Julia Maesa

162 – 224 · Generation XI · Severan

Julia (AD 162 – AD 224). Domna’s sister — twice she raised a teenage grandson to the throne by the army’s hand. The elder daughter of the Emesene priest Julius Bassianus, she married the Syrian consular Julius Avitus and bore two daughters, Soaemias and Mamaea. For some twenty years she lived at the imperial court in Rome, growing very rich, until Macrinus seized power in 217 and sent her home to Emesa with her fortune intact. There she claimed that her grandson, the boy priest Bassianus, was Caracalla’s son, offered her wealth to the soldiers of the nearby Legio III Gallica, who hailed him emperor in 218, and at Antioch leapt from her chariot to rally wavering troops. As Augusta and “mother of the camp and the senate,” she appeared in the Senate beside Elagabalus and persuaded him to adopt his cousin Alexander. After his murder she helped steer the new reign through a council of sixteen until her death in the mid-220s, and was afterwards deified like her sister.

Place in the family

• The archive records 4 of her descendants, across 2 generations.

One of 9 people of Severan (145–235) in this archive. Septimius Severus’s line, held together by the Syrian priestly family of his empress Julia Domna.

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Children

• Julia Mamaea (180 – 235)
• Julia Soaemias (180 – 222)