The Ancients - The End of the Severan Dynasty

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Following two assassinations and two executions, the title of Roman Emperor fell to Alexander Severus. He was one of the youngest to ever hold this title, and he was to be the final emperor of the Severan Dynasty. But who was making the decisions? In this episode we hear about the thirteen year reign of this young emperor, and examine the intriguing figure of his mother and advisor, Julia Mamaea. Matilda Brown, PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, is back on the Ancients to take us through the final years of the Severan dynasty, busting myths along the way.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

And in today's podcast, well, oh yes, we are back talking about one of the most brutal dynasties of ancient Rome, the Severan dynasty. You might remember a couple of weeks back, we chatted to Dr. Alex Imry all about the infamous Emperor Caracalla and a couple of months back we also chatted to Matilda Brown about the rise and fall of the Emperor Elagabalus and in particular the women that surrounded him, his mother Julia Suemias and his grandmother Julia Mame, and the key roles that they played in his reign and before his reign. Now, I'm delighted to say that today, Matilda is back to continue the story. We're going

from where we left off with the murder, with the assassination of Elagabalus and his mother, Julia Suemias, and we're focusing in on the reign of the last Severan emperor, Alexander Severus. We're going to be talking a lot about Alexander Severus, but Severus. We're going to be talking a lot about Alexander Severus, but in particular, we're going to be focusing in on the third Julia, the mother of Alexander Severus, who was incredibly significant during the reign of her son. And this was Julia Mammaea. So without further ado, here's Matilda. Matilda, always a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome back. Thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited.

Yes, me too. We're almost, as it were, continuing the story from last time. We've another key figure from the late Severan period, or key figures, but Julia Mamea. can we say that she is one of the most successful empresses in Roman history? I would certainly argue as much, certainly more than her sister, who she had assassinated as we left off our last podcast on the Elagabalan empresses. on the Elagabalan empresses. Julia Mamea is, in my opinion, hands down one of the best political strategists of, you know, the proper imperial period. What she managed to do in getting her 13-year-old son on the throne for a 13-year reign is really incredible, particularly when we consider the political place of women in antiquity. Well, let's rewind a bit. Let's take a step back to the start of 222 AD. What's the situation in the Roman Empire at that time? The beginning of 222 AD, we have the Emperor Elagabalus on the throne, and he is about 18 years old at this point.

And on the 1st of January, he is supposed to hold the joint consulship with his younger cousin, who is 13 years old, Severus Alexander, who he has also adopted as his son, and who has been made Caesar, which is to say sort of heir-designate. Alexander Severus is the son of Julia Mamea, who is the topic of today's episode, and he is the favorite of the Praetorian Guard, the imperial bodyguard, and Elagabalus knows it at this point. This is coming off of the tales of a Praetorian attempted coup at the end of 221. So at the beginning of 222, we have these two boys who are meant to hold the joint consulship and process from the Senate house to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. And Elagabalus says, absolutely not, no way, I'm terrified. Actually, what our sources tell us, he says, is I hate Alexander Severus, but what I think is that

he was terrified. So finally, he is convinced to go. Very begrudgingly, he does this consular procession. And this is sort of the last moment that he makes any point of sort of successful overtures to the Praetorian Guard in the city of Rome as an emperor because shortly after this point in March of 222 the Praetorian Guard assassinates Elagabalus and his mother, Julia Soamius. And it is at the behest of Julia Mimea, Elagabalus's aunt, and the mother of Severus Alexander. And a day later, Severus Alexander, 13 years old, ascends the throne. And this feels like a great climax, that the rise of Severus Alexander to the throne. But from what you've been saying there it sounds as if Julia Mamea for some time before that she has been very carefully maybe covertly

maybe from the shadows orchestrating navigating her son to the emperorship shall we say that's exactly right so when Severus Alexander is adopted by Elagabalus, Elagabalus is already beginning to lose some steam with the Praetorian Guard. He's falling out of favor. And Julia Mamea seizes this opportunity to start plugging her own son as the sort of favored rightful emperor of the Roman Empire. And again, this is a really young kid. He's at the time of his adoption. He's only about 12 years old. And she undertakes this rigorous Roman academic training, and she forbids him to hang out with Elagabalus's debaucherous cronies. And she starts paying off the Praetorian Guard to favor Severus Alexander in order to get her son on the throne. And this is something that we

do tend to see with a lot of Roman mothers, that they're really trying to, or Roman imperial mothers, trying to get their sons on the throne. So at the, you know the end of 221, beginning of 222, we're seeing this real tension in the imperial household between these two factions, the faction that favors Alagabalus and the faction that favors Severus Alexander. And what we're really told in the text is that Julia Mimea is the one who is pushing this along. She is sort of the main architect of this push to get her son on the throne. And it is because of her relationship with the Praetorian Guard and her bribery of the Praetorian Guard that she eventually succeeds. And talk to me also, before we move on, talk to me about the whole name Severus Alexander and how this also plays into this.

So Severus Alexander, we don't actually have a good amount of evidence on what his name was before he became emperor. In some sources, he's Alexianus. In other sources, he's Bassianus. Generally, what modern scholarship concludes is that his name was Alexianus Bassianus. This is before he is declared Caesar. When he is declared Caesar, he is named Severus Alexander after Alexander the Great. And this corresponds with this rumor that the ghost of Alexander the Great, right before, you know, he gains all of this prominence, had ridden through Moesia and Thrace as an omen of the success that Severus Alexander would have later as emperor. This is a particularly interesting omen because it happens in Moesia and Thrace, and that is where at this point in the Roman Empire, the Praetorian Guard is being

sourced from. So, you know, if I have taken this as potentially evidence, or I've understood this as potentially evidence for a push by Julia Mamea to start courting favor with the Praetorian Guard in their home provinces by saying, you know, Alexander the Great was just here. And he's, you know, it's an omen that Severus Alexander deserves to be on the throne. So this may be evidence of a very, very early attempt to secure power for him, which, of course, we see her doing much more concretely later on. Pretty cool if she also sees herself as a mother of Alexander the Great too. But also, just before we go on, Moesia and Thrace, that's Bulgaria and Romania area today, is that right? Yes. Yeah, around there.

Brilliant. Now, our sources for Julia Mimea and Severus Alexander, what are our main sources that we have available? So we have a couple of literary sources that are important. We have Cassius Dio. He's generally considered our best source for the Severan period, accepting his narrative of the reign of Elagabalus, which is really largely considered to be propaganda from Severus Alexander, sort of trashing the reign of Elagabalus to make Severus Alexander look good because the final books were written under Severus Alexander. And Dio holds his consulship alongside Severus Alexander, his second consulship in 229.

That book is very short. It's an epitome. in 229. That book is very short. It's an epitome. Severus Alexander reigns until 235, so we don't have, you know, the final six years of his reign in that book. Then we have the Historia Augusta, which is notoriously problematic and also really attempts to make Severus Alexander look fantastic as this example of the ideal ruler. And then we have Herodian, who is an author who we know very, very little about, but he does provide us with the fullest account. So those are our literary sources. There's a tremendous amount to be taken, however, from the coinage and from the epigraphy, the inscriptional evidence. And this is actually with the later Severan women, because so many of their portraits were destroyed. Julia Mamet is the only woman for whom we actually

have any extant recognizable portraiture, which makes for an interesting sort of piece of evidence as well, though it, you know, can't tell us that much beyond what her statues looked like. Quite something indeed. And so we've set the scene, we've set the background, we've set the sources there. And so we go to 222 AD. Elegoebalus is dead. Soemias is dead. Alexander Severus, this boy, he's on the throne. Julia Mimea, can we see her influence straight away? Straight away, we see her influence stated explicitly in our literary sources. Cassius Dio and Herodian both say that the second that Severus Alexander takes the throne, he's the emperor, but all of the trappings of power are in the hands of his womenfolk. And by that they mean Julia Mamea, his mother, and his grandmother,

Julia Maesa, who was actually largely responsible for having gotten Elagabalus on the throne. Though we do see Maesa remain prevalent for the year or so that she survives into that reign. I've always found it interesting that she isn't assassinated along with Elagabalus, reign. I've always found it interesting that she isn't assassinated along with Elagabalus like her other daughter, Julia Soamius, was. She is taken off of the Roman coinage and therefore kind of taken out of the public face of the reign until her death and her deification. So what it really looks like is that Julia Mamea immediately becomes top dog. And she's granted just a slew of titles. She's named mother of the army camp after her mother's death.

Later on, she's named mother of the senate and of the fatherland. She is really, really credited with calling all of the shots. And that is something that is reflected in the way that Alexander himself is referenced in the sources. They all call him Alexander the son of Mimea. They talk about him through his matronymic as opposed to his patronymic. This is in the literary sources, which, you know, were produced after his death, probably. It also appears in some of the inscriptions that were produced contemporaneously with the reign, where there are inscriptions that say, Julia Mamea. She is the main thing that is sort of credited as his point of successfully getting there, the main explanation for why he got there.

And if that is the case, you mentioned how Julia Mamea, she's removed from the coinage. But if Julia Mamea is therefore, she's the top dog she is in charge and her son is still very young she must hold all the cards in regards to his education over the next few years i mean who does she appoint to surround severus alexander as he's growing up to help steer him in what she sees as the right direction? So that's a great question. There is actually some disagreement between, I don't know if I would say the sources or the scholarship. There's some lack of clarity, perhaps, is the best way to say this. What our sources tell us is that Severus Alexander becomes the emperor

and all of the trappings of power go to his womenfolk. And Herodian tells us the first thing that Julia Mammaea does is she elects a council of 16 senators to surround her son and really guide his administration. Then we know that the jurist Ulpian, who had been tremendously prominent under the earlier Severans, is elected to be Praetorian prefect. And Cassius Dio tells us he's given the Praetorian prefecture and control over all of the other matters of Rome. Both of these things fall apart for two different reasons. In the case of Opian, he is assassinated very, very quickly by the Praetorian Guard, which leaves just Mamea and Alexander again. And as far as the Council of 16 Senators, we do not have any proof that those existed. And we in fact have good proof that they did not exist at all. Kaylin Davenport has done a great study on the

consuls during the reign of Severus Alexander. And in no cases were there any men who held the consulship alongside Severus Alexander who continued on to have any sort of impressive career. We don't have any evidence that this senatorial council existed. You know, what we have evidence for is that people are brought to the top and then very quickly thereafter kicked aside. So that again, all we have left is Julia Mamea and Severus Alexander. So we have this situation where it's a mother and son at the head of the Roman Empire. Of course, there are going to be other people coming in and out. But the one sort of constant through this reign is Julia and Severus Alexander, not any other sort of

group of men who are coming in and helping out with stuff. And is this idea, this emphasis on these two figures being the constant, is this reflected at all in what the coinage shows, what the coinage depicts in the early years of Alexander's reign? Yeah, absolutely. The coinage of Alexander's reign is really fascinating. There's a lot of traditional imagery that is intended to sort of contrast the wackiness of the reign of Elagabalus, but there's also this imagery that comes out particularly on the medallions, which are given out sort of on special occasions, that emphasizes the significance of Julia Mamea alongside her son.

We have these medallions that are struck over and over and over again that have facing portrait busts, facing portrait busts of Severus Alexander and Julia Mamea with all of Mamea's titles listed there. And Severus Alexander's kind of kept very small. And then oftentimes on the other side of the coin, we have all of this military imagery and imagery of Mamea conducting sacrifices, which is a very male thing. So Mamea is with these medallions being brought into sort of the male sphere and constructed as having relationships with these traditional masculine and political sort of groups and activities in a way that hints at her involvement in the political sphere in a very public way. This is not imagery that we

see on other coinage this prevalently. The facing portrait busts of an emperor and his mother, the only precedent that we have for that is Agrippina the Younger and Nero. And we saw how that turned out. Not well. So this is sort of a risky thing to be doing. What we have here is we have a woman and a little boy on these coins. And those are the coins that are advertising who is ruling the Roman Empire. It's quite interesting, like from an outside person

looking in, when you mentioned that connection with Agrippina and Nero. I mean, I initially first thought of it when you mentioned Dalpian and then cross-referencing it with the likes of Burrus or something like that. It almost seems like hearkening back you can see the similarities there for the earlier part of Nero's reign with Agrippina which seems to work well we won't talk about the later part gets a bit messy as you say but I always find those comparisons that you can see over generations is sometimes absolutely fascinating. I absolutely think so. And it's been a long standing question mark for me as to whether the parallels that I can see between the early part of Nero's reign and, you know, the presentation of Agrippina and Nero and the way that Mimea and Severus Alexander presented, whether those were intentional. are presented, whether those were intentional. Because if they were, you know, we have to sort of reconsider how Nero and Agrippina were viewed sort of in the centuries after that reign, you know, despite the fact that Nero had his mother killed. We need to recalibrate our conception of just how bad Nero looked, because if there was

intentionality in that parallel, then why? A why is the big question. You know, regardless, the most important thing here is that art historians who have looked at these coins of Nero and Agrippina, I think particularly Diana Kleiner, has stated that these coins where their two busts are shown on the coins were intended to purvey a message that the power was shared evenly between these two imperial family members. And if that is true, then it is absolutely also true for Mimea and Severus Alexander that on these coins, they are being depicted as having equal stakes in the power. This is an important thing. You know, there's an important caveat here as to whether or not that was true. Do we know?

I would say yes, but there are plenty of scholars out there who would argue with me on that point. I think the one solid takeaway is that a concrete effort was being made to make that image appear to be true. And that means that we really need to think about why was that acceptable to Rome? Why was it acceptable to have a woman and a child at the head of the Roman Empire? Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And in my podcast, Not Just the Tudors, we talk about everything from sex to spying, wardrobes to witch trials. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. it is really interesting and if we don't focus on the history that has just preceded julian and severus alexander and you mentioned how mamea is portrayed sometimes with the soldiers and your mind instantly thinks of

Severus what his last words may well have been you know look after the soldiers don't really pay attention to much else do you think Julia Mimea she's seen and of course the importance of the soldiers of the Praetorians in the rise of her son do you think she knows very well the need the necessity to stay on good terms with the soldiers and to actively pursue that? I think that is absolutely the case. When there are a couple of pieces of evidence that point to that being the case, aside from the greater context of what's going on in the empire at this point. Speaking to the evidence, we have a lot of literary discussion of Mimea's miserliness and greed and avarice. That is something that just plagues her literary

image. What is overtly stated is that she is saving up money to pay off the soldiers to continue to do so. This is an incredibly important thing. The pay of the soldiery had gone up under Severus and then had gone up again under Caracalla. And in order for her to maintain a good relationship, she had to continue that trend. We see emperors before Alexander Severus complaining about this. Macrinus, the usurper between Caracalla and Elagabalus, we have a letter that he wrote to the Senate recorded in Dio where he's just whining about this. He's saying, how am I supposed to keep up with this? If I don't pay them, they're going to revolt. So, you know, this is something that was very clearly known. And we see Mimea intentionally saving money in order to sort of continue this good relationship with the troops. And this is at a point where the

military presence in Italy was the largest that it had been for centuries. Septimius Severus had increased the number of Praetorian guardsmen that there were in the guard. And he had also stationed a new legion in Italy for the first time in centuries. So, you know, there are a tremendous amount of soldiers, and they're in the city, they're around the city, and they have an unprecedented involvement in politics. And we see that in the assassination of Elagabalus, which takes place at the Praetorian camp. We see that with, you know, all of the involvement that these troops have with the imperial family itself. You know, Mimea is, even before her son takes the throne, paying them off, and she needs to continue to maintain that relationship. And on, you know, again, on the coins, we see her

have this connection to the military sphere with her face on one side of the coin and these military scenes on the other side of the coin. But to me, the most sort of telling piece of evidence as to not only the importance of this relationship, but also Mamea's success in maintaining this relationship is the inscriptional evidence. Eric Kettenhofen was a German author who published all of the inscriptions of the Severan Empresses in 1979, found about 150 inscriptions of Julia Mamea. And over or around one third of those inscriptions were located in Moesia and Thrace, those provinces where the Praetorian Guard was getting recruited. The vast majority of the inscriptions from across the empire were erected at military settlements and at veteran settlements. This is, you know, in contrast to

earlier empresses, Julia Domna, for example, whose the people who were honoring her were predominantly civilians, and it was kind of scattered in other places. What this speaks to, you know, Mamea's very weird inscriptional distribution speaks to a relationship between Mimea and those populations that were peopling the most important military units during her son's reign. And I actually think that it's because of the eventual failure of this relationship, rather than what the sources tell us, that Alexander Severus and Mimea are killed because Alexander Severus is a little lad tied to his mummy's apron strings and is excessively, you know, deferential to his mother. It's because of the failure of this relationship,

because of Mimea's failure to continue to pay these troops, that everything falls apart in the end. We will get into that, don't you worry. But I want to keep on the 220s a bit longer, because as you mentioned, this greed trope that's sometimes associated with Julia Mamea, I'd always like to talk about another event that is sometimes associated with Mamea. And this is the entrance into the fold of another woman. In 225, you probably know where I'm going with this. Matilda, what's the story of the marriage? So in 225, Mamea, helicopter parent extraordinaire finds a lovely bride for her son, Celestia Orbiana. Celestia Orbiana and Severus Alexander are married for two years, from 225 to 227. And then our sources tell us that Bamea just becomes completely jealous of the fact that she has to share her title, Augusta, with this young

wife of her son's and orchestrates a divorce between the young couple. And Alexander is just completely heartbroken, but he can't say no to mom. So he goes along with it. And in the center of this divorce, you know, it's partly Mimea's jealousy over this young woman and sharing this title with this young woman, according to the sources. And it's partly that Mimea absolutely hates Orbiana's father, Lucius Seus Celestius. And what we actually have evidence for is that Lucius Seus Celestius and what we actually have evidence for is that Lucius Seus Celestius was declared Caesar under Severus Alexander this does not appear in any of our literature but we have a papyrus from Dura Europis in Syria which it lists all of the sort of observances that the cohort stationed there had to celebrate in honor of the imperial

family and he is listed there they celebrate you know lucius celestius caesar and then we also have an inscription from africa that says there is a caesar under alexander those are the only two pieces of evidence that we have that this man was elevated to this position. But at any rate, elevated he was, and he has this conflict with Julia Mamea and then runs to the Praetorian camp saying, you guys have got to protect me from this terrible woman. And Julia Mamea again wins out and has him executed and has his daughter exiled to Libya. This is another interesting connection to the soldiery, to the Praetorian Guard. We have this man who has been elevated to nominally the second most important position in the imperial structure and is presumably, you know, considerably older than

Severus Alexander if Severus Alexander is marrying his daughter, who runs to the Praetorian Guard. The only other times that we really see members of the imperial family running to the Praetorian Guard is when they're trying to gain the approval of the Praetorian Guard in order to sort of take power for themselves. There is some debate as to whether this entire situation, the divorce and the execution of Celestius Caesar, was because he was conspiring against Mimea and Alexander. I think that that was absolutely the case. I think that that was absolutely the case. Exiling princesses because they had been involved in some conspiracy was a well-trodden path for the Romans. We see it with Caracalla's wife, Plautilla. She also gets exiled after her father is charged with conspiring against Caracalla and Septimius Severus, and then he is executed. To me, this looks like a conspiracy against Severus Alexander and Mimea that Mimea gets involved in to quell and gets rid

of the threat. And that involvement of the Praetorian Guard again really solidifies, again, the significance of the soldiery in this period to the acquisition and maintenance of power. Absolutely. And we're only talking about 225 here, Matilda. Do we know how Alexander slash Julian of Mayors' rulership continues in the immediate years following this? So, you know, in the years following, it's interestingly not a tremendously eventful reign until 230. That is when at Arxerxes, the Sassanid Empire invades the eastern frontier. And in 231, Alexander leaves and goes east in order to face that threat. He goes north first, stopping along the Rhine and Danube frontier to pick up some soldiers, and then goes and faces this threat in the east. This is one of the biggest

mistakes that he can make, stopping on the Rhine and Danube frontier and emptying all of the garrisons there, because shortly thereafter, barbarians on the other side of the frontier take this as an excellent opportunity to have this huge invasion of the settlements on the Roman side of the frontier, which are, again, where the families of some of the most important troops in the empire are living. So Severus Alexander succeeds in really ticking off a key demographic there. And then to boot, he of course does not have the finances to pay them off and keep them happy. Because of these pay raises of the pre, you know, the imperial coffers are empty after Caracalla and Septimius Severus.

The coinage has become completely debased at this point, empire-wide. They're in real financial struggles. This is sort of the point where we're seeing the beginning of the end in this 231 to 233-4 campaign against the Persians. And during this time, Matilda, of course, Alexander, he's a little older now, Severus Alexander, but Julia Mammaea, she's still with him at this point. Oh yeah, she goes east with him. There is a lovely anecdote that we have from Eusebius. She goes east, she goes to Antioch, and then she has the church father, Origen, called up from Alexandria to come and chat all things Christianity with her. You know, she has her own intellectual pursuits that she's doing. And she also is involved with her son's life,

you know, pretty heavily. Herodian tells us that she really convinces Alexander not to go on the battlefield and not to fight in the melee. And this is really, he's condemned for this, for listening to, you know, the weak nervousness of a woman and not going to fight himself. He gets in a lot of trouble for this. And again, this is sort of the beginning of the end. Her presence there sort of makes this a bitter pill to swallow, his reluctance to fight himself, even though he was still a young guy at this point. You know, he's probably only about 20 when he gets there. And so what are your thoughts on all of this, Matilda? All that is said in the sources regarding the role of Julian Mammaia with Alexander Severus in the yeast. Can we see any

elements of truth, do we think, in that? Or is it more literary construction? I think that there's a fair amount of literary construction that is certainly going on here as far as, you know, again, the avarice and meanness and the feminine weakness. These are all sort of common literary tropes that we see applied to various different women in power. What I think is really going on here is that this a fully fledged man. He's still a very young guy. And I think mom is being kept on as a incredibly important, if not the most important advisor.

And this is a role that we see, you know, her playing earlier in the reign. She's probably really actually calling the shots early in the reign when he's too young to be doing this himself. Certainly at this point, and we do actually get a flavor of that in the literature. Again, we get this idea, it is said that she has this miserliness and greed, and that she's doing it in order to pay off the soldiers. We see actually reflected in Alexander's policy that instead of going to war, he's really trying to find diplomatic solutions to all of the conflicts on the borders. That is likely also because wars are costly. They don't want to spend

more money. And that tendency towards diplomacy rather than warfare is also credited to Mimea as a result of her sort of feminine weakness and fear of the battlefield. I think that it's absolutely fair to say that she's still playing a tremendously significant role. And she remains with her son no matter where he goes throughout the entirety of this reign. throughout the entirety of this reign. Is it also, I mean, given what's happened in the previous years, for instance, following the death of Caracalla and the seeming end of the Severan line there before the return or the rise of Elagabalus, Alexander Severus, he doesn't have a son at this point, does he?

So if he dies, that's the end of the line. Yeah, that's that. But, you know, again, I think that there's plenty of time in their minds. I don't, you know, they're not predicting that they're going to get assassinated in 23 end that things start getting a little bit rocky. He doesn't necessarily need an heir, or dare I say. He doesn't need that stabilizing traditional message of the continuity and the stability that he will bring to the empire because he's already brought stability to the empire. He overturned the wacky Elagabalus. He returned Jupiter to the head of the Roman pantheon. He's viewed as this conservative and truly Roman alternative to his cousin. So while a wedding would probably look good eventually, he does not have to have that in order to really solidify his claim.

Well there you go well you mentioned that rocky period so let's go through that rocky period now. Matilda first of all what happens in the east how does that campaign unfold but then how does Severus Alexander end up in 235 in northern Europe at a place where he will never return to Rome from? So he goes east. They campaign. Again, an expensive campaign. And at Arxerxes' forces retreat. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the Romans.

They have to deal with their own problems back home, but Severus Alexander's sort of propaganda spin machine takes this as an opportunity to say, see, he's a big manly man and we should totally have a triumph in Rome to celebrate this. Of course, Severus Alexander's troops know that this isn't the truth. They have been taken out of their homes, you know, their garrisons along the Rhine and Danube. There are barbarian incursions happening in the places that they have abandoned. They do not have the booty of an actual victory. They don't have any of the money that comes with that. So they're pretty dissatisfied at this point. They go back to Rome. Severus Alexander has a triumph. And then they go north

to deal with this barbarian incursion issue. And that is the point where things finally really fall apart. They're still trying at diplomacy on that northern frontier. They're still not really willing to go all in. And finally, the head of Severus Alexander's Praetorian Guard, Maximinus Thrax, says, you know, Thrax says, you know, we've had enough. And the soldier, he says, we've had enough. Again, little lad tied to his mummy's apron strings. One of my favorite quotes of Herodian. The critique of Alexander there is really palpable. Finally, they have him assassinated along with his mother there on the front. And after that, we see the Roman Empire fall into 50 years of civil war. This is the last stable reign of sort of the Roman Empire for a very long time. On the one hand, it's really interesting, once again, the parallels of this

demise with the demise of Suemias and Elagabalus beforehand. But also that fact which you've just said there is that this reign where it seems Julian of Mya has a key significant role, very maybe in charge overall, as you say, 50 years. This is the last stable reign for some 50 years to follow. It's extraordinary that it therefore ends with this reign in particular. some 50 years to follow. It's extraordinary that it therefore ends with this reign in particular. It absolutely is. Particularly when we think about the conceptions of a good ruler versus a bad ruler in ancient Rome. A good ruler was not at the whim of the women in the imperial household. He was not under their control. He was not necessarily asking them for, you know, the green light on all of his decisions. But it very much appears that

this is what's happening during the reign of Severus Alexander. It looks to me like Mimea was successful in part because she was so careful with money, because she was maintaining this strong relationship with the soldiery successfully up until this point. And because I have my sneaking suspicion that she was really in charge of making sure that no other man could get to her son and sort of usurp her position as semi-regent, unofficial regent. Again, we see this overturn with the consuls, the Praetorian prefects, that's a tremendously important position, the captain of the imperial bodyguard, they are turning over very rapidly as well.

No one person is maintaining a position of authority during this reign for any long period of time. And I think that it's absolutely fair to say that Julia Mamea likely was responsible for that. She was making these administrative choices in order to preserve the power in herself and her son. running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

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construction, political, economy, everything like that, overall, who do you think was more in charge severus alexander even when he's a bit older especially or does julian mamea seem to remain in charge for the duration overall of his reign i think that's a tricky point to get at because of the nature of this mother-son relationship. The nature of this mother-son relationship, we have to assume that she was really calling the shots early on. I don't know if she was necessarily number one toward the end because this is, you know, in the realm of speculation, of course. We can't know what these people's personalities were like but generally speaking parents raise their kids to kind of send them out into the world and be successful adults on their own in theory if she gets this throne for her son she wants him to be a successful emperor i think that no matter what

alexander was a figurehead at the end at 26 years old. Whether he was still a figurehead then for her power may be inaccessible. I think that she remained a tremendously influential force. and had, you know, full involvement in this reign. And toward the very end, though, I would probably venture to say that he begins to take on a little bit more autonomy as he comes into adulthood. I think that we see a consistency of policy, however, because she raised her son to sort of walk in her footsteps. You know, Alexander Severus's dad likely died in 218 when he was about nine years old. He has not really had a strong father figure there. She has been doing all of the grunt work and raising this son. And so she has shaped him into the emperor she wants to see. And that inevitably involves a little bit of, you know, deferring to mom from time to time. But I think that there probably was more equity in those roles as time progressed,

just because of the nature of, you know, parental relationships, and then also gender dynamics in antiquity. I mean, this equity, can we see it possibly reflected in coinage? I know you mentioned how Severus is portrayed as quite a young lad in coinage early on. But that goes on does he come more to the fore does he more look like a young man as an adult near the end of his reign compared to near the start if we have that evidence available we do and he does age but he still looks like a young adult he still has sort of wispy facial hair and he's round faced and he always has this sort of dreamy, benevolent look, which, you know, you contrast with the portraits of Caracalla, which always look very angry and masculine and square-jawed and, you know, rough and tumble. And of the emperors who come after him, who similarly

look like these real buff, manly men, he retains this sort of youthful beautiful sort of round-faced look on all of his portraiture throughout which is really an interesting thing he's sort of presented as this more youthful person they're not hiding the fact that this is a very young man this is a boy who's on the throne initially and he's only a young man later on. And he and Mimea together form this duo. She does not ever look that elderly. She looks like a mature mother, a mature woman, but he never ages that conspicuously.

So she still kind of looks like she has that upper hand as far as age is concerned. That was sort of, it was a normal thing for Roman mothers to be involved in their son's political careers, which may have made this look okay to people. He's a young guy, but he's got his mom there. And in a more traditional sense, that's still all right. Well, there you go. Matilda, this has been an absolutely fantastic chat just before we completely wrap up is there anything else you'd like to mention to highlight about any of these figures that we haven't mentioned so far i don't think so i think that

we've been pretty comprehensive here we have a lot of interesting stuff that we've covered with a lot of Julia names that I hope people can keep track of. That is what I like to hear. Very comprehensive indeed. Matilda, this has been a blast. Last but certainly not least, you're working on your PhD at the moment, and it is around this area of ancient history, if I am not mistaken. That is absolutely correct. I'm covering the imperial women in the 50 years of civil war that followed. I'm looking at representation and power dynamics and I'm trying to identify them because it's nearly impossible because they're almost entirely absent from the literature. But there's plenty to be said in my opinion and it's a great project. A great project, plenty to be said, and characters who I'm sure you can compare and contrast with all of the Julias that we've covered in the past couple of podcasts.

Yes. Matilda, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show. Thank you so much for having me. This has been great. Thank you.