On This Day...

[Robert Vermaat]

January 31, 36 BC: Birth of Antonia Minor, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia Minor (d. 38 AD).

[Nathan Ross]

4 February 211

Septimius Severus dies at York



"...before Severus died, he is reported to have spoken thus to his sons (I give his exact words without embellishment): "Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men."

After this his body, arrayed in military garb, was placed upon a pyre, and as a mark of honour the soldiers and his sons ran about it; and as for the soldiers' gifts, those who had things at hand to offer as gifts threw them upon it, and his sons applied the fire. Afterwards his bones were put in an urn of purple stone, carried to Rome, and deposited in the tomb of the Antonines.

It is said that Severus sent for the urn shortly before his death, and after feeling of it, remarked: "Thou shalt hold a man that the world could not hold."

(Cassius Dio - LXXVII. 15)

[Robert Vermaat]

February 4, 211 AD: Death of the Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus, b. 11 April 145 (known as Septimius Severus or Severus), Emperor from 193 to 211, who was campaigning in northern Britannia until he fell seriously ill at York.

[Robert Vermaat]

February 5, 62 AD: An earthquake hits Pompeii, Italy.

[Robert Vermaat]

February 6, 464 AD: The Patrician Ricimer defeats the Alans at Bergamensis (Bergamo) in the Alps and kills their king Beorgor.

[Robert Vermaat]

February 7, 457 AD: After the death of Marcian (January 26), the Patrician Aspar suggests his successor - the senate duly elects Flavius Valerius Leo, tribune of the Mattiarii, who becomes emperor of the Eastern Empire (Leo I).

[Robert Vermaat]

February 8, 421 AD: The magister militum Flavius Constantius is elevated to Augustus (Constantius III) by the Emperor Honorius.

[Robert Vermaat]

February 9, 474 AD: After the death of Leo of dysentery (January 18), his grandson Flavius Leo is crowned Emperor at age 7, while his father Flavius Zeno is crowned co-emperor.

[Robert Vermaat]

February 11, 55 AD: Death of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus (12 February 41 — before 12 February 55), heir to the Roman throne, under mysterious circumstances in Rome. Nero dismissed the murder by claiming that the boy suffered from epilepsy, and some historians support this, but Tacitus claimed he was murdered by poison at the instigation of Nero, after his stepmother Agrippina declared that she repented of her actions to bring Nero to the throne, and would throw in her lot with Britannicus.

February 11, 244 AD: Death of the Emperor Gordian III, under unclear circumstances. Roman sources suggest that Gordian died far away, upstream of the Euphrates, or that Philip, who succeeded Gordian as emperor, as having murdered Gordian at Zaitha (Qalat es Salihiya). However, Persian sources claim that a battle (unmentioned by Roman sources) was fought (Battle of Misiche) near modern Fallujah (Iraq) and resulted in a major Roman defeat and the death of Gordian III.

February 11, 641 AD: Death of the Emperor Flavius Heraclius.

[Robert Vermaat]

February 16, 307 AD: Death of the Western emperor Flavius Valerius Severus (or Severus II). After Severus moved from Mediolanum (Milan) to Rome to suppress the revolt of Maxentius, his troops deserted to their old commander Maximian, father of Maxentius, who had come back from retirement. Severus surrendered at Ravenna to save his life, but was forced to commit suicide anyway when Galerius invaded Italy.

[Robert Vermaat]

February 17, 364 AD: Death of the emperor Flavius Jovianus (Jovian), who died aged 32 in Dadastana, halfway between Ancyra and Nicaea (February 17), on the return voyage of Julian’s failed Persian campaign. His death may have been due to either a surfeit of mushrooms or the poisonous carbon monoxide fumes of a charcoal warming fire.