Mammaea or Mamaea, Julia
Mammaea or Mamaea, Julia, the daughter of Julia Moesa, and niece
of Julia Domna, the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus. She played for a short
time a conspicuous part in Roman history, not without some interesting points of
contact with the Christian church. By her marriage with the Syrian Gessius Marcianus
she became the mother of Alexander Severus, and soon afterwards was a widow. With
her mother and her sister Soaemias, the mother of ELAGABALUS,
she went, at the command of Macrinus after the death of Caracalla, to reside at
Emesa. On the election of her nephew Elagabalus as emperor, she went with him and
her son Alexander, then 13 years old, to Rome, and it speaks well for her prudence
and goodness that she continued to secure the life of her son from the jealous suspicions
of the tyrant and to preserve him from the fathomless impurity which ran riot in
the imperial court. There are sufficient reasons for assigning this watchfulness
to at least the indirect influence of Christian life and teaching. Possibly, as
in the time of Nero, there may have been disciples of the new faith among the slaves
of Caesar's household, whom she learnt to respect and imitate. On the death of Elagabalus,
a.d. 222, and the election of her son by the Praetorian Guard, she attained great
influence. Her leanings to the Christian society were shewn more distinctly when
she was with the emperor at Antioch, and hearing that Origen, already famous as
a preacher, was at Caesarea, invited him to visit them with the honour of a military
escort, welcomed him with all honour, and listened attentively as he unfolded the
excellence of the faith of Christ (Eus. H. E. vi. 21). It does not appear
that she ever made a definite profession of belief, and her religion, though it
won from Eusebius (l.c.) the epithets of θεοσεβεστάτη
and εὐλαβής, and from Jerome (de Script.
Eccles. c. 54) that of religiosa, was probably of the syncretistic type
then prevalent, which shewed itself, in its better form, in Alexander's adoption
of Christian rules of action, and in his placing busts of Christ, Abraham, Orpheus,
and Apollonius of Tyana in his private oratory (Lamprid Vit. Sev. c. 29,
43), and in its worst when Elagabalus wished to build a temple on the Capitol in
which Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Romans were to unite in worshipping the
Deity whose name he had adopted. Both mother and son, in consequence of these tendencies,
came under the lash of Julian, who sneers at the childish unwisdom of the latter
in submitting his own will to Mammaea's and gratifying her greed of gain (de
Caesarr. p. 315), and represents him as weakly bemoaning his disaster. Mammaea
shared her son's fate when the troops rose and murdered him in Gaul, and her last
moments were embittered by her son's reproaches for the pride and avarice which
had wrought their common ruin (Gibbon, cc. vi. and vii. and authorities cited above).
[E.H.P.]