Aulus Caecina Severus

Aulus Caecina Severus was a Roman senator and general who served under Augustus and Tiberius. He fought in the great Illyrian revolt and later commanded forces under Germanicus in campaigns beyond the Rhine. In AD 15 he extricated his army from a dangerous German ambush at the Long Bridges, although with heavy losses. He was also known for proposing that provincial governors should not take their wives with them, a motion rejected after debate in the senate.

Caecina appears in modern historical fiction about Rome’s attempt to recover from the Varus disaster. Ben Kane’s Eagles of Rome novels use the campaigns of Germanicus and the perilous retreat from the Long Bridges, placing officers such as Caecina within a brutal landscape of supply failure, ambush and divided command. Fiction often emphasises his experience and steadiness while drawing most personal detail from a very small body of ancient evidence.

Ben Kane’s Eagles in the Storm places Aulus Caecina Severus within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making. Ben Kane’s Hunting the Eagles places Aulus Caecina Severus within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making, crime, espionage and covert power, and court politics and dynastic power.