THE CIVIL WAR AND SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS

Pertinax was appointed emperor to replace Commodus, but his severe reign lasted just 86 days before the praetorians murdered him, too. Next, they auctioned the Empire off to the highest bidder. Didius lulianus won by offering each praetorian 25,000 sestertii. He never paid up and was executed just 66 days later, on 2 June 193. By then several other players had entered the ring. In Syria, the governor Pescennius Niger was proclaimed emperor by his army. In Upper Pannonia the same thing happened to Septimius Severus [54), and in Britain to Clodius Albinus. The process of events was complicated, but initially Severus gained the upper hand by appointing Clodius Albinus as his heir, and set off to defeat Pescennius Niger. With Niger disposed of, Severus turned on Albinus.

In 197 at Lyons, Severus narrowly defeated the army of Clodius Albinus, drawn from Britain’s garrison. It used to be claimed that very few of the garrisons of Britain’s northern forts in the third century were the same as those in the second, and that this was evidence for the disruption caused by the war of 193-97.

Unfortunately, the inscriptions naming auxiliary units at any one fort mainly belong to after the civil war and on into the third century, while most of our evidence for the second century comes from military diplomas, which do not name the forts that units were based in.

The Maeatae, a tribal group in the Wall area, joined forces with the Caledonians further north while Cdodius Albinus was absent during the civil war.* Septim ius Severus sent Virius Lupus (c. 197-202) to be the new governor. Lupus paid the Maeatae a subsidy, buying enough time

54. Septimius Severus (193-211).

Severus initiated a programme of military' works in Britain, culminating with his protracted and inconclusive 5kottish campaign (208-11). Soon after the emperor’s death, his son Caracalla (211-17) abandoned his father's conquests. (Indiana University Art Museum).

55. Risingham (Northumberland).

Elaborate inscription recording the restoration of a fort gate between 205 and 207 at Risingham (Habitancum), during the governorship of Alfenus Senecio and the procuratorship of Oclatinius Adventus.

To repair military installations. This was a dramatic change of policy that eventually became routine. Inscriptions record a major programme of rebuilding and restoration work, and often survive because they were reused in later building work at the same sites. One such inscription from Bowes says that the Vettonian cavalry restored the bath-house which had been ‘burnt by the force of flames* for the resident First Cohort of Thracians.* The cause could have been either an attack by the enemy or an accident. Baths were liable to burn down because of their furnaces. At Brougham, an inscription from around this time records that after the baths had burnt down, they were repaired by replacing the floor supports and conduits.**

The building work carried on through the governorship of Gaius Valerius Pudens (202-5), and into that of Lucius Alfenus Senecio (205-8). Usually the slabs simply record dedications, but one from Risingham records that the gate and walls were restored having ‘decayed from age? Such texts were once interpreted as Roman euphemisms for enemy action, but the overall picture is more one of general decay, echoing evidence from Birdoswald and other sections of Hadrian's Wall of a frontier that had never really been finished or maintained rigorously.

An interesting development is that the Risingham inscription records the involvement of the procurator, Marcus Oclatinius Adventus, whose responsibilities were only supposed to be the province's finances [55j. The scale of the work concerned might have made it essential that he was involved, as well as Senecio. Another possibility is that Septimius Severus, who arrived in Britain to reinvade Scotland in 208, had instructed Britain’s administrators to begin making preparations for the great campaign he planned.