Battle of Issus (194)

After earlier defeats in Asia Minor, Pescennius Niger withdrew towards Syria while Severan forces pressed the campaign eastwards. The final major battle was fought near Issus in Cilicia.

Niger’s defeat ended his claim to the purple and allowed Septimius Severus to consolidate control of the eastern provinces before later confronting Clodius Albinus. The battle linked a famous ancient battlefield with another imperial succession struggle.

Field of Blood uses the approach to this confrontation as the climax of Marcus Aquila’s service in Severus’s army. The setting works for fiction about veteran fatigue, forced allegiance and the brutal narrowing of a civil war to one surviving emperor.