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Home / People / Septimius Severus

Historical person

Septimius Severus

146–211

Septimius Severus was Roman emperor from AD 193 to 211 and founder of the Severan dynasty. He seized power after civil war, strengthened the army, campaigned in the east and Britain, and left a more militarised imperial system to his sons.

In Simon Turney’s Caracalla, Septimius Severus wins the empire through civil war and attempts to found a stable dynasty through his sons, Caracalla and Geta. In Anthony Riches’s Storm of War, Marcus Valerius Aquila and Scaurus escape Rome and enter the service of Septimius Severus. Other novels featuring Septimius Severus include Anthony Riches’s Field of Blood, Anthony Riches’s Clash of Legions, Ruth Downie’s The Bear and the Wolf, and Steven Saylor’s Dominus.

Historical context

Historical periods linked to Septimius Severus

Severan Dynasty 193–235 CE

Series

Series featuring Septimius Severus (5 series)

Empire in Order

by Anthony Riches 16 books 4.5

The Empire series follows Marcus Valerius Aquila, a Roman aristocrat forced into hiding after his family is destroyed under Commodus. Serving under an assumed name with the Tungrian auxiliaries, he moves from Hadrian’s Wall and the Rhine to Rome, Egypt and the eastern civil wars that follow the…

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Praetorian in Order

by Simon Turney 8 books 4.5

The Praetorian series centres on Gnaeus Marcius Rustius Rufinus, a legionary drawn into the Praetorian Guard and the lethal politics of Commodus’s court. Investigations, covert missions and frontier commands expose him to conspiracies involving imperial relatives, prefects, freedmen, senators and rival claimants to the throne. As Commodus’s reign…

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The Damned Emperors in Order

by Simon Turney 4 books 4.3

The Damned Emperors series retells the reigns of Caligula, Commodus, Domitian and Caracalla through people close enough to witness their private fears and public violence. Each novel sets later hostile traditions against the personal, dynastic and political pressures that shaped an emperor condemned by Roman memory. Rather than…

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Imperial Assassin in Order

by Alex Gough 7 books 4.4

The Imperial Assassin series follows the soldier Silus and the Arcani, a clandestine intelligence service operating under the Severan emperors. Beginning with Septimius Severus’s campaigns in Caledonia, the novels carry Silus through the rivalry of Caracalla and Geta, political purges, frontier wars, Alexandria, North Africa and the final…

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Roma Trilogy in Order

by Steven Saylor 3 books 4.0

The Roma Trilogy follows generations of the fictional Pinarius family across the long history of Rome. Roma begins with the city’s legendary foundation and continues through the Republic and the rise of Augustus; Empire carries the family through the Julio-Claudian, Flavian and adoptive-emperor periods; Dominus follows the later…

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Standalone books

Standalone books featuring Septimius Severus (1 book)