General interest in the Roman Emperors seems to fade with the dramatic succession of Commodus taking over for Marcus Aurelius. But what followed Commodus was even more dramatic and led to worse civil wars than the end of the Republic or the end of the Julio-Claudians.
Septimius Severus is the character that bridges the world of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius and connects it to a vast and deadly crisis that almost put the Roman World into the Dark Ages a few centuries early.
Most interestingly is that the diversification of the Roman Senatorial Class since the time of Claudius and Hadrian had opened it to non-Italians and Asians and Africans. Septimius Severus was an African Roman citizen descended from the Punic settlers of his hometown of Lepcis. He was both a part of the elite of his society and an outsider from the most elite portion of the elite. It seems that this resentment drove a lot of his behavior once he took power. The title "Roman Hannibal" was not entirely undeserved. Once he consolidated power, he seemed to aver little to the wishes of the Senate and seems to have shut most of them out of his decision-making.
The author of this book, Illka Syvanne, has written extensively on the transformation of the Roman Army from the time of Trajan to the Byzantine army of the Middle Ages. He shows us how the Roman Army was transforming and adopting new equipment to face the threat of the Parthian mobile armies as well as staying on top of Germanic and Celtic enemies.
Syvanne is the first author to really comment on the Roman Army at this period which had been recently been chastened of some of its pride in the 14 years of the Marcomannic War.
With Didius Julianus purchasing the Throne of the Caesars from the Praetorian Guard, three different armies revolted and it was Severus who organized things to his advantage. Severus's civil wars were the biggest since the days of Augustus and Mark Antony. Also the scale and degree of movement is on a scale that would not be seen again until the days of Early Modern Europe, centuries later.
Syvanne does much work to locate important battlefields and marching routes using clues from the original texts and modern archaeology. As with all of his other books, Syvanne has a rich and full visual component, some of it by his own hand. Although for this Severus researcher, the most valuable is reproductions of drawings of the reliefs on the Severan Arch, which still stands in the Roman Forum, but with much detail destroyed by the ages. But his best work is the plethora of maps, giving the reader an almost tactical feel for the battles. Septimius Severus undertook four large and two smaller campaigns in his reign and before this book, they had lacked real explanation. Ilkka Syvanne has done history a great service by describing these campaigns and their crucial battles. Since Severus was such a military-oriented Emperor, it serves well that this text has to describe the organization of the entire Roman military at the beginning of the Third Century.
This reviewer only has a small problem with Syvanne's dependence on the veracity of the Historia Augusta, but it's more something I wish I could discuss over beers with the author instead of nitpicking. Otherwise, this book is perfect!
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