Few states in history can claim to have had the power, influence, and sheer size of the Roman Empire. It’s been the subject of countless books, TV shows, and movies ranging from Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series to Spartacus. Even in media where the Roman Empire isn’t explicitly named, its presence is felt such as in A Song of Ice and Fire where Old Valyria serves as the advanced, powerful empire that preceded the fractured states that became of it.
But unlike the books’ Valyrians, the show Valyrians and real Romans were never quite as homogenously white as we conventionally think of them. At the very least, they wouldn’t have easily identified themselves as being white.
This ambiguity hovers over the identity of Septimius Severus. Born in a place that would become present-day Libya, Septimius Severus was undoubtedly the first African born emperor. However, many have claimed that Septimius Severus was black, as in, of African ethnicity. Look up his name right now and you’ll see dozens of TikToks saying Septimius Severus had been whitewashed and that he was actually African-blooded, not just African-born.
History, however, is not so straightforward, and to understand whether Septimius Severus would have been considered black in his time, we need to understand how the Romans viewed race, citizenship, and identity.
Who Was Septimius Severus?
Septimius Severus or, if you’re really patient, Lucius Septimius Severus was a Roman Emperor who served from 193 to 211 A.D. His name probably sounds familiar to you if you’re part of a Christian denomination as Septimius Severus is famous for, among other things, forbidding conversion into Christianity.
But that’s just a drop in the bucket of everything Septimius Severus accomplished during his reign.
Septimius Severus was born in Leptis Magna, one of the foremost cities of its time that commanded the coastlines and trade routes of the Mediterranean. Before you imagine Leptis Magna as a Greek or Roman city in terms of geography, it was far from the center of the empire. Instead, Leptis Magna was located in what we today call Khoms, Libya in North Africa.
This made Septimius Severus the first African-born Roman emperor. There’s no dispute on that front. The ambiguity comes from claiming he was the first black emperor of Rome. Septimius Severus’ parents were of Italic and Punic ancestry. His father, Publius Septimius Geta was Punic, alternatively called a western Phoenician. Because the western Phoenicians were Semites, this would make Septimius Severus, though a little removed, a Semite himself as it was understood in his time. It was Fulvia Pia, his mother, and member of the prominent Fulvia family (gens Fulvia) of Rome, who gave him his Roman-blooded origins.
He was said to have been an eager student, always yearning to learn more and fluent in Punic, the local tongue of Leptis Magna, as well as Greek and Latin, both of which he spoke with a Punic accent. Though Septimius Severus was taught the skill of public speaking, his accent would be a sign of what was to come in his political career.
Septimius Severus’ Rise to Power
Septimius Severus joined the senate in 173. While accounts of him describe him as mentally capable, it was his connections through his family that would help him secure a public career. Septimius Severus was recommended by his cousin Gaius Septimius Severus to none other than Marcus Aurelius, the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors.
He may not have known it at the time, but Septimius Severus had massive shoes to fill.
Septimius Severus spent most of his time during Marcus Aurelius’ reign serving as a state attorney but the Antonine Plague forced his career to a halt, giving him few safe options aside from coming back to Leptis Magna. But the Antonine Plague was more of a gift than a curse. Since it had killed many of the older senators, Septimius Severus could eschew seniority, jumping the ranks of the senate to later become senate himself.
Gaius Septimius Severus would give him a second big break: Now proconsul of Africa, he offered Septimius Severus the role of being his legatus. This sudden promotion helped him secure a senior legislative position.
But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for him in the Roman Empire. Following Marcus Aurelius’ death, his son Commodus became emperor and was assassinated. He was replaced by Pertinax who tried to introduce a string of reforms but was killed by his own Praetorian Guard.
Septimius Severus, wise enough not to let a good crisis go to waste, assembles an army and marches to Rome, forcibly taking emperorship with little resistance.
Septimius Severus’ Legacy
Septimius Severus’ iron grip on the Praetorian Guards and Senate, whose ranks he purged and filled with his loyalists, made him unpopular with the Senate yet effective. Commodus’ corruption made him look great in comparison and he was successful in expanding the Roman Empire to the largest it would ever be, making him incredibly popular with the Roman public.
After a long and largely successful reign, he fell ill and died in Eboracum, present-day York, England.
These days, he’s regaining that popularity for being the “Black Roman emperor”. A search for him on TikTok will quickly turn up results talking about how he was “white washed” and that, because he had come from Africa, he must have been ethnically African himself.
Was Septimius Severus Really Black?
As nice as it would be to have a black Roman emperor, no record of Septimius Severus’ life describes him as black nor would there be any reason to believe he was. His mother was an Italic Roman and his father a Semitic western Phoenician. He was certainly born in Africa, but he was no more black in his time than Elon Musk, who was born in Pretoria, South Africa, is today.
While he likely wasn’t as “white” as movies and TV shows depict the Romans, he could not have been black either. And even if he were and were not, categorizing Septimius Severus as either black or white wouldn’t reflect how Rome treated him.
Ancient Roman Attitudes on Race vs. Citizenship
The Romans themselves were not white or, to be more accurate, not white in the way we think of today. Today, we easily categorize Scandinavians, the English, and Italians as “European” and therefore white. The Romans, to put it bluntly, would not have been happy being grouped with people they believed to be “barbaric”.
Whiteness and blackness as categories did not exist for the Romans the way they do for us today. The stereotypes that racists have today of “non-whites” are eerily similar to the way the Romans viewed Northern Europeans, though many writers also had a begrudging respect for them.
Yet many “barbarians” rose to prominence in Rome anyway. “Race” as we know it was both a factor and a non-factor for the Romans. They drew “racial lines” and othered people based on differences in custom, language, and religion. To them, differences in culture were the things that truly marked someone as an other. After all, with such a massive empire, you’re bound to have a fellow Roman that didn’t look like you, but you shared gods, a language, and understood each others’ customs.
Assimilation made a Roman a Roman. Not their “race”. However, it would be remiss to pretend that Rome was a land of equal opportunity. They did use the concept of “natio”, place of origin, as a way of determining which slaves would be suited for which tasks. It’s worth noting that while 19th-century claims of scientific racism would often classify the “white European” as intelligent compared to non-whites, the Romans believed the opposite about their Briton slaves.
“I think that you will not expect any of them to be learned in literature or music.” Cicero wrote to Atticus regarding captives from Britain.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio takes it a step further, “…men born in cold countries are indeed readier to meet the shock of arms with great courage and without timidity, but their wits are so slow that they will rush to the charge inconsiderately.”
Okay, but Why Was Septimius Severus Depicted With Dark Skin?
A surviving tempera painting of Septimius Severus and his family depicts him with dark skin which has been claimed to be proof that Septimius Severus was black. There’s just one problem: He isn’t the only man in Roman art to be shown with dark skin. Notice that his features aren’t differentiated from that of his wife Julia Domna, herself an Arab from Roman Syria and also considered a Phoenician in her time, and their children.
At the time, men and women were depicted in art as having darker and paler skin, respectively, due to gender roles. Women stayed home and lived largely private lives that kept them out of the sun. Men were depicted with darker skin as they would have been outside more due to their roles in the public sphere. Whiteness and blackness in Roman art was less about race and more about gender.
Of course, given his ethnicity, Septimius Severus wouldn’t be white the way we think of whiteness today, but he seems to have had opinions of sub-Saharan Africans that would contradict him being one himself.
The Historia Augusta has this account of Septimius Severus’ campaign in Britain.
“After inspecting the wall near the rampart in Britain… just as he [Severus] was wondering what omen would present itself, an Ethiopian from a military unit, who was famous among buffoons and always a notable joker, met him with a garland of cypress. And when Severus in a rage ordered that the man be removed from his sight, troubled as he was by the man’s ominous colour and the ominous nature of the garland.”
Ultimately, Septimius Severus Can’t Be Black Because Blackness Today Is a Recent Sociopolitical Construct
It’s no question that non-white people are underrepresented in media and their contributions are downplayed compared to their white counterparts. However, the zeal with which we look for aspirational non-whites in history can be its own form of historical revision. Our modern ideas on race and ethnicity, as influenced by Gomes Eannes De Zurara and the scientific racists of the 19th century, are so removed from the Romans as to be irrelevant and unreflective of the dominant views of their time.
And besides, the Romans wouldn’t dislike Septimius Severus for being black. If there was anything “origin” related they could remotely hate him for, it would probably be because he was Punic, and by a stretch of definition, from Carthage…and he had Hannibal’s tomb covered in fine marble.
I think this is an incredible article! Thank you!
With the bona fide evidence that people, places and things that were more black than white and more African than not have been erased, destroyed, maligned and abridged, what intrinsic value is gained from making sure that readers undoubtedly deny the blackness of Septimus?
Can you point me to some of your writings that endeavor to confirm, instead of deny blackness?
I deign to assume that you have not yet written about a historical figure from the perspective of them not being white, or from the perspective of making a direct connection with their non-whiteness. I hope I am wrong. I think most people can agree that a view of history that highlights those of African descent is needed more than history that seeks to further erase Afrocentricity’s rightful place in the evolutionary sojourn of humanity.
Only imperialists will grab the history from a people like the Tunisians. Severus was from this Arab ethnicity but you people from America and England despise Arabs and that makes this cultural appropriation acceptable in your eye. You only flaunt your disregard and arrogance in this desperate attempt to steal the history of Arabian people. History will deem you as what you are – cultural imperialists
The Roman Empire was not an African Empire- it was a European Empire. It doesn’t really matter that there were no black Emperors the same way it doesn’t matter that there were no “white” Kings of Mali.
Rome was a very diverse Empire and there were Emperors from Spain, Italy, Gaul, Illyria, Syria, Anatolia, and Northern Africa. There were no Chinese Emperors nor were there any Emperors from sub-Saharan Africa. Doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.
Septimius Severus was not Scandinavian or Germanic. He wasn’t super “white” in the modern sense. At the same time Septimius Severus also was not from Sub-Saharan Africa- nor were his parents.
Ethnically speaking Septimius had a Punic father (think part Greek and part Middle Eastern) and a Roman mother. His skin would have been olive-colored and his hair would have been black or dark brown.
Now people who don’t know this period tend to confuse “Punic” with “African”. This is technically correct as the Punic peoples were from Northern Africa. The problem is they descended from Greeks, Persians, and Arabs. They had been closely aligned with the Greek and Roman world and didn’t really have much connection with sub-Saharan Africa.
The import of your article is to deny the blackness of the emperor, which you tirelessly but unsuccessfully did.
The Romans, once again, didn’t care about skin color. Wealth, power, and will determined status. As the article points out, the idea of race is a recent construct. Please don’t put your 21st century political views on antiquity.The Roman disdained blue eyed blonds as barbarians.
Africa in terms of skin color is diverse. Have you ever been to Morocco, Algeria, Lydia or Egypt? Obviously, you’re not in Scandinavia but neither are you in sub-saharan Africa.
OK boomer
Being black and the subsequent connotations and interactions, people’s fears etc from being dark skinned isn’t just a political construct invented in the 21st century.
Ok boomer
This article was a huge contradiction. You stated that he couldn’t be black because there was no indication of it. Okay sure. Then you went on to say that Romans did not identify people with the term black or white, they were just people, which is why there is no indication of it mentioned. Secondly you referenced the time frame as though this wasn’t the same time frame in which the Moors (also black) weren’t in control of the areas ( which they were until 619AD). So the mere fact that it wasn’t mentioned or profoundly odd , was due to the fact that it was normal to have African Black rulers.
Even in the photo you can clearly tell he is Black. He may not black in the normal thought of what you envision someone to be who is from Africa today. You said so yourself that his mother was Roman which could have very well meant that he was mulatto which would completely explain his skin tone. Even compared to previous sculptures, paintings, and drawings of other men during that time. The artist even then we’re able to differentiate colors from pale to darker colors. You can’t possibly justify he wasn’t black, because men were darker due to the sun and women were in the house all the time. A white person whoever you view them then or now. Do not get that dark even on the test tan days. They get red and a slight tint, just to appease your theory. However, the painting represented is beyond any tan a white person would get if both his parents are white. If his parents were one white one black then this is extremely more likely.
Your hypothesis neglected to even phantom that he was mulatto at all. He was either all white or all black.
Coming from a long line of Mulatto family members he literally looks just like my uncle. Curly hair same complexion and all.
He was brown skinned, yes. Roman’s did not care but he was in fact a shade of brown.
Brown is not black.
Your cookies are so invasive. Use precise geolocation? Get forked
“blackness is a sociopolitical construct” shove your head back up your cunt lol
I would just like to know. Why is it so important for so-called white folks? To have this strong need to abolish the so-called black experience, history, life, and time Of said black people???