Talk:Septimius Severus

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troop numbers conflict[edit]

lead - 50,000 (with citations) body - 40,000 (with citations) - needs to be resolved. I suggest the smaller estimates be used as this was oversea and not just a land troop transport.50.111.19.37 (talk) 02:19, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Picture[edit]

Someone just changed the image in the infobox. Can we revert to the old one? Current image has terrible contrast - black foreground vs dark blue background. Julia Domna Ba'al (talk) 18:43, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That appears to have been fixed by USer:T8612. Tarl N. (discuss) 20:22, 30 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's a mistake in the caption for the image of Legio XIV Gemina Martia Victrix in that it refers to the Legion as Legio XIIII, which in Roman numerals I'm pretty sure Fourteen is represented as XIV not XIIII. I would edit the image myself but I'm not sure how to edit captions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.41.63 (talk) 09:22, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If look closely at the image, XIIII is exactly what is on the coin. The practice of "IV" instead of "IIII" was not strictly required at the time. Tarl N. (discuss) 18:45, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. I guess ignore me then — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.41.63 (talk) 09:18, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What is this r?[edit]

emperor Antoninus Pius r. 138–161. His mother's ancesto 2600:6C51:7FF0:350:7049:99D6:16E5:FBA8 (talk) 17:06, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

reigned? 2600:6C51:7FF0:350:7049:99D6:16E5:FBA8 (talk) 17:08, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is the Wikipedia abbreviation for reign. If you open up the article's edit page, you will see this "reign|138|161" Oatley2112 (talk) 21:55, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Racially 'weird'[edit]

From the text: "Due to Severus being born in North Africa, recent years have occasionally seen him mischaracterised as racially African".

There is no African race! It might be more accurate to state persons of the Niger-Congo and Bantu races have sought to infer Severus was black (i.e. visually like them). These races at the time were ensconced in West Africa south of the Sahara and were not in the general purview of the Romans. 2001:8003:70F5:2400:9107:C71E:CFB9:9AAE (talk) 15:09, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, not only is there no "African race", but also there are no races at all – at least in biology; but racial classifications are used legally and to some extent in sociology and history. The text is simply trying to say that Septimius' ancestors (as far as we know them) came from Europe and Western Asia, and he had no deep ancestry anywhere in Africa, even in the north.

And of course, in antiquity, the modern notion of "race" was unknown anyway. At most, Septimius may have considered himself something like "of Phoenician stock" in addition to Roman, but large continent-based ethnic labels were alien to the ancients.

One complication that has never been addressed so far on this talk page is that there is not only black, white and mixed-race as possible alternatives in these classifications, there are also ethnic groups such as Arabs, who are not considered Black nor mixed-race, but neither are they consistently accepted as white in Europe (even if they were traditionally classified as "Caucasoid"), given their origins well outside Europe. (Depending on the agenda of individual writers, Arabs may sometimes be subsumed under "whiteness", much like Egyptians are widely appropriated for it, but everyday practice and the widespread Anti-Arab racism proves their position is at best ambiguous. Let's not forget that most Asians, Oceanians and indigenous Americans are neither black, white nor mixed-race.) Rather, these ethnic groups (also Berbers, by the way) are best classified as brown in this framework. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:39, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]