The collision between the forces of Severus and Albinus was the most violent that had taken place between Roman troops since the contest at Philippi. The decisive engagement was fought on February 19 of the year 197 on the plain between the Rhone and the SaOne, to the north of Lyons, and resulted in a complete victory for Severus.
Thus, released from all need for disguise, he "poured forth on the civil population all the wrath which he had been storing up for a long time" (Dio). He frightened the senate by calling himself the son of Marcus and brother of Commodus, whom he deified. He read a speech in which he declared that the severity and cruelty of Sulla, Marius and Augustus had proved to be safer policy than the clemency of Pompey and Julius Caesar, which had wrought their ruin. Over 6o senators were arrested on a charge of having adhered to Albinus, and half were put to death.
The next years (197-202) were devoted to war against the Parthians, who had invaded Mesopotamia, and Severus recovered and annexed Mesopotamia, and spent some time in what seems to have been a rather unsuccessful punitive expedition. On his return journey he visited Egypt; Dio observes that he was not the man to leave anything, human or divine, uninvestigated. He returned to a triumph, commemorated still by the arch that bears his name. For the next six years (202-208) Severus lived at Rome. Nothing of great importance happened except the fall of Plau tianus, praefect of the guard, an African like his master, who exercised a more complete dominance than any favourite since Seianus. He was thoroughly hated by both Iulia and Caracalla, and Caracalla invented a plot against the emperor's life in which Plautianus was supposed to be implicated, and had him put to death in 205. Severus spent the last three years of his life (208– 211) in Britain, which had been unsettled for some time. He seems to have welcomed military service as a chance of healing the strife between his sons Caracalla and meta, and getting them away from Rome. He died at York on Feb. 4, 2 I I.
In his home administration the chief feature is the further re duction in the importance of the senate, combined with an in crease in the powers and duties of the equites, and especially of their chief members, the praefecti praetorio.
The Legal Praefect becomes the most important subject in the empire, with administrative as well as judicial powers; the praefectus annonae disappears in this reign, and his duties are absorbed by Papinian, the first and most distinguished of a long line of judicial praefecti. They repaid their advancement by
working the theory of absolutism into Roman law. Severus' laws show a growing humanitarian tendency, and a renewed attempt to carry out the social policy of the Lex Julia de adulteriis. His financial policy is marked by the growth of a new treasury, the res privata, the emperor's personal property, distinct from the Crown property.
As a result of his own troubles with the holders of big provincial commands he tended to split up the largest, e.g., Britain, Syria and Africa, into divided commands. On the whole the reign of Severus was one of peace and prosperity in the provinces.
The foregoing account, though mainly confined to undisputed facts, implies a favourable estimate of Severus' administration, and is based on Platnauer (see inf.). Mention must be made, however, of the view of Rostovtzev (infra), who bases on the same facts a wholly different interpretation, in which Severus appears as responsible for the demoralisation and, if not the barbarisation, yet at least the "democratisation and provinciali sation" of the army, as responsible for the abandonment of the policy of the Antonines in favour of a dynasty supported by the army, and as having sacrificed the upper classes of the empire to the peasants, from whom the army was now drawn. Where they differ flatly is in their estimate of the condition of the provinces during the reign.
In literature and philosophy the reign is undistinguished, but interesting on account of Iulia Domna, the philosophic Empress, and her circle, which included Diogenes Laertius, Galen, Aelian, the lawyers Papinian and Ulpian, and Philostratus, the author of that abortive gospel, the Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Severus himself was markedly superstitious, but there is nothing to con nect him with the surge of Eastern mysticism that his wife fostered. What we have of his is a definite edict against conver sion to Christianity.