175. That meant that he was in Bithynia when the revolt of Ovidius Cassius broke out. Rather than join the other eastern provinces, Albinus withheld the single legion he controlled from Cassius, and instead remained loyal to Marcus. This endeared him to the emperor and his son Commodus, who, you will recall, was there during the crisis, and learned quickly who was with his family and who was opposed to them.

For the entirety of Commodus' reign, Albinus continued to be held in high esteem by the emperor, and was given commands in Gaul, and then finally the powerful governorship of Britain. Given remarks that we should not hold it against Albinus that he was so well liked by Commodus, and that sometimes, even men who usually favor the corrupt and venal, occasionally, almost by accident, favor the honest and capable, which by all estimations Albinus was. In fact, Albinus actually took things a little bit further than that. In early 192, a believable rumor reached his headquarters in Britain, that Commodus was dead, and in response, Albinus delivered an address to his troops, condemning the excesses and brutality of Commodus, and openly calling for a return to a republican form of government. By the time the speech was over, he had outed himself as a full-blown critic of the imperial system, and likely would have paid for the crime with his life, had not Commodus really been killed just a few months later, before the emperor could deal with his suddenly treasonous governor of Britain.

Just like with Severus and Niger, the elevation of Pertinax came as welcome news to Albinus, but the elevation of Julianus did not. Perhaps in a nod to his republican sympathies, Albinus initially refused the title Imperator and Augustus, and allowed himself to be styled merely as a lieutenant of the people. But, perhaps further revealing that some of those republican sympathies were more rhetorical and theoretical than actual, he allowed himself to be seduced by Severus' offer of Caesarhood, and so stood by while Severus annihilated Niger. But after Caracalla was elevated in Albinus' place, Severus was exposed as a ruthless two-faced tyrant who was not to be trusted nor followed. In Albinus' mind, it was now his duty, as the only man in a position to do something about it, to do something about Septimius Severus.

In February 197, Albinus very nearly did something about it. The force Severus mustered to face down his last rival was roughly equal to that of Albinus' army. That is, Severus' army is also quoted to be at the aforementioned 150,000. Which meant that at least for this one fight, the two generals were on equal footing. The size of the two armies also meant that this was the largest legion-on-legion fight in the whole long history of Rome. By contrast, the battle of Pharsalus featured a mere 30,000 troops for Caesar, and maybe 60,000 for Pompey, a combined total that would have been dwarfed by a single side in this latest fight for control of the empire. Even taking into account the exaggeration factor, the battle of Lugdunum had to have been an absolutely humongous affair.

In contrast to the other battles won in his name, Severus decided that this fight was critical enough that he needed to be there in person to lead his armies, and with Albinus personally directing his own forces, the fight turned into a slugfest between two evenly matched armies, both being led by highly intelligent commanders. For most of the day, the two sides both gave as good as they got. When Albinus' left wing began to give way, Severus' left wing simultaneously fell into a trap that nearly cost Severus his life, when he was caught in a chaotic retreat away from a booby-trapped field. But eventually the Severans wore down Albinus' men and broke through their lines. Albinus himself fled the field and retreated back to a house in the still as of yet untaken city of Lugdunum, but, recognizing that the day was lost and that it was only a matter of time before he was captured and executed, Claudius Albinus committed suicide.

It is reported that Severus showed no respect for Albinus' honor, and, in addition to running over the discovered corpse with a cart, he chopped off the head and sent it back to Rome as a warning to anyone who dared to dream that Septimius Severus was not, in fact, the invincible and undisputed master of the world.

Next time, Severus will have to deal with the consequences of his actions. A man of boundless energy, who was used to immediate and unquestioned compliance with his orders, suddenly found himself leading a civilian governmental apparatus that was sluggish, temperamental, and, above all, boring. The life of a Roman politician is absolutely nothing like the life of a Roman general, a fact that Severus was quickly coming to understand. In pursuit of power, he had never stopped to contemplate whether the imperial throne would prove to be a blessing or a curse. In the end, he came down squarely on the side of the ladder. With no great crises left to engage him, his spirit atrophied in the face of bureaucratic minutia. Relief was supposed to be found in the cultivation of his sons, but before his very eyes, Caracalla and Geta were turning into cruel, petulant adolescents, and, worse yet, seemed to despise one another. Rather than being left satisfied that the power he had won for his family would be wielded wisely, he was left dejected, suspecting that the minute he was gone, the boys would tear each other and the empire apart.

I say next time, rather than next week, because, unfortunately, I am going to have to miss the next two Sundays. I'm headed up to Madison for an extended Fourth of July vacation, and all my available writing time is going to be replaced with family time. But you might say, shouldn't that mean you're only taking one week off? Well, yes, that's what I thought too, but then I did the math, and it turns out that between everything, this one week-long trip is going to knock me out for two full episodes worth of production time. But don't worry, I'll come back tanned, ready, and rested, and next time, we'll delve into the back end of Severus's unhappy reign and watch his adorable little boys turn into deplorable little monsters.