In Search of Ancient North Africa by Barnaby Rogerson

Author:Barnaby Rogerson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909961555
Publisher: Haus Publishing
Published: 2017-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

8

Septimius Severus

It was not just his home town of Leptis Magna that prospered, for there is hardly a Roman city in North Africa that did not grow more beautiful, more useful and more holy during the reign of the Emperor Septimius Severus. His influence is everywhere proclaimed: the view through an imperial triumphal archway designed to frame the prospect of rolling acres of farmland; the construction of an elegant new marketplace flanked with colonnaded walkways, lined with shop stalls and kiosks and overlooked by a fountain and a public weighing scale; a new piazza built as another element of the good life, halfway between the forum and the theatre; a delicate line of three interconnected temple–shrines overlooking an ancient spring-fed sanctuary; or a vast new bathhouse ornamented with statues and marbles like some royal palace but used every day by the people. If you have walked in wonder among the haunting ruins of Volubilis in Morocco, Timgad in southern Algeria, Dougga in Tunisia, Djemila in northern Algeria and Leptis in Libya, you will identify these places.

On the southern edge of Leptis Magna, astride the coast road to Carthage and the roadstead south into the Sahara, stands one of the most distinctive monuments to this man, the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus. It is a cube of white marble scooped through by four arches, a bold, imposing and innovative experiment in architecture, a first essay in baroque, for the pediments have literally been turned on their heads. So instead of supporting the projecting edges of a temple roof, they stand upright like four guardian horns, perched on the free-standing corner columns. Those who have travelled deeper south into the desert will be able to recognise how this radical architectural innovation also dances a reference to the acroteria that embellished Saharan tomb–altars.

The whole edifice of the arch was also mounted on a traffic island, so that it looked down on the swirl of provincial traffic that once flowed around it. If you advance out of the African sun to take shelter in the shade, you will find that the four archways support a hexagon of massive stone beams that carry the dome. It is a pregnant model, an experiment pointing the way to all the domed churches of Byzantium and Ottoman Istanbul built over the next thirteen hundred years. The walls have everywhere been lined with carved marble, a triumphal profusion of winged victories, trophies and imperial eagles. Those on the attic, the uppermost portion of the arch, are exact portraits of the imperial family, engaged in the solemn business of offering up sacrifices to the gods on each face of the arch.

Emperor Septimius Severus was born in Leptis Magna, so he is a fascinating individual for anyone interested in Roman North Africa. But it was not just his own city and home province that benefited from his rule, for under him the whole Roman empire reached its dazzling apogee. He is arguably one of the greatest lawmakers, statesmen and architects in

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