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Lucius Septimius Severus Pertinax
Known as: Septimius Severus
Reign: 9 April 193 – 4 February 211
Severan Dynasty
Manner of Death: Infection
Succeeded by: Caracalla
Lucius Septimius Severus (11 April 145 – 4 February 211) was a Roman politician who served as emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present-day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through the customary succession of offices under the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Severus seized power after the death of the emperor Pertinax in 193 during the Year of the Five Emperors.
After deposing and killing the incumbent emperor Didius Julianus, Severus fought his rival claimants, the Roman generals Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus. Niger was defeated in 194 at the Battle of Issus in Cilicia. Later that year Severus waged a short punitive campaign beyond the eastern frontier, annexing the Kingdom of Osroene as a new province. Severus defeated Albinus three years later at the Battle of Lugdunum in Gaul. Following the consolidation of his rule over the western provinces, Severus waged another brief, more successful war in the east against the Parthian Empire, sacking their capital Ctesiphon in 197 and expanding the eastern frontier to the Tigris. He then enlarged and fortified the Limes Arabicus in Arabia Petraea. In 202, he campaigned in Africa and Mauretania against the Garamantes, capturing their capital Garama and expanding the Limes Tripolitanus along the southern desert frontier of the empire.
He proclaimed as augusti (co-emperors) his elder son Caracalla in 198 and his younger son Geta in 209, both born of his second wife Julia Domna. Severus travelled to Britain in 208, strengthening Hadrian's Wall and reoccupying the Antonine Wall. In 209 he invaded Caledonia (modern Scotland) with an army of 50,000 men but his ambitions were cut short when he fell fatally ill of an infectious disease in late 210. He died in early 211 at Eboracum (today York, England), and was succeeded by his sons, who were advised by their mother and his powerful widow, Julia Domna, thus founding the Severan dynasty. It was the last dynasty of the Roman Empire before the Crisis of the Third Century.
Christianity During Rule:
A number of persecutions of Christians occurred in the Roman empire during the reign of Septimius Severus (193-211). Writing during his reign, Clement of Alexandria said: "... we have exhibited before our eyes every day abundant sources of martyrs that are burnt, impaled, beheaded." The traditional view has been that Severus was responsible. Early church historian Eusebius describes Severus as a persecutor, but the Christian apologist Tertullian states that Severus was well disposed towards Christians, employed a Christian as his personal physician and had personally intervened to save from "the mob" several high-born Christians whom he knew.
Some historians argue that Severus initially held a favorable policy towards Christians during his early years of reign, but later changed, and in his tenth year of reign he began to persecute them. Alternatively, Eusebius' description of Severus as a persecutor may derive merely from the fact that numerous persecutions occurred during his reign, including Perpetua and Felicity in the Roman province of Africa, but this was probably as the result of local persecutions rather than empire-wide actions or decrees by Severus.