Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

one cultural identity. A Roman did not need to have been born within sight of the seven hills of the Eternal City: he or she could be north African or Greek, a Gaul, German, or Briton, a Spaniard or a Slav. Even emperors did not have to be ethnically “Roman.” Trajan and Hadrian were Spaniards. Septimius Severus, who seized power in a.d. 193 and clung to it until a.d. 211, was born in Libya (Leptis Magna) to a north African father and a Syrian Arab mother; his successors (known as the Severan dynasty) therefore shared this African Arab heritage. The second emperor of this dynasty was none other than Caracalla. So while Caracalla had good political reasons for issuing his edict of a.d. 212—not least widening the tax base during a parlous time for the public finances—it is perhaps not too anachronistic to suspect the experience of being an emperor with African heritage must have affected his thinking.