The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

CHAPTER XII
JULIA DOMNA

With the accession of Septimius Severus to the throne, we find ourselves confronting one of the most dominant personalities in the long line of Roman Empresses—a woman of the standard of Livia, Agrippina, and Plotina—and passing again into one of the brighter periods of the life of the Empire. The degradation of Commodus’s reign will disappear like a mist on a summer morn; the jaded frame of the Empire will seem to recover all its vigour in a few years. These periods of rapid recovery are not sufficiently appreciated by the rhetorical censors of the morals of Rome, whose investigations are almost entirely confined to the reigns of Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus; as if it were just to define the climate of a region by its worst days only. Let a strong man rise to power, let an imperial encouragement be given to virtue and manliness, and even the city of Rome takes on a normal moral aspect. The throne is but an electric point, and, according as it is positive or negative, it draws into the light of history either the good or the bad elements of Rome. Both are there all the time. And if the good rulers had made as drastic a purge of evil types, as evil rulers made of good types, when they came to power, the Empire might not have provided so much material to the censors of extinct civilizations.

The Empresses whom we have hitherto considered were, with a few exceptions, the daughters of Roman patricians, or of distinguished provincials who had lived in Rome for a generation or two. In Julia Domna, the wife of Severus, we have for the first time a woman of the East on the throne; and, as her family will for some time deeply influence the fortunes of the Empire, it will be interesting to glance at her origin.

On the bank of the Orontes in Syria, at the large village or small town of Emesa (now Hems), there was in the second century a very ancient and prosperous religious centre. At some early date in the history of the land a mysterious stone had been cast on the country from the home of the gods—a meteorite, modern science would call it—and it had been set up as a symbol of the Regenerating God (Elagabal, which the Greeks improperly turned into Heliogabalus, or Sun-god). A fine temple was in time built to shelter it, pilgrims sought it from the whole country, and the richest gifts were made to the god and his living representatives. About the middle of the second century the priest in charge was a certain Bassianus, who had two handsome and very clever daughters. The planets which presided at the birth of the elder promised her, according to the astrologers, a throne; and, as there was a camp of Roman soldiers near Emesa, and the temple was a great attraction to the soldiers in their exile, the pretty Syrian girl and her horoscope came to be known very far away. In the year 186 or 187 an offer of marriage came to the priest’s daughter from one of the highest officials, the legatus, of the rich province of Lower Gaul, and she crossed sea and land to accept it. Within six years this officer, Septimius Severus, was Emperor of Rome, and Julia Domna was Empress.

Some doubt has been thrown on this pretty story, and Serviez, whose chapter on Julia Domna is a piece of irresponsible fiction, describes her as coming to Rome, on her own account, in search of adventure. But we have abundant evidence that Severus was a most enthusiastic astrologer, and there is nothing improbable in the story. Severus was of the province of Roman Africa, of humble family, and, like so many energetic men in the days of Antoninus and Marcus, had earned promotion from office to office. He had first married a certain Paccia Marciana at Rome. He was then made Prætor, had a military command in Spain and Gaul, spent some years in study at Athens, and became Legate of the Lugdunian province. At Lyons he lost his first wife, and sought a second. Hearing that there was a maid in Syria with a royal horoscope, he sent for her, and married her at Lyons. A child was born the first year, and, although Bassianus (more popularly, Caracalla) is described by Eutropius and Aurelius Victor as her stepson, he was undoubtedly her first child. Geta, his brother and co-Emperor, was born two years later.

By that time they were living in Rome, where Severus was Consul. Commodus, whose follies excited his ambition no less than his disdain, gave him the command in Lower Germany. Immediately afterwards Commodus was assassinated, and about three months later came the news of the murder of Pertinax. It was easy to inflame the troops with anger on this occasion, and, as Severus offered a more than usually heavy bribe, he was acclaimed Emperor, and, as we saw, led the legions upon Rome. We do not know whether Julia had remained at Rome, or accompanied him, but she would be present when Rome greeted its new ruler. He rode in full armour, in the centre of a picked body of six hundred men. When, however, he saw that Rome had entirely deserted Julianus, he entered the city in civic costume, on foot. Flowers and laurel and gay hangings decorated all the houses, and the early summer sun shone on the white-robed masses of the citizens. Another splendid, but less joyous, spectacle was offered on the morrow, when a wax image of Pertinax was honoured with an Imperial funeral. Then he set about the stern business of securing his Empire. He had no title to it but his sword, and there were two other able generals—Albinus in Britain and Niger in Syria—urging the same title on their own behalf.

We do not know whether Julia accompanied Severus during the long civil war that followed. Some of the authorities represent her as egging on her husband to the destruction of his rivals. The advice would not be unnatural, but it would be so superfluous that we disregard the statement. With a craft that has not won him the regard of historians, Severus held Albinus in Britain with the empty title of Cæsar, while he proceeded to crush Niger in the East. As there are coins of the year 196 which entitle Julia “Mother of the Camps,”[15] she probably accompanied Severus to the East, but we need not pursue the long campaign. Severus committed the work to his generals, and kept watch over Rome and the West. Several years were absorbed in pacifying the East, and he then turned toward Britain. Acting under the strain of African barbarism which undoubtedly existed in the nature of Severus, he sent men with a treacherous commission to murder Albinus, and the discovery of the plot brought the British legions thundering over Gaul. The rivals met decisively at Lyons, and a titanic conflict ended with the triumph of Severus.

Rome had followed the even struggle with suspense, and some had ventured to take sides. The omens were ambiguous. A strange light—the aurora—flickered in the northern sky, and a rain mixed with silver—Dio soberly assures us that he plated several bronze coins with it—fell upon the city. Human judgment had been as uncertain as that of the gods, and many of the Romans had espoused the “white” (Albinus) or the “black” (Niger) cause, instead of that of the “grey,” to put it in the language of the hour. For Severus to have abstained entirely from punishing those who had supported his rivals, after the years of anxiety they had caused him, is too much to expect; but it must be admitted that his vengeance was cruel, and that his plea of the security of the State was little more than a cloak for a very human resentment, The “Historia Augusta” gives a ghastly list of forty-one Senators whom he put to death, and crowds of lesser folk suffered from his vindictiveness. From Syria to Gaul he marked the progress of his triumph with a trail of human blood.

Of the attitude of Julia in regard to these executions we have no knowledge. Severus was a cruel and passionate African, and we have no reason to think that any one impelled him to commit these deeds. His whole behaviour in the hour of triumph was injudicious and unworthy. He made a most unpleasant speech to the Senate in praise of Commodus, and directed that the highest honours should be paid to his memory. It may be that the consciousness of his lowly origin—which his sister tactlessly irritated by coming to Rome, and displaying her rural innocence to the amusement of the nobles—made him more suspicious of the patrician order than he need have been. Albinus, however, had come of a most ancient and honourable, if somewhat decayed, stock, and his finer blood may have influenced the Senate.

Leaving Rome under a painful impression of his harsh use of power, he set out for the East, where the Parthians were again in arms. Julia accompanied him on this campaign, but it is of little interest. The Parthians retired before his advance, and he pursued them down the Euphrates, and for a time held Babylon and several of the ancient cities of the East. Foiled, and incurring heavy losses, in the siege of Hatra, he retired sullenly from Mesopotamia, and sought consolation in a pleasant tour through Palestine and Egypt. They returned to Rome, about the beginning of the third century, for their first long stay in the capital.