I, Lucius Septimius Severus, the first and only African Emperor of Rome, speak to you from the grave. Although I died in grey Britannia on a cold February day in the year 221 AD while fighting those troublesome northern barbarians, my heart has always been in the south under the strong Libyan sun, where I was born and raised for seventeen years among the more civilized people of Phoenician and Berber blood, as is mine..
My natal city was Leptis, known far and wide as Leptis Magna, because I, by my command, clad it in marble and made it great and still gleaming, two millennia after my own time. Yet Leptis is now a ghost town, having been unearthed only recently by archaeologists from the sand, where it lay safely shrouded for fifteen hundred years.
While alive, I saw Leptis at the height of its Roman glory- its great vaulted basilica and the second largest theater in Africa, its hippodrome- the largest outside Italy- and its 16,000 seat amphitheater carved from bedrock, its magnificent Hadrianic baths- with a swimming pool measuring 28m x l5m- and its temples great and small, its mosaic-paved private villas and public forum, whose Aswan granite columns rest on marble quarried from Mt. Pentelicus in Greece, identical to those in the portico of the Pantheon in Rome, its once busy market places and the three triumphal archways of Tiberius, Trajan, and the greatest one of all belonging to Myself!
Later, from the cold comfort of the tomb, I saw Leptis defeated and depopulated by Saharan tribesmen- the Austuriani from the near desert and the Garamantians from the deep desert- and by Vandal invaders from the European north. Even the bravest Roman soldiers learned to fear the marauding brigands. When the town fathers asked the army to beat their attackers back from the city walls one time in the 4th C, the Roman governor demanded they raise a 4,000 strong camel corps to confront the enemy on their own.
When Belisarius, the great general under the command of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, retook Leptis from the Vandals in the year 534, he did not bother to rebuild the destroyed walls and ramparts. Instead, he reduced the extent of the protected city by three quarters, making Leptis in effect nothing more than a fortified harbor, and weakly fortified at that. When the Muslims led by their general Amr ibn al-'As marched across Libya one hundred years later, they found Leptis empty of everything but sand.
And now, slowly over the last one hundred years, I see Leptis being recovered- unearthed and rebuilt- by modem archaeology. Today Leptis is called the greatest intact Roman city on earth, superior even to Pompeii- which, I might add, never gave Rome an Emperor.
I want you to visit Leptis with me, as my guest. And I ask that you not listen to Edward Gibbon, author of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, who wrote that "Septimius promised, only to betray, and flattered, only to ruin", or that "his ambition was never diverted from its steady course by feelings for humanity", or that "posterity justly considered him as the principal author of the decline of the Roman Empire." I made Leptis Magna, but I did not unmake Rome. Indeed, my arch, albeit of less grandeur than that in Leptis, still stands in the Roman Forum.
And it is also not true, as Gibbon wrote, that modem Italians call me the "Punic Revenge". Yes, my father was Phoenician and my mother's family was intermarried with Berbers. My sister Octavilla spoke only Phoenician, and never once did she leave this city, so much did she love Leptis. I myself spoke Latin with a heavy Punic accent but it is not true, as some scholars say, that I pronounced my name "Sheptimiush Sheverush".
Yes, I was denounced in the United States Senate in 1963, at the height of the civil rights debate, by an angry southern segregationist, who called me Rome's worst emperor, because I was a "Negro". Africans, I would have told him, come in all colors. But what can a Roman Emperor teach an ignorant Mississippi senator?
Gibbon quotes correctly what I once had to say about myself- omnia fui et nihil expedit "I was all things, and all was of little value". You see, I learned well the stoic maxims of my mentor Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations I read as a boy. Little did Gibbon know, however, that I was not speaking about myself, but rather about Leptis Magna.
The impudent Greek historian Dio Cassius was less fair to me when he wrote of what I built in Leptis and in Rome, "Severus restored a very large number of ancient buildings and inscribed on them his own name, just as if he had erected them in the first place from his own private funds. He also spent a great deal uselessly in repairing other buildings and in constructing new ones."
Dio is wrong. Whatever I built, I built anew from the ground up- such as the 366 meter long Colonnaded Way connecting my new harbor to the decumanus maximus, that paved Roman coastal road linking Alexandria to Carthage. I admit that I modeled it after those great long streets in Palmyra and Apamaea in Syria, near to where my wife Julia Domna was born, just as my triumphal quadriform arch at the crossing of the cardo and the decumanus, the first Roman arch adorned with a broken pediment, I also took from Eastern examples.
For columns, I used the finest Attic white and Euboean green marbles and the strongest Aswan red granite. Before me, Leptis had been built with grey limestone, which weathered over time to a fine yellow patina, but it was not a white city until I made it so. If you do not believe me, look at huge unworked block of Attic marble beside my Arch, fished up from the sea bed just offshore where it had tumbled off the boat before being landed- and see how difficult is was for us to transport across the sea.
See how difficult the marble was to move even one thousand years later. The French archaeologist Charles LeMaire could not load three columns off the beach, and there still they lie, pounded by the surf. As he wrote helplessly to his sovereign in Paris in 1680, "I have been working over 5 months to free them from the sand, but I cannot ship them because I do not have a barge strong enough."
My fellow citizens called Leptis "the splendid colony", the jewel of Roman the jewel of Roman Tripolitania, far outshining its two other sister colonies Sabratha and even Oea, which, implausibly, has been given the modern name of Tripoli. Should not that honor, which keeps alive the great Roman legacy in Libya, which I above all others had been most diligent to magnify, have gone instead to the city of my birth?.
It was by mere historical happenstance, a lucky accident according to archaeologists today, that Leptis- unlike Sabratha, which became a much scavenged quarry for later builders, and ancient Oea, of which nothing remains in modern Tripoli except a much-defiled arch of Marcus Aurelius- was abandoned not long after my death and quickly blanketed by sand. The city was thus protected, covered just as a warm quilt protects a child on a cold night, keeping it from the depredations and thieving hands of those- or, at the least, most of those- who came later.
Just as Pompeii was buried and, paradoxically, thereby saved for posterity- so was Leptis. And just as Pompeii is today a marvelous lesson and example for those who otherwise could know nothing of Roman domestic architecture and city planning- so too is Leptis Magna, which seems every day to give new proof of how well wealthy Romans lived at home.
Just a few years ago, a sumptuous Roman villa in Leptis- of the kind called a maritime villa because of its seaside location- was cleared of sand and found to contain a perfectly intact 2nd C AD glass and stone floor mosaic, showing an exhausted gladiator resting on the ground and eyeing his vanquished foe with a mixture of sympathy and satisfaction. Because of its fine painterly quality and dramatic effect, it is said to be on par with the Alexander mosaic from Pompeii's House of the Faun, now the masterpiece of the Naples museum.
Leptis' other maritime villas- Villa Silin, accidentliy discovered by a fisherman sitting on a sand dune when he scraped his foot on a mosaic pavement, or Villa Nile, Villa Dar Buc Ammera, and Villa Orpheus- have all offered up wonderful floor mosaics with such themes as the four seasons, the bounty of the Nile River, the myth of Lycurgus King of the Edonians, and Orpheus playing to the animals.
True, antiquities scavengers like the Frenchman LeMaire, the Englishman William Henry Smyth, and the Ottoman Turks stole Leptis marbles for their own use. From the green cipolline marble of the grand Colonnaded Way were built the Rouen cathedral's pulpit, the altar in the church of St. Germain-des-Pres in Paris, and the antique folly in Windsor Castle Park- that surrounds, fittingly, the Roman-style equestrian statue of Mad King George. Even the 16th C. mosque of Murad Aga nearby Tajura oasis was made of my columns.
Yet there is something about these columns taken from their proper place that seem to invite trouble. Joan of Arc was condemned from the Rouen pulpit to burn at the stake in 1431. Tajura has gone down in history as the first place where bombs were dropped from an airplane, during the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911. Windsor Park was later blitzed by the Germans.
It was the modern Italians, returning to Libya in the early twentieth century- as colonists for the second time- who began the first scientific excavations at Leptis Magna. And they- sad as it is for me, a proud Roman, to say this- also stole from Leptis. Not architectural pieces, for of those there are plenty in Rome- but rather fine statues, which fill the museums there.
Some they even gave to their Nazi allies in World War II, such as a 2nd C AD Roman copy of the Capitoline Aphrodite, which was finally returned in 1999. Only this year, an Italian court, rejecting false nationalist claims of "protected cultural property", ruled that an exquisite headless nude known as the "Venus of Cyrene", taken by Italian archaeologists in 1913 from the ancient Greek colony in eastern Libya, must be repatriated.
The Phoenician traders who founded Leptis almost one thousand years before the time of Christ- its name comes from the Phoenician letters LPQY- were the first to plant olive trees and grape vines, for which the colony became rich and famous. The city later grew strong under the protection of Carthage, its Punic mother. It is for this reason that most of the names found in Leptis' dedicatory inscriptions- Iddbal, Ithymbal, Muthumbal, and Annobal- have a decidedly non-Latin, pagan god Baal-worshipping resonance.
And then there were the Greeks. Herodotus, who knew first hand the five Greek colonies of the Pentapolis in the east- Cyrene, Apollonia, Berenice, Barca, and Arsinoe- was not wrong when he called this place "the fairest spot in all Libya". In Book 5 of his History he wrote of how a Spartan colony at nearby Cinyps (the modern Wadi Qa'am) was founded in the year 515 BC by Doreius, older brother of Leonides (who was later to die at the Battle of Thermopylae) and after only 3 years they were chased away by the Phoenicians at Leptis fighting in league with local tribesmen.
Olive oil and wild beasts- both of insatiable demand in Rome- gave Leptis wide fame and tremendous wealth as an export emporium. It is perhaps a paradox that two so utterly diffferent things- one so soothing on the plate and in the bath, the other so frightening in the arena and in a cage- could make one rich, but such is huinan nature.
One of my primary efforts was to rebuild the harbor, whose quays and fastening rings are still visible, albeit far inland from the present shoreline. The Leptis river in flood has always carried too much silt, and over the years, even in my own lifetime, it would fill the harbor, now fully choked.
Archaeologists think that the city's agricultural holdings, spread 4,000 sq.km across the coastal plain, contained up to 1,500 olive presses. The ruins of many presses can be seen today dotting the flats, their two large verticle stones standing like monolithic legs missing a giant torso. The intrepid 19th C German explorer Heinrich Barth, only the second European to reach Timbuktu and return alive to tell the tale, mistook them as Druidic blood sacrifice altars.
Each press in a good year might produce 100,000 liters of oil, so Leptis could export some 30 million liters a year. When Julius Caesar imposed a punitive tribute on Leptis of three million pounds, for its townspeople having harbored his enemies during his civil war against Pompey in 46 BC, the burden amounted to a mere drop in the amphora.
I set things right on this matter when I declared a ius italicum in Leptis during my one and only homecoming as Emperor in the year 203, when I forgave taxes and, in the words of my biographer in the Augustan History, "donated to the Roman people in perpetuity a free and lavish daily supply of olive oil." From that day forward, the people of Leptis were called septimiani, no longer lepcitani, and could neither dip their bread, nor light their lamps, nor anoint their bodies without thanking me.
As for the beasts, when my predecessor Emperor Titus opened the Colosseum, he paid for one hundred days of blood sports- leopard pitted against elephant, lion against giraffe, rhinoceros against jaguar- in which nine thousand animals died, many if not most captured from my city's hinterland. Trajan celebrated his victory over the Dacians by ordering eleven thousand beasts to kill themselves before enthralled spectators. Animal combats were a Roman addiction, and Leptis was the chief supplier.
We all know of Emperor Hadrian's great attachment to his boy lover Antinous, and how the boy drowned mysteriously in the Nile in the year 130 AD, and afterwards how Hadrian created a votive cult to honor the deified boy at Antinopolis. In Hadrian' s Bath at Leptis, an Antinous-headed statue of the god Apollo was found. But more to my point about animals is the story of their lion hunt, which occurred somewhere in the Libyan desert just a month before Antinous' death, as recounted in the epic by Hadrian' s court poet Pancrates.
It is only by dumb luck that the poem has survived, even as a fragment. It was found in 1901 on a papyrus leaf, rolled up as a bottle stopper and thrown into an Egyptian midden pile, and tells of the ferocious beast how
Straight he rushed upon them both
Scourging his haunches and sides with his tail
While his eyes, beneath his brows, flashed dreadful fire.
And from his ravening jaws the foam showered to the earth
While his teeth rattled within.
On his mighty head and shaggy neck the hair stood bristling,
On his limbs it was bushy as trees,
And on his back it was like whetted spear points.
Antinous rashly attacked but was wounded and then unable to defend himself against the lion, so Hadrian intervened to kill the beast and thus save his lover' s life. From the dying lion's blood sprouted red lotus flowers.
There is no doubt of the presence of lions and leopards very near Leptis. The city' s Hunting Baths, so called because of the vivid frescoes on their walls that document hunting scenes, show men killing- in Pancrates' words, with "a spear shod with adamant"- three leopards, and even identify the beasts by name- Rapidus, Gabatius, and Fulgentius, from the Latin stem fulgeo, fulgere- to glitter or to gleam.
Even more than Hadrian and Antinous, Leptis is most proud of another pair of lovers namely, John Wayne and Sophia Loren! In the 1957 Hollywood movie Legend of the Lost, they appear as a thick-skinned adventurer and a sexy prostitute crossing the Sahara in search of a city deep in the sands that promises them boundless treasure- "emeralds the size of eggs, rubies the size of my hand!"- and fall madly in love just as they enter the marble gates of Leptis Magna.
The lovers wander the ruins with the fires of amor burning ever brighter. Miss Loren poses as a sultry siren next to a gorgon head and screams when she trips over a skeleton "! feel they are watching us, all the dead people who lived in this city. I don't like it." Meanwhile, Mr. Wayne mutters Texan imprecations- "You're not going to bed in the desert, you' re going to stand up and walk like a woman. A lost city and a batty dame!" and sight reads a Latin inscription- which he gets completely wrong!
In the picture, we clearly see the inscription he reads-
IMP[eratore] CAES[ar] L[ucius] SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS PIUS...
Emperor Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus, Loyal. ..
which I myself had ordered to be written. But Mr. Wayne mistranslates it as "Emperor Trajan built this city to last forever"- without even a mere mention of my name! Such an error alone is sufficient reason to give the movie "thumbs down!" Yet it was filmed in Technicolor, so my city' s green marble and red granite, against the backdrop of yellow sands and blue skies, have never looked better.
Visitors to Leptis Magna today are most fascinated by one particular frieze on my archway, the so-called dextrarum iunctio, or sacred handclasp, showing me reaching across the chest of my second son Geta to shake the hand of my first son Caracalla, both of whom I had named co-emperors shortly before my death. People say this frieze sends a secret message, that with this handshake, in which our two fists almost appear to conceal knives, I authorized Caracalla to commit the sin of fratricide.
Historians write of the "dysfunctional" Severan dynasty and of buckets of imperial blood it spilled- Geta stabbed by Caracalla in their mother's arms not long after the frieze was made, Caracalla stabbed by a usurper while in the toilet, and my grandnephew Alexander stabbed alongside his mother by his own legionnaires. Perhaps Gibbon was right after all that the end of the Roman Empire is written in my family's blood.
If it is true, then perhaps the decline and fall of Rome is most clearly foretold on that archway at Leptis Magna, which, nevertheless, stall stands where I commanded that it be built two thousand years ago- under the Libyan sun, on the breezy shore of the Mediterranean.