Julia Mamaea

Julia Mamaea was a Syrian-Roman noblewoman, the daughter of Julia Maesa and mother of the emperor Severus Alexander. After the overthrow of Elagabalus in AD 222, she exercised great influence over her young son’s government, surrounding him with advisers and attempting to restore conventional public morality.

Military dissatisfaction grew during campaigns against Persia and Germanic invaders. In 235 soldiers murdered both mother and son, ending the Severan dynasty and beginning a period of rapid imperial crisis. Julia Mamaea was born in Homs and died in Mainz.

In Robert Low’s Beasts from the Dark, Captured and manipulated by a would-be usurper, the former gladiators become pieces in a conspiracy reaching back to the court of Severus Alexander and Julia Mamaea. In Harry Sidebottom’s Iron and Rust, in AD 235 the emperor Severus Alexander and his mother, Julia Mamaea, are murdered by soldiers on the Rhine. In Jacquie Rogers’ The Carnelian Phoenix, in Rome, Quintus finds that old loyalties have shifted around the young emperor Severus Alexander, his mother Julia Mamaea and the jurist Ulpian. A conspiracy to remove the emperor forces him to navigate senatorial ambition, military resentment and secrets inherited from the previous generation, turning the mystery of the ring into a struggle over succession and the stability of the Severan regime.