Julia Mamaea, Mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus

In the early third century A.D. there sat upon the throne of Rome a dynasty of Syrian emperors whose era was distinguished by the attempt to tinge social life and religious ideas in Rome with an Eastern color, until Rome's great poet Juvenal said, "The Orontes empties into the Tiber." This age was distinguished also by the great role played by woman, whether in political, literary, or military life, so that it was said, "In Syria there are women, but no men." Among the eminent women of that age were Julia Domna, priestess of the Temple of the Sun at Homs and wife of the Emperor Septimius Severus — the most famous of them; her sister Julia Maesa, mother of the Emperor Elagabalus; and her daughter Julia Mamaea, mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus — in truth the wisest and ablest of them all.

We do not know exactly in what year this woman was born, for her name did not rise to prominence until her son came to the throne at the age of fourteen. She then devoted herself entirely to caring for him and training his body, his mind, and his character: to strengthen his body she would oblige him to bathe in a pool of cold water every day and to drink a measure of water before every meal.

Alexander studied under great masters and grew passionately fond of Greek and Latin literature, and nothing restrained him from pursuing them but his mother's plea that he take upon himself the founding of a lofty government ruled by love and peace. For that reason he followed her counsel and that of his teacher, the famous Beiruti jurist Ulpian: he drew close to the Senate after the estrangement begun by his predecessors in power, and surrounded himself with a number of senators whom he consulted on important questions, his mother mediating between them and him. It was she who managed affairs; it was she who debated with the senators; it was she who sat with men of letters and philosophers, examining their writings and their ideas, advising, guiding, and directing.

Mamaea's activity at court and among its men was not confined to political and literary matters alone; it extended to military affairs as well. She accompanied her son from Rome to Syria, where the fires of war were blazing between the Romans and the Persians on the eastern frontier; she roused the armies to battle and marched at their head until a great victory was hers, by which she drove the young forces of Ardashir back from Syria after they had occupied it and wrought devastation there.

Among the things to which Julia Mamaea attended, giving them her great care and her warm sympathy, were religious matters. The third Christian century was an age of struggle between Christianity and the Roman religions, native and imported, such as the worship of Mithra and of Cybele. This struggle grew very fierce, for each of these religions embodied a particular way of life diametrically opposed to the other: the Christian religion, with its asceticism and austerity and its turning of attention to man as an individual human being, was a direct reaction against the life of luxury, ostentation, and indulgence that Rome was living. Julia could not but be affected, and her son affected with her. She took upon herself the trouble of traveling from Rome to Antioch to hear Origen, the philosopher of Christianity in that day; she sent royal guards to him and summoned him to her, and he stayed with her no short time, during which she listened to his expositions and his opinions. In the wake of this meeting with so able a philosopher she began to expound to her son, and to urge upon him, a life of asceticism and austerity, of devotion, and of the consecration of oneself to the cause of the empire and the cause of his family. Alexander was thus the only one among the Syrian emperors who turned his gaze from the pavilions of luxury and empty pleasure toward a life of contemplation, wisdom, and deliberation. He allowed all religions to work in freedom — even Christianity, which had never ceased to be a target of persecution by the emperors before him; and no long time had passed since the death of Caracalla, who had brought down upon the Christians the greatest of persecutions. In his palace Alexander set up a place of worship in which he joined the Christian religion with the Roman religions, and by this act he was the first of those who lightened the burden upon the Christians.

Alexander's reforms went beyond administrative, military, and political matters to education: he founded elementary schools in most of the villages belonging to his empire, and there remain to us to this day papyri in Egypt that were used as textbooks in the elementary schools.

Although Alexander remained in power for a considerable time, his war with Ardashir exhausted his strength and cost him much of his money, which left room for revolts in his empire. The Illyrian tribes rose against him and threatened northern Italy while he was still with his mother at the Persian war. When he could not master these tribes he took to bribing their chiefs, which lost him the confidence of his troops, who were already disgusted at his mother's domination over him; so they mutinied and abandoned the two of them, and the Syrian armies on which mother and son had relied mutinied as well, fell upon them, and killed them together in the year 235 A.D.

By this deed they left a vast void in the empire, for with the death of this woman and her son there began an age of military anarchy; and exposure to the assaults of the barbarians was a powerful factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Thus ended the life of this woman of Homsi origin. And how many are her likes among great women of whose very existence we are ignorant — in this age in which woman in our country is trying to take her place beside man, to serve her nation as he serves it, and to prove that the nation's weak half is strong in its right to life, liberty, honor, and dignity.