Alexander Severus (M. Aurelius Alexander Severus), 222-235 A.D.
[222-232 A.D.]
Both the senate and the army joyfully concurred in the elevation of Alexander Severus; and the former body, lest any competitor should appear, hastened to confer on him all the imperial titles and powers. On account of his youth and his extremely amiable disposition he was entirely directed by his grandmother and mother, but Mæsa dying soon after his accession, the sole direction of her son fell to Mamæa. [The statues and coins of this woman show that she was a pagan, though the contrary has been inferred from the correspondence with Origen.] Nevertheless in her guidance of public affairs she exhibited a spirit of wisdom, justice, and moderation such as had not appeared in any preceding empress. Her enemies laid to her charge the love of power and the love of money, and blamed her son for deferring too much to her; but their accusations are vague, and no act of cruelty caused by avarice stains the annals of this reign.
The first care of Mamæa was to form a wise and upright council for her son. Sixteen of the most respectable of the senate, with the learned Ulpian, the prætorian prefect, at their head, composed this council, and nothing was ever done without their consent and approbation. A general system of reformation was commenced and steadily pursued. All the absurd acts of the late tyrant were reversed. His god was sent back to Emesa; the statues of the other deities were restored to their temples; the ministers of his vices and pleasures were sold or banished, some of the worst were drowned; the unworthy persons whom he had placed in public situations were dismissed, and men of knowledge and probity put in their places.
Mamæa used the utmost care to keep away from her son all those persons by whom his morals might be corrupted, and in order to have his time fully occupied she induced him to devote the greater part of each day to the administration of justice, where none but the wise and good would be his associates. The good seed fortunately fell into a kindly soil. Alexander was naturally disposed to every virtue, and all his efforts were directed to the promotion of the welfare of the empire over which he ruled.
The first ten years of the reign of this prince were passed at Rome and devoted to civil occupations. His daily course of life has been thus transmitted to us. He usually rose early and entered his private chapel (lararium), in which he had caused to be placed the images of those who had been teachers and benefactors of the human race, among whom he included the divine founder of the Christian religion. Having performed his devotions he took some kind of exercise, and then applied himself for some hours to public business with his council. He then read for some time, his favourite works being the Republics of Plato and Cicero, and the verses of Horace, and the Life of Alexander the Great, whom he greatly admired. Gymnastic exercises, in which he excelled, succeeded. He then was anointed and bathed, and took a light breakfast, usually of bread, milk, and eggs. In the afternoon he was attended by his secretaries, and he heard his letters read and signed the answers to them. The business of the day being concluded, his friends in general were admitted, and a frugal and simple dinner followed, at which the conversation was mostly of a serious instructive nature, or some literary work was read out to the emperor and his guests.
The dress of Alexander was plain and simple, his manners were free from all pride and haughtiness; he lived with the senators on a footing of friendly equality, like Augustus, Vespasian, and the wiser and better emperors. He was liberal and generous to all orders of the people, and he took an especial pleasure in assisting those persons of good family who had fallen into poverty without reproach. Among the virtues of Alexander was the somewhat rare one in that age of chastity. His mother early caused him to espouse a lady of noble birth named Memnia, whom however he afterwards divorced and even banished to Africa. The accounts of this affair differ greatly. According to one, the father of the empress formed a conspiracy against his son-in-law, which being discovered, he was put to death and his daughter divorced. Others say that as Alexander showed great respect for his father-in-law, Mamæa’s jealousy was excited, and she caused him to be slain and his daughter to be divorced or banished. It appears that Alexander soon married again.
We have already observed that a portion of the civil jurisdiction had fallen to the prætorian prefects. This imposed a necessity that one of them should be a civilian, and Mamæa had therefore caused this dignity to be conferred on Ulpian. From the love of law and order which distinguished this prefect, he naturally sought to bring back discipline in the prætorian camp; the consequence was that repeated attempts were made on his life, and the emperor more than once found it necessary to cast his purple over him to save him from the fury of the soldiers. At length (228) they fell on him in the night; he escaped from them to the palace, but they pursued and slaughtered him in the presence of the emperor and his mother.
Some slight actions on the German and Moorish frontiers were the only occupation given to the Roman arms during the early years of the reign of Alexander, but in the year 232 so powerful an enemy menaced the oriental provinces of the empire, that the presence of the emperor became absolutely requisite in the East.
The Parthians, whom we have had such frequent occasion to mention, are said to have been a Scythian (i.e., Turkish) people of the north of Persia, who, taking advantage of the declining power of the Macedonian kings of Syria, cast off their yoke (250 B.C.), and then gradually made themselves masters of the whole of Persia. Their dominion had now lasted for five hundred years, and their power had from the usual causes, such as family dissensions, contested successions, and such like, been long on the decline; and in the fourth year of Alexander Severus (226) a native Persian, named Artaxerxes (Ardashir), who pretended to be of the ancient royal line but who is said to have been of humble birth and a mere soldier of fortune, raised a rebellion against the Parthian king, Artabanus. Fortune favoured the rebel, and Artabanus was defeated and slain. Artaxerxes then assumed the tiara, and his line, which existed till the Mohammedan conquest, was named the Sassanian, from the name of his father.