Are they and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr. Caitlin

Davenport, senior lecturer in Roman history at Macquarie University and

Humboldt Research Fellow at Gurthi University in Frankfurt, Germany.

This is episode CXXXVIIII.

Rise of the Sasanian Empire.

Severus Alexander was an emperor who spent much of his reign at war, but he was ill-suited to it and

would likely prefer to be elsewhere.

His main enemy was the Sasanians, an empire that rose out of the ashes of the Parthians,

and would be a leading regional power for the next 400 years.

Here's Kalin Davenport.

All right, so when we're talking about Severus Alexander as an emperor, one thing that comes up a lot in more modern writings, especially,

is his attitude slash interactions with the Christians.

Yes there's a couple of very famous passages in historical gusta's life of Severus

Alexander that deal with the Christians. So in Severus

Alexander chapter 29 the author tells us that he would worship gods in the sanctuary of his lare, that it's the household

gods. In there he kept statues of the deified emperors, but only the best ones, the author tells us, and also Christ, Abraham,

Orpheus and others of the same character and the portraits of his ancestors.

So that's a very interesting passage, but then the author goes on to say in section 43 of the life, he also wished to build a temple

of Christ and give him a place amongst the gods.

A measure which they say was also considered by Hadrian.

Alexander, however, was prevented from carrying out this purpose

...