Clodius Albinus

• 1. Introduction

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  Clodius Albinus was born around 150 CE in Hadrumetum, a city on the coast of North Africa, in what is now Sousse, Tunisia. He died on the 19th of February 197, on a battlefield outside a Gallic city, his army defeated, his cause lost. In the hours after his death, his naked body was laid out on the ground so that the victorious emperor could ride a horse over it. Then his head was cut off and sent to Rome as a warning.

  This was the fate of a man who had once shared a consulship with that same emperor. A man who had commanded the loyalty of three British legions and one Spanish, who had proclaimed himself emperor with a name stretching across four family titles, and who had come within a battle's edge of ruling the Roman world. His story belongs to one of the strangest years in Roman history, 193 CE, when five different men held or claimed the imperial throne in the space of a single year. How did a provincial soldier from Africa come so close to power? And what does his end reveal about the brutal logic of Roman civil war?

• 2. A Soldier from Africa

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  Hadrumetum sat in the province of Africa, a long-established Roman city and a place the young Albinus would leave behind early. He entered the army young, and his talent showed quickly. In 175 CE, when the general Avidius Cassius rose in rebellion against Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Albinus distinguished himself on the side of the throne.

  Marcus Aurelius himself acknowledged the debt in two letters. In them, the emperor called Albinus an African who resembled his countrymen but little. He praised Albinus for his military experience and the gravity of his character. Marcus Aurelius went further, stating that without Albinus the legions in Bithynia would have gone over to the rebel Cassius, and that he intended to have Albinus chosen consul.

  Those letters are a rare thing: direct imperial praise for a junior officer, preserved across the centuries. The Historia Augusta, an unreliable source by the standards of modern historians, adds a detail about his name. It claims Albinus received the cognomen Albinus because of the extraordinary whiteness of his complexion. Whether or not that story is true, the letters from Marcus Aurelius confirm that by his mid-twenties, this African-born soldier had made himself impossible to ignore.

• 3. Command and Controversy

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  Emperor Commodus gave Albinus successively greater responsibilities, first a command in Gallia Belgica and then in Britain. Britain was a posting of real military weight, anchoring the northern frontier of the empire. It was there that Albinus made a move that could easily have ended his career.

  A false rumor spread that Commodus had died. Albinus seized the moment, denouncing the emperor before his soldiers in Britain and calling Commodus a tyrant. He went further, arguing that restoring the Senate its ancient dignity and power would benefit the Roman Empire. The Senate, upon hearing these words, was very pleased. Commodus was not. He dispatched Junius Severus to relieve Albinus of his command.

  Albinus kept his command anyway. The reason is not spelled out in the sources, but the outcome tells its own story. He held his position through the deaths of Commodus and then his successor Pertinax in 193 CE. Whatever political maneuvering kept him in place, it bought him the time and the legions he would need when the empire fractured.

• 4. The Year of Five Emperors

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  When Pertinax was assassinated in 193, the praetorian prefect Aemilius Laetus and his men effectively sold the imperial throne to the wealthy senator Didius Julianus. Across the provinces, troops refused to accept that arrangement. Pescennius Niger was proclaimed emperor by the legions in Syria. Septimius Severus was proclaimed by the troops in Illyricum and Pannonia. Albinus was proclaimed by the armies in Britain and Gaul.

  Three men with three armies, and a fourth already seated in Rome on a purchased throne. Severus moved first and moved fast. He captured Rome, and Didius Julianus was put to death by order of the Senate. Then Severus turned his full attention east, toward Pescennius Niger. He needed his western flank secure. That meant Albinus.

  The deal they struck was a striking one. Albinus added the name Septimius to his own, accepted the title of Caesar from Severus, and the two men shared a consulship in 194 CE. Albinus remained effective ruler of much of the western empire, holding it with his British and Spanish legions while Severus campaigned in the east. It was a partnership built entirely on mutual necessity, and both men understood it.

• 5. The Break and the Battle

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  Niger was defeated and killed in 194. Byzantium, one of the last holdouts among his supporters, fell in 196. With the east secured, Severus had no further use for a co-ruler. In autumn 196, word reached Albinus that Severus had appointed his elder son Caracalla as Caesar, the formal designation of a successor, and had convinced the Senate to declare Albinus an official enemy of Rome.

  Albinus had narrowly escaped assassination by a messenger from Severus before this declaration reached him. With that attempt behind him and the Senate's verdict delivered, he had nothing left to negotiate with. He mobilized his legions in Britannia, proclaimed himself emperor under the full name Imperator Caesar Decimus Clodius Septimius Albinus Augustus, and crossed from Britain to Gaul, taking a large part of the British garrison with him. He defeated Severus' legate Virius Lupus. He laid claim to the military resources of Gaul and made Lugdunum his headquarters. The Rhine legions, however, would not join him.

  On the 19th of February 197, the two armies met at the Battle of Lugdunum. Cassius Dio, writing of the engagement, recorded 150,000 troops on each side. The battle was hard-fought. Albinus lost. Whether he killed himself or was captured and executed on Severus' orders, the sources disagree. What happened next is not in dispute. Severus rode his horse over the body. The head went to Rome with a letter mocking the Senate for their loyalty to Albinus. The wife and two sons of Albinus were pardoned, then almost immediately killed. His headless body, along with the bodies of his family, was thrown into the Rhône. Lugdunum was plundered, and his supporters were persecuted across the empire.

• 6. The Man Behind the Soldier

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  The ancient sources say that Albinus wrote a treatise on agriculture and a collection of Milesian tales, a genre of bawdy, entertaining short stories popular in the Roman world. Neither work survives. The combination is an unexpected one: a frontier general with literary interests, producing both a practical farming handbook and a collection of racy fiction.

  His personal life leaves almost no trace in the historical record. The name of his wife is unknown. The Historia Augusta mentions a son named Pescennius Princus, but historians such as Anthony Birley consider that name fictitious. The same text claims his parents were named Aurelia Messallina and Ceionius Postumus, and that he was given his cognomen for the whiteness of his skin. Modern historians regard none of those family names as likely to be accurate.

  What remains, then, is the soldier: a man praised in writing by Marcus Aurelius, given command of Britain by Commodus, proclaimed emperor by his troops, and killed by the man he once shared a consulship with. His headless body thrown into the Rhône is the last image the sources provide. The letter Severus sent to Rome with his severed head was, in the words of those who recorded it, insolent.