Aulus Caecina Severus

Aulus Caecina Severus was a Roman senator and general who served under Augustus and Tiberius. He fought in the great Illyrian revolt and later commanded forces under Germanicus in campaigns beyond the Rhine.

In AD 15 he extricated his army from a dangerous German ambush at the Long Bridges, although with heavy losses. He was also known for proposing that provincial governors should not take their wives with them, a motion rejected after debate in the senate. Aulus Caecina Severus was born in Volterra.

Ben Kane’s Hunting the Eagles and Eagles in the Storm place Aulus Caecina Severus among the senior Roman commanders involved in Germanicus’s return to Germania after the Varus disaster. The novels use the competing demands of revenge, recovery of the lost legionary standards and survival in hostile country to show how men such as Caecina had to move large Roman forces through terrain in which Arminius could still dictate the terms of battle. His presence helps anchor Tullus’s fictional search for his legion’s eagle inside the real command structure of the campaigns of AD 14–16.