02-04-2011, 07:34 AM
4 February 211
Septimius Severus dies at York
![[Image: septimius_severus_blk.jpg]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-HE1lR1mlb8/TEKRdOP7Q0I/AAAAAAAACvg/o_gJPN-4QPw/s1600/septimius_severus_blk.jpg)
"...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)
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)
Nathan Ross
