Lives of the Later Caesars by Anthony Birley

Author:Anthony Birley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141935997
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

SEVERUS*

BY AELIUS SPARTIANUS

AFTER the murder of Didius Julianus, Severus, a native of Africa, gained the empire. His home town was Leptimagna,1 his father was Geta and his ancestors had been Roman knights before citizenship had been given to all.2 His mother was Fulvia Pia, his uncles were Aper and Severus,3 ex-consuls, his paternal grandfather was Macer4 and his maternal grandfather was Fulvius Pius. He himself was born on the third day before the Ides of April, when Erucius Clarus, for the second time, and Severus were the consuls [11 April A.D. 146].5 In his earliest boyhood, before he became steeped in Latin and Greek literature, in which he was highly educated, the only game he played with other boys was ‘Judges’. In this game the fasces and axes would be carried before him and, with a council of boys standing around him, he would sit and give judgement. In his eighteenth year he gave a formal speech in public, after which he came to Rome to pursue his studies, and applied for and received the broad stripe from the deified Marcus, with the backing of his kinsman Septimius Severus, who had already been consul twice.6

On his arrival at Rome he chanced upon an innkeeper who was reading the Life of the emperor Hadrian at that very time. This he seized upon as an omen of future good fortune. He also had another omen that he was to be emperor. When invited to an imperial banquet he had come wearing a Greek mantle instead of the toga he should have worn, and he was given the emperor’s own official toga to put on. The same night he dreamed he was sucking the teats of a she-wolf, like Remus or Romulus. Further, he sat in the imperial chair, which had been put in the wrong place by an attendant, being unaware that it was not permitted. Another time, when he was sleeping in a tavern, a snake wound itself round his head, and when his friends were alarmed and shouted out, the creature went away without harming him.

He did a lot of wild things in his youth, not all of them innocent. He was sued for adultery and spoke in his own defence, being acquitted by the proconsul Julianus.7 (He succeeded Julianus in the proconsulship, was his colleague in the consulship and also succeeded him as emperor.)8 His quaestorship he held with diligence, having omitted the military tribunate. After his quaestorship he received Baetica by lot and then set out for Africa to settle affairs at home, as his father had died. But while he was in Africa he was assigned to Sardinia instead of Baetica, because the Moors were ravaging Baetica.9 After completing his Sardinian quaestorship, then, he took the post of legate to the proconsul of Africa.10 During this legate-ship, when he was walking along preceded by the fasces, one of his fellow-townsmen, a man of Lepcis and a plebeian, embraced him as an old comrade. Severus gave the man

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