Julia Domna and the Severan Prophecy

Julia Domna was born in Emesa (present-day Homs) in Roman Syria, the youngest daughter of the high priest of Baal, Julius Bassianus. The family had enormous wealth and was promoted to Roman senatorial aristocracy. Before her marriage, Domna also inherited the estate of her paternal great-uncle, Julius Agrippa, a former leading centurion. 

In 187 CE, she married Severus, who at the time was governor of the Roman province of Gallia Lugdunensis. The Augustan History relates that, after losing his first wife around 186 CE, Septimius Severus heard a prophesy of a woman in Syria who would marry a king. So Severus sought out Domna from one of Syria's most prominent families as his wife.

As empress, Domna was famous for her political, social, and philosophical influence. She received titles such as "Mother of the Invincible Camps" because, unlike most imperial wives, Domna remarkably accompanied her husband on his military campaigns and stayed in camp with the army. After the elder of her sons, Caracalla, started ruling with his father, she was briefly co-empress with Caracalla's wife, Fulvia Plautilla, until the latter fell into disgrace. Following the death of Severus in 211, Domna became the first empress dowager to receive the title combination "Pia Felix Augusta", which may have implied greater powers being vested in her than what was usual for a Roman empress mother. 

Domna is said to have committed suicide in 217 CE upon hearing of her son Caracalla's assassination in the course of his campaign against Parthia, on which she had accompanied him as far as Antioch (present-day Antakya, Turkey).

Image: A Severan Period mold-made lamp, 2nd century CE, terracotta, at the J. Paul Getty Museum (Villa).  This unusual moldmade lamp depicts  a woman dressed in a long-sleeved garment standing next to a truncated column, playing a harp, which leans on her shoulder. Her hairdo is similar to a style worn by Empress Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus . The Filling-hole is on top of the instrument and the wick-hole pierces its base. 

 

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The Phrygian Cap in Greek and Roman Art

 The Phrygian cap later known as a liberty cap is a soft conical cap with the apex bent over, associated in antiquity with several peoples in Eastern Europe and Anatolia, including Phrygia, Dacia, and the Balkans.  By the 4th century BCE (early Hellenistic period) the Phrygian cap was associated with Phrygian Attis, the consort of Cybele, the cult of which had by then become graecified. At around the same time, the cap appears in depictions of the legendary king Midas and other Phrygians in Greek vase-paintings and sculpture. The Phrygian cap also came to be applied to several other non-Greek-speaking peoples ("barbarians" in the classical sense). Most notable of these extended senses of "Phrygian" were the Trojans and other western Anatolian peoples, who in Greek perception were synonymous with the Phrygians, and whose heroes Paris, Aeneas, and Ganymede were all regularly depicted with a Phrygian cap. 

While the Phrygian cap was of wool or soft leather, in pre-Hellenistic times the Greeks had already developed a military helmet that had a similarly characteristic flipped-over tip. These so-called "Phrygian helmets" (named in modern times after the cap) were usually of bronze and in prominent use in Thrace, Dacia, Magna Graecia and the rest of the Hellenistic world from the 5th century BCE up to Roman times. 

The Greek concept passed to the Romans and encompassed not only Phrygians but also the other near-neighbours of the Greeks. On Trajan's Column, which commemorated Trajan's epic wars with the Dacians, the Phrygian cap adorns the heads of Trajan's Dacian prisoners. Parthians appear with Phrygian caps on the 2nd-century CE Arch of Septimius Severus and Gauls in Phrygian caps are depicted on the 2nd-century CE friezes of the 4th century Arch of Constantine. In the tauroctony images of Roman Mithraism, the figures of the god Mithras as well as those of his helpers Cautes and Cautopates are routinely depicted with a Phrygian cap. 

In later centuries, a Phrygian-looking cap became associated with liberty because of its resemblence to the Roman cap of liberty, the Roman pileus, a felt cap worn by manumitted (emancipated) slaves of ancient Rome, and an attribute of Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty. 

Figure of male with Phrygian cap, earthenware with painted decorations possibly from Palmyra, Syria, 1st-2nd century CE at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.

Paris of Troy wearing a Phrygian cap on a Roman sarcophagus dating to the Hadrianic period (117-138 CE) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Three wise men" with Phrygian caps to identify them as "orientals" 6th-century, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor nina-no.

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Isotope Analysis and the Case of the Headless Romans

Today, in my Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology class, we studied the use of isotope analysis as a method to identify geographic origins and dietary patterns in archaeologically recovered human remains. I read, with particular interest, the isotope analysis report of the "Headless Romans" found in the cemetery just outside of York. I assumed before reading the report that the exclusively male burials with almost 50% decapitated individuals and many remains displaying antemortem trauma, would have been consistent with a military group burial. This was considered plausible by researchers. But, the burials were not separated by time period and they were found to be not due to a single incident, so no conclusions about a particular engagement or period of unrest could really be drawn from the group of remains as a whole. I actually expected the study's outliers to be non-Briton individuals and this was confirmed. These individuals would have probably been officers, usually from Roman aristocratic families, that were fulfilling the military service required by the Cursus Honorum. But I was a bit disappointed that more understanding could not be shed on the high percentage of decapitations. Researchers pointed out that if the decapitations were a result of improper actions, they should have constituted less than 10% of the group, not almost 50%. Early conclusions pointed to a “mass execution” of members of the Imperial Court in the turbulent aftermath of Septimius Severus’ death in 211 CE (as explored in the video below). But that would not account for the wide spread of time between deaths. It is my understanding that the taking of heads as battle trophies was a Celtic tradition. So, the group burials, (some grave pits contained up to four bodies each) may have been the aftermath of a punitive operation against local war bands where heads that had been taken were repatriated then buried with their respective torsos. But that would have also probably required most of the individuals to have been interred during roughly the same period. Instead, the 80 bodies represented burials across two to three centuries. Another theory proposed they were gladiator burials based on possible similarities in trauma patterns with known gladiators and especially the toothmarks of a large carnivore, possibly a bear, lion or tiger, found on one of the skeletons. But, researchers pointed out that there appears to be no evidence that decapitations were part of the ritual used for dispatching defeated gladiators. More studies of the remains are ongoing so maybe there will be better clarification later.

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