Chapter 28
After the murder of Severus Alexander in 235, chaos threatened to engulf the Roman Empire. The frontiers were under repeated attack. The office of emperor became a football tossed back and forth among a bewildering number of usurpers. Whole regions broke away under their own emperors. The Empire seemed about to disintegrate completely. Many painful, long-term adjustments had to be made before order could be restored and the Empire preserved for the future.
Reasons for the crisis
Many interrelated factors combined to create this crisis. A number of them had existed for some time and had been the reasons for Septimius Severus’ efforts to make fundamental changes in the imperial system. Others were more recent. The combination was almost lethal.
The failure of the Severan dynasty
One of the major factors was the failure of the Severi to produce another emperor of Septimius Severus’ stature. Under increasing stresses and strains, there was no one person powerful enough to maintain firm control over the whole in the face of regional needs and interests. Therefore, the crisis was intensified by numerous civil wars between regionally backed rivals for the throne.
Internal tensions
Severus had grasped the essential need to eliminate the dominant positions of the senate and of Italy in order to create a stronger, truly united Empire in accordance with geopolitical reality. Unfortunately, the integration that he had promoted had not yet been completed. Many traditionally minded senators and Italians were determined to protect their prestige and privileges. They worked to undermine emperors of equestrian and provincial origin, whom they had had no hand in making. Because they did not have the military power to protect their nominees, all that they succeeded in doing was creating more chaos.
Interregional jealousies were just as bad. The legions and inhabitants of one province or group of provinces often believed that an emperor who came from another part of the Empire was not paying enough attention to their problems. Therefore, they often rebelled and set up an emperor who would look after their needs. For example, the Pannonian legions, to whom the northern frontiers were a special concern, had mutinied against the Syrian Severus Alexander because, in their eyes, he had shown weakness in dealing with the invading Germans.
Defensive system and increased pressure on the frontiers
By the time of the Severi, the Romans had created an elaborate system of defense that went back to the Flavian emperors, was formalized by Hadrian, and was elaborated by his successors. It depended on broad frontier zones that took advantage of natural defenses, such as mountain ranges, deserts, major rivers, and large bodies of water, whenever possible. These zones were anchored in the rear by large concentrations of troops. The troops manned fixed installations, such as walls, palisades, ditches, and large fortified camps or towns close to major supply and communications routes, such as navigable rivers and carefully constructed military highways. The frontier armies also maintained an extensive network of forward forts and observation posts to protect trade and settlers and to monitor the activities of native peoples. The larger forces stationed in the rear could be warned quickly and mobilized against rebellions and raids.
The Romans did not usually conceive of these frontiers as fixed limits to their imperium: the frontiers were fluid and marked the temporary limits of their actual control and administration. As time and circumstances permitted or required, the frontier could be moved forward, as when Antoninus Pius built a new wall beyond Hadrian’s in Britain, when Marcus Aurelius unsuccessfully tried to incorporate large new territories beyond the Danube, or when Septimius Severus successfully pushed forward the frontiers in the East and North Africa.
The problem is that, as the Romans moved farther and farther from the Mediterranean core of the Empire, the harder it was to maintain the system, and the more it came under external pressure that it could not handle. So long as the level of attacks on the frontiers remained relatively low or infrequent, this system could work. Local units could handle small-scale incursions. If a major threat occurred in one sector, units could be called up temporarily from others to mount a major campaign.
The Romans had largely subdued and pacified the nearer, more settled Germanic tribes along the Rhine–Danube frontier. Consequently, the Empire was exposed to heavier and more frequent attacks from larger, more unsettled, and more warlike tribes migrating from northern and eastern Europe. Moreover, the Romans had also helped to bring down the Parthian Empire by expanding eastward. Now, they had to face the more vigorous belligerence of the new Sassanid Persian dynasty that took over from the Parthian Arsacids. Throughout much of the period, in effect, Roman emperors confronted every military strategist’s nightmare, major simultaneous wars on two fronts.
Meeting an emergency on one front by summoning troops from another merely invited a dangerous attack on the second. Knowing that, men were reluctant to leave the fronts entrusted to their care and fight on another. Also, many had become closely attached to their sectors of the frontier since Septimius Severus had permitted Roman soldiers to contract permanent marriages and allowed non-Roman auxiliaries to take up farming near their posts. Therefore, they often raised up their local commanders as emperors in the hope of securing greater imperial concern for their region.
Shortage of manpower and money
In many ways, the Roman Empire was trapped. The only way in which the defensive system could have been made to work in the face of mounting pressure on all fronts would have been to increase dramatically the size of the army. In particular, the army needed more well trained, well paid, and well equipped legionary troops. The crucial point is that under the conditions then prevailing, the Roman Empire could produce neither enough men nor enough wealth to support such an increase. The productive capacity of ancient agriculture and industry was low, and the transportation and communications systems were cumbersome (pp. 505–6). Medical knowledge and effective therapies were very limited. In the best of times, therefore, poor nutrition and disease kept the natural increase of the population low. By the middle of the third century c.e., another great plague was raging (p. 533). It was difficult to find large numbers of additional soldiers within the Empire unless they were removed from the productive sector of the economy. Removing them made it more difficult to generate the taxes to equip and pay them. It was possible to recruit auxiliary troops from neighboring peoples. Yet, they were not so well trained or equipped as Roman legionaries, and more money still had to be found to pay them, even at lower rates.
As Augustus had long ago realized in better times, the Empire could not easily raise and support even twenty-eight legions. Both he and Tiberius had left the number at about twenty-five after the loss of Varus’ three legions in 9 c.e. (p. 367). The number of permanent legions had not reached thirty until Marcus Aurelius. Septimius Severus had raised it to thirty-three. That number is 32 percent larger than under Tiberius. By allowing Roman soldiers to marry and auxiliaries to settle as farmers, Septimius may have attracted more men to serve, promoted the birth of future Roman soldiers, and eased the burden of supplying frontier forces. Still, when he and then Caracalla made service more attractive and sought the loyalty of the troops by significantly raising their rate of pay, they greatly increased the burden to the treasury beyond the cost of three additional legions. The treasury could not support these increases, particularly on top of Septimius’ numerous expensive civilian and military building projects. Neither the money raised from confiscating the estates of wealthy senators nor the booty captured in the Second Parthian War sufficed. Afterward, Rome’s wars were seldom profitable. In fact, without the troops to defeat attackers, emperors often bought them off with subsidies, which left the Empire even less to spend on active defense. Raising taxes was unpopular with everyone and made it more difficult for small producers to survive.
The fiscal problems were made even worse by a declining supply of precious metals from the Empire’s mines. By 170, the Romans did not have sufficient technology to exploit fully the remaining ores in many of its mines. Therefore, Septimius, Caracalla, and most of their successors during the third century resorted to further and further debasement of the coinage. That eventually ignited a truly disastrous inflationary spiral that nearly ruined everyone.
The emperors of troubled times
Through fifty years of crisis, emperors rose and fell with such frequency that any account seems little more than a blur of names, battles, and dates. Bewilderment is compounded by the scanty, biased, and frequently fictitious ancient accounts. Nevertheless, recent research has shown that many of the emperors were neither the fools nor the tyrants that biased ancient authors depict. Many of them valiantly tried to stem the chaos, but their reigns demonstrate how the problems just outlined were making it impossible for them to do so and destroyed them in the process. It is a wonder that the Empire survived at all.
The nightmare begins, 235 to 253 c.e.
Having led the mutiny against Severus Alexander in 235, Maximinus Thrax (the Thracian) became emperor. During his brief reign (235–238), he was very successful against the Germanic tribes across the Danube. He seemed on the verge of completing Marcus Aurelius’ grand scheme of conquest. He was popular with his soldiers because he doubled their pay when they made him emperor, and he led them to victory. Unfortunately, the leaders of the senate scorned him because he had come up through the ranks as an ordinary soldier. Their view is reflected in the sources that depict him as an ignorant peasant.
Maximinus’ civilian support was weakened when he significantly debased the coinage and vigorously enforced the collection of taxes to finance his military pay raises and campaigns against the Germans. His tax collectors particularly offended the wealthy North African landowners who had become powerful in the senate since the time of Septimius Severus. They raised up a revolt in 238 and proclaimed the rich but elderly M. Antonius Gordianus as the Emperor Gordian I. His son of the same name became the joint ruler Gordian II. The result was a disastrous civil war that aborted Maximinus’ successful operations on the Danubian frontier and left both Gordians dead in that same year.
The senate appointed two of its members, M. Pupienus Maximus and D. Calvinus Balbinus, in place of the Gordians. The Praetorian Guard pressured the senate to make Gordian III, the thirteen-year-old nephew of Gordian II, emperor designate with the title of Caesar. Maximinus’ failure to take the strategic city of Aquileia led to his death at the hands of his soldiers. They accepted the senatorial appointees.
Senatorial attempts to restore a sound currency did not leave enough money for sufficient donatives to the praetorian guardsmen, who promptly killed Pupienus and Balbinus after fewer than sixty days. Gordian III now became the reigning emperor (238–244) with the powerful support of his father-in-law, the praetorian prefect C. Furius Timistheus.
Another debasement of the coinage provided cash. Timistheus ably organized a massive campaign in 242 to stabilize the frontier on the lower Danube and check the advance of the Sassanid Persians under the mighty Shapur (Sapor) I in the East. Between 243 and 244, Timistheus and Gordian III broke the Persian siege of Antioch, recovered the province of Mesopotamia, and marched deep into Persian territory. They were on the point of taking the Persian capital of Ctesiphon when Timistheus died. Then Gordian himself died, apparently after falling from his horse in battle. Another tradition, however, says that the new praetorian prefect, Philip, an Arab sheik from what is now Jordan, took advantage of a threatened food shortage and engineered a mutiny, which resulted in the death of Gordian.
The army acclaimed Philip, often called Philip the Arab, as the new emperor (244–249). He was able to reach a settlement with Shapur. The Persians recognized Roman control over the provinces of Lesser Armenia and Mesopotamia and may have freed recently captured Romans. The cost to Rome, however, was high—10,000 pounds of gold that the Empire could ill afford and weakened the monetary system further. At least it bought Philip time to return to the Danube. There he had enough military success to permit him to go to Rome in 247.
Philip courted the goodwill of the senate and conscientiously attended to governing. At the same time, he prepared a magnificent—and costly—celebration of Rome’s one-thousandth anniversary. He hoped to enhance his own stature in the eyes of all. Sadly, events were beyond his control. While he was celebrating in Rome, an invasion of the Goths and Carpi caused the Danubian legions to acclaim their general as emperor in Philip’s place. That move prompted the rise of two other pretenders in the East. When Philip sent the senator C. Messius Quintus Decius to restore order on the Danube, the latter’s success merely prompted the soldiers there to make him emperor. Another civil war resulted. In 249, Philip was defeated and slain near Verona in a battle that wasted scarce manpower and left Decius the dubious prize of being emperor (249–251).
Pagan Latin writers generally favor Decius because he was a respected consular senator. Christian writers, not surprisingly, condemn him for instituting Rome’s first empire-wide, systematic persecution of Christians. In his view, Christians belonged to a subversive organization that refused to recognize the state religion and obstructed the defense of the Empire by preaching peace. Ironically, in 251, while he was preoccupied with these concerns, the Goths poured across the Danube. Decius hurried from Rome and fell into a trap on boggy ground at Abrittus, near Adamclisi in the Dobrudja (a region south of the Danube, along the Black Sea). The Romans lost both Decius and thousands of men in one of the biggest military disasters in their history.
Decius’ ineffectual and, perhaps purposefully, unhelpful subordinate commander C. Vibius Trebonianus Gallus received the acclamation of the remaining troops. At the start of his brief reign (251–253), Gallus made a disadvantageous treaty with the Goths. They returned home with all of their plunder, their high-ranking Roman prisoners, and the guarantee of an annual tribute that further drained the imperial coffers. Again, troubles on the Danube inspired Persian aggression in Syria. An outbreak of plague made it difficult for Gallus to respond. When he did, the Danubian troops rebelled and raised up their commander, Aemilius Aemilianus, in 253. Gallus was killed by his own men. The soldiers in Raetia soon declared for an old and respected senator named P. Licinius Valerianus (Valerian). As he marched to seize Italy, Aemilianus was murdered. The senate gladly accepted Valerian and his son, P. Licinius Egnatius Gallienus, as co-emperors.
The Age of Gallienus, 253 to 268 c.e.
The period encompassed by the reigns of Valerian (253–260) and Gallienus (253–268) is often called the Age of Gallienus. It witnessed the culmination of the destructive trends originating in the past and laid the groundwork for future recovery. It began in catastrophe. New invaders were breaking through the shattered and weakly defended frontiers along the Rhine and the Danube. In the Near East, the Persians had invaded the provinces of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Cappadocia. Scarcely a province escaped the havoc wrought by invasion: the widespread destruction of property, the sacking and burning of cities, and the massacre and enslavement of citizens.
Pirates infested the seas as in the days before Pompey; bands of robbers and thieves raided the countryside; earthquakes rocked both Italy and Asia Minor. At the height of the devastating invasions, a plague broke out in Egypt. It infected the entire Empire for more than fifteen years. The death toll was staggering. Two-thirds of the population of Alexandria perished. During the worst of the epidemic, as many as 5000 a day died in Rome alone. The high death toll created a shortage of rural and urban labor. Production fell sharply. Worse still, the plague severely depleted the ranks of the army. The impact of all these blows, occurring simultaneously or in rapid succession, aggravated the problems that broke the resistance and shattered the unity of the Empire.
The breakdown of imperial defense increased the localist spirit of the troops on the frontiers. This localist spirit, together with the constant desire for more pay as the shortage of goods and declining value of coins drove up prices, increased the number of locally supported usurpers. During the reign of Gallienus alone, eighteen usurpers made vain attempts to seize the throne.
Developments in the East
In 253, the Persian Shapur (Sapor) I invaded Mesopotamia and Syria while the Goths were plundering the coasts of Asia Minor. In 256, Valerian himself led an expeditionary force to the East. He accomplished little except to take out his frustrations by persecuting some Christians. Finally, out of desperation and in the midst of a plague in 260, he sent his disease-weakened legions against the main Persian army at Edessa. He fell into the hands of Shapur and died a pathetic captive. His humiliation is still commemorated on a huge rock-carved relief that Shapur commissioned.
The remnants of Valerian’s army managed to counterattack when Shapur invaded Asia Minor. They actually captured his baggage train and harem and forced him to withdraw toward the Euphrates. There he was badly mauled by Odenathus, the Roman client sheik of the rich and powerful caravan city of Palmyra. That disastrous encounter left Shapur politically and militarily crippled for a long time.
Palmyra
Palmyra was an oasis in the Syrian Desert. It lay astride the main caravan routes from the Mediterranean to central Asia and to the Persian Gulf. Piled high in its marketplace were such goods from China, India, Persia, and Arabia as textiles, spices, perfumes, jewelry, and precious stones. By the second century, it had become one of the major cities of the Near East. It boasted fine wide streets and highways, shady porticoes, stately arches, and magnificent public buildings.
Since the time of Trajan, Palmyra had been an important recruiting ground for the Roman army. The famous Palmyrene cohorts of mounted archers and armored cavalry had rendered invaluable service all over the Empire. Later on, the Severi, who gave Palmyra the rank of titular colony and admitted some of its leading citizens into the senate, allowed these units, though officially part of the Roman army, to serve as a semi-independent Palmyrene army in Syria and along the Parthian (Persian) frontier. That was the army with which Odenathus humbled Shapur on the western banks of the Euphrates.
The services that Odenathus had performed for Rome on his own initiative were not lost on Gallienus, now sole emperor. He showed his gratitude by rewarding Odenathus with flattering high-sounding titles and by making him commander of all the Roman forces in the Near East. Odenathus returned the favors. First, he helped to destroy a pair of pretenders who had tried to take advantage of the crisis in the East while Gallienus was occupied in the West. He then invaded Persia in 266. After besieging Ctesiphon, he turned back to face the Goths. They had invaded Asia Minor by land and sea, had laid waste the rich cities of Chalcedon and Nicomedia, and had destroyed the great temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus. Odenathus failed to overtake them, however. They had already sailed away on the Black Sea with their loot and captives. Shortly after that, an unknown assassin stabbed him to death. His capable widow, Zenobia, assumed power in Palmyra and held it until the reign of Aurelian (p. 538).
Losses in the West
Meanwhile, Gallienus, constantly at war since 254, had been busy clearing the Alemanni and the Franks out of Gaul and the Rhineland. He beat back their attempts to cross the Rhine and strengthened Roman fortifications. Farther south, the Marcomanni and the Alemanni had been hammering away at the Danubian defenses. They had broken through and pushed down into Italy. The Marcomanni had penetrated as far as Ravenna in 254; the Alemanni had reached Mediolanum (Milan) four years later. Gallienus first halted the Marcomanni by concluding an alliance with them and granting them land south of the Danube in Upper Pannonia. Then, in 258 and 259, he crushed the Alemanni near Milan. During the next year, he had to suppress two dangerous rebellions in Pannonia. Legions there, irked by his continued absence on the Rhine, had thrown their support first to one pretender, then to another.
The situation in the Rhineland rapidly deteriorated during his brief absence. The Alemanni crossed the upper Rhine and invaded the Rhône valley and the Auvergne. The Franks surged over the lower Rhine and overran Gaul, Spain, and even Mauretania (Morocco). The Saxons and the Jutes, who dwelt along the coasts of Germany and Denmark, began roving the seas and raiding the shorelands of Britain and Gaul. That was not all. In 259, the legions on the Rhine, in fear and desperation, mutinied. They renounced their allegiance to their absent emperor in favor of Postumus, the general whom Gallienus had left in command of the Rhineland. The armies of Spain and Britain later followed suit.
Hampered by the German and Gothic invasions of the Danubian provinces as well as by the rebellions of other pretenders to the throne, Gallienus could do no more than compel Postumus to confine himself to the western provinces. Left alone, Postumus drove the Franks and the Alemanni out of Gaul, energetically defended the frontiers, issued his own coinage, and established an efficient administration. Gallienus himself could not have done better.
The last battles of Gallienus, 268 c.e.
The Goths were encouraged by their success in Asia Minor during 266. Joined by the Heruli in 267, they began the largest invasion of the third century. A great armada of ships put to sea. A massive land army invaded the Balkans and the Aegean area, ravaged Greece, and sacked the cities of Sparta, Argos, and Athens. The Athenian rhetorician and statesman Dexippus counterattacked with a hastily recruited local army. In 268, the invaders passed north through Epirus and Macedonia and finally arrived in Moesia. There, Gallienus intercepted them and destroyed thousands of them in the bloodiest battle of the third century. This victory might have been the end of the Gothic peril had not Gallienus been compelled to break off pursuit. He had to hasten back to Italy to suppress the rebellion of Aureolus, the cavalry general to whom he had entrusted the defense of Italy against Postumus. Gallienus defeated Aureolus in battle near Mediolanum (Milan), only to be assassinated by his own staff officers. They all were Illyrians who may have felt that Gallienus had not devoted enough energy to the defense of the Danubian lands.
The reforms of Gallienus
Before his death, Gallienus had laid the foundation of future recovery and prepared the way for the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine. His purpose was to strengthen the central government by restoring discipline in the armies. That helped to prevent the rise of usurpers and made it easier to defend the Empire against increased attacks on the frontiers.
Administrative
The most significant of Gallienus’ reforms was to regularize the exclusion of senators from direct command of legions. He replaced them with equestrian prefects, many of whom were now coming up from the ranks. One purpose of this reform may have been to prevent rebellions and attempts by ambitious senatorial commanders to usurp power. It also aimed at the restoration of military discipline and efficiency by providing an adequate supply of professional officers willing to endure the hardships of army life on the frontiers and capable of enforcing strict military discipline. The reform not only completed the process of professionalizing the army but also dealt a heavy blow to the prestige of the senate.
Equestrians also gradually replaced senatorial governors in most of the imperial and occasionally even in the senatorial provinces. Therefore, civil and military powers at the provincial level generally remained linked. In the most devastated provinces, Gallienus even combined fiscal responsibilities with civil and military powers in the hands of experienced equestrian officers. With those combined responsibilities, they could deal effectively with crises.
Military
While he promoted from the ranks to provide experienced senior officers, Gallienus also made some major tactical and strategic changes. They were not part of any grand, preconceived system but were practical responses to sometimes temporary situations and were not always permanent. A major and permanent tactical change, however, was to place greater emphasis on cavalry units to increase the mobility of the Roman army and meet the challenges posed by the notoriously effective Persian and Alemannic horsemen.
The new cavalry corps consisted of Moorish bareback-riding javelin men; Dalmatian horsemen; Osrhoenian and Palmyrene mounted archers; and cataphracts (cataphractarii), heavily armored (both horse and rider) cavalry of the Persian type. Gallienus regarded this cavalry corps so highly that in 263 he placed it on a par with the Praetorian Guard. Its commander, the magister equitum, soon rivaled and later eclipsed the praetorian prefect. Though only of equestrian rank, he became the most powerful man in the Empire next to the emperor. Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, and Probus were later to use this command as the springboard to the emperor’s throne.
Temporarily, Gallienus strategically abandoned the eastern and western extremities of the Empire to regional dynasts. He concentrated mostly on saving the Empire’s central core: Egypt, western Asia Minor, Greece, the Balkans, Italy, and North Africa. Although he distrusted Postumus and never recognized his authority as legitimate, Gallienus left him in de facto control of the westernmost provinces and responsible for defending the Rhine. Gallienus maintained nominal suzerainty over Odenathus and Zenobia in Syria and Mesopotamia but left them on their own to deal with Persia. His immediate need was to defend the Alpine and Danubian frontiers. He maintained and strengthened fortifications and infantry units as a first line of defense in the frontier zones themselves. Behind the frontiers, he also fortified numerous cities capable of resisting and absorbing attackers who broke through the first line of defense.
Finally, in response to various large incursions, Gallienus stationed large cavalry detachments (vexillationes) at strategically located major cities in the rear. From these secure, well-supplied positions, they could move swiftly in any direction to meet emergencies in their sectors. Such bases were located at Mediolanum (Milan), Verona, and Aquileia to protect Italy and defend the Alpine frontier; at Poetovio in Noricum and Aquincum (Budapest) and Sirmium in Lower Pannonia to protect the middle Danube; at Lychnidus in Macedonia and Byzantium in Thrace to protect the Balkans, Greece, and the Aegean (map, pp. 378–9). Once the core of the Empire had been secured and the frontiers stabilized, the vexillationes would be shifted elsewhere.
The constant need for an emperor to be in personal charge of imperial defenses from bases like Mediolanum reduced the political importance of the city of Rome and the senate. Emperors had to establish mints, arms factories, and their own residences in major military centers. Where the emperor was, there Rome was also. In the fourth century, Mediolanum in the West and Byzantium in the East would displace Rome as principal imperial residences.
An assessment of Gallienus
Of all his imperial predecessors, Gallienus seems to have resembled Hadrian most closely. He had the same keen intellect, indefatigable energy, and crucial capacity for swift decision. Gallienus shared Hadrian’s love of poetry and the arts, as well as his admiration for Greek culture, literature, and philosophy. He also shrewdly abandoned his father’s distracting persecution of Christians. He established a policy of toleration that lasted for forty years, a period known as the Little Peace of the Church.
Initial recovery under Illyrian soldier emperors, 268 to 275 c.e.
Gallienus was shamefully assassinated by the Illyrian officers whose careers he had previously promoted. Nevertheless, they vigorously carried on his work of rescuing the Roman Empire. The first, Claudius II (268–270), earned his cognomen, Gothicus, by thoroughly crushing the Goths before he died of the plague. He was briefly succeeded by his brother, but L. Domitius Aurelianus, Aurelian, soon seized power (270–275). Aurelian had been Claudius Gothicus’ magister equitum and was known as Manus ad Ferrum (Hand on Steel) for his harsh discipline. He earned another title, Restitutor Orbis (Restorer of the World), by regaining most of the ground that Rome had lost in the previous decade. He twice had to drive invaders out of Italy and was in danger of losing Rome before he was able to drive them back to Germany and secure the northern frontier.
Aurelian’s reforms
Aurelian returned to Rome to suppress a serious revolt of mint officials who were aggrieved at the emperor’s efforts to check their profiteering from debased coins. He immediately closed the mint for a time as a preliminary step toward his projected reform of the coinage. In order to protect Rome from future assault and capture by invaders, he began the construction of a brick wall around the city in 271. The wall was twelve miles long, twenty feet high, and twelve feet thick. It had eighteen gates protected by round towers and had square towers projecting out every one hundred feet. Convinced of the impossibility of permanently holding Dacia, with its irreparably broken defenses, Aurelian withdrew all the garrisons and most of the civilians from the province. The withdrawal not only shortened the frontier defense line of the Empire but also released troops for service elsewhere. The evacuated civilians were resettled in the ravaged and depopulated provinces of Pannonia, Moesia, and Thrace, and Dacia was abandoned to the Goths.
Zenobia and the reconquest of the East, 272 to 273 c.e.
With Italy and the Danubian provinces temporarily safe from attack, Aurelian was free to attempt the reconquest of the East. The enemy whom he had to conquer was not the Persian king, but Zenobia, the energetic and capable queen of Palmyra. She not only maintained a court of pomp and splendor, but also gathered about her scholars, poets, and artists. Her chief advisor was Cassius Longinus (213? to 273), a celebrated Athenian rhetorician, polymath, and philosophical writer.
Zenobia took advantage of Claudius Gothicus’ death, plus Aurelian’s usurpation and subsequent preoccupation in Italy and on the Danube. She extended Palmyra’s dominion to include Egypt and Asia Minor as far north as Bithynia. She had even concluded an alliance with the Persians but received little help from them. Sometime in the second half of 271, Zenobia and her son assumed, respectively, the titles Augusta and Augustus and claimed the imperial purple.
Aurelian sent his magister equitum, M. Aurelius Probus, to Egypt and immediately advanced through Asia Minor himself (map, p. 379). He overcame Palmyrene forces at Tyana and Antioch on the Orontes and proceeded to Emesa. There, the Romans won a resounding victory and then set out to besiege Palmyra. Well prepared for a siege, Palmyra stubbornly resisted. It finally capitulated when the queen attempted to flee to Persia for help. Brought before Aurelian, the captured Zenobia saved her life by accusing Longinus and her other advisors and friends of inspiring her aggressions. Longinus had to die. What happened to Zenobia’s son is unknown, but Aurelian was very lenient with the people and city of Palmyra. He stationed a small garrison there and at once set out for Europe.
He had gone so far as the Danube when word came in early 273 that Palmyra had risen in rebellion and massacred the garrison. Aurelian’s return was swift, his vengeance terrible. Not even women or children escaped his wrath. He had Palmyra’s treasures carted away, tore down the walls, and reduced the once proud and powerful city to a small desert town. Soon after, he suppressed a rebellion in Alexandria with similar ruthlessness.
The reconquest of Gaul, 273 to 274 c.e.
Aurelian then set out to reconquer Gaul. After the murder of Postumus in 268, the Gallic succession passed first to Victorinus and then to Tetricus, a harmless old senator who could neither keep out the German invaders nor maintain authority over his own army officers. His opposition to Aurelian was halfhearted and ineffectual. In 274, when his subordinates finally compelled him to fight, he deserted his troops and surrendered to Aurelian.
Aurelian’s triumph and the fate of Zenobia
Now Aurelian was able to return to Rome and celebrate a magnificent triumph as Restorer of the World (Restitutor Orbis). Tetricus and, according to most accounts, Zenobia were paraded in Aurelian’s triumphal procession. Afterward, Aurelian, with unusual leniency, appointed Tetricus chief inspector of Lucania (corrector Lucaniae) in southern Italy. Stories of Zenobia’s fate vary. She may have died or been executed shortly after Aurelian’s triumph. In another version, Aurelian presented Zenobia with a villa at Tibur (Tivoli), where she ended her days as the wife of a Roman senator.
Economic reforms
In 274, Aurelian grappled with another gigantic task: the restoration of internal stability. The most pressing problem was the regulation of the coinage. It had depreciated so much since 267 that people had to use denarii and antoniniani (double denarii) by the sackful (3125 antoniniani to the sack). Aurelian reduced the official valuation of the antoninianus from eight sesterces (two denarii) to one sesterce in order to bring it in line with the eightfold rise in the price level after 267. Whether that change actually halted inflation is debatable. He increased the number of provincial mints and permanently abolished the senatorial mint at Rome. Thus, he reduced Rome’s municipal autonomy and the prerogatives of the senate.
To relieve the distress that had resulted in Rome from the rise of food prices, Aurelian placed the bread-making industry under the direct control of the state, which sold wheat for milling to the bakers’ guild (collegium) and fixed the price of bread. He suspended the monthly grain dole and arranged instead for the daily distribution of two pounds of bread to all eligible citizens. For the same citizens, he instituted regular distributions of pork, oil, salt, and, possibly, wine. Following the example of Alexander Severus, Aurelian placed all guilds (collegia) engaged in the transport and processing of food and other necessities under state control. They thereby became agencies of the government.
The nightmare resumes, 275 to 285 c.e.
A corrupt secretary trying to save himself from punishment spread a false rumor that Aurelian had marked a number of officers for execution. It prompted them to assassinate the emperor. When they learned the truth, they let the senate nominate its own leader, M. Claudius Tacitus (275–276), as the next emperor. New invasions already threatened the Empire. Tacitus, then in his mid-seventies, even won some victories against the Goths and Alans who had invaded Asia Minor. His six-month reign marked only a fleeting resurgence of senatorial power before he was assassinated by his own soldiers.
A confrontation ensued between the praetorian prefect, Florianus, and the magister equitum, M. Aurelius Probus. It ended with Florianus being murdered by his own men and Probus becoming emperor (276–282). Initially, Probus tried to clear invaders out of the provinces. He also attempted to turn those whom he defeated into manpower for Rome. Although he killed tens of thousands of Franks and Alemanni, who had overrun Gaul, he recruited 16,000 of them as Roman soldiers. That practice would become more and more common in the future. To lessen the impact of the new soldiers as a group, Probus assigned them in small units to various provinces. In 278, he settled 100,000 Scythians and Germanic Bastarnae on abandoned land in Thrace after the Goths had driven them from southern Russia. In 279, he subdued the troublesome Isaurian tribesmen of southern Asia Minor and established colonies of veterans there to keep the peace and breed young recruits for the Roman legions. The Isaurians became one of the best sources of Roman soldiers for the next two centuries.
During these same two years, Probus also cleared Raetia and Pannonia of invading German tribes. His generals liberated Egypt from a Sudanese tribe known as the Blemmyes. In 280, his departure for an attack on Persia sparked a rebellion in Gaul that demanded his attention. When he tried to resume the expedition against Persia in 282, he fell victim to yet another mutiny.
The sources say that the soldiers turned on Probus because he worked them too hard on land reclamation and public works projects. A more compelling reason may well have been the troops’ reluctance to be drawn away from their posts for another war in a far-off land that had been the graveyard of many a Roman general and army. In Raetia, the troops were already putting up the praetorian prefect Marcus Aurelius Carus as emperor, and Probus’ troops declared for him.
Carus and his sons, Carinus and Numerian (282 to 285 c.e.)
Carus was another Illyrian. He, too, was a professional soldier and a fairly competent general. He did not even bother to seek senatorial confirmation of his position as emperor. Upon his accession, he conferred the rank of Caesar on his two sons, Carinus and Numerian (Numerianus). Later in 282, leaving Carinus to defend Italy and Gaul, Carus set out for the East with Numerian. Early in 283, he defeated the Quadi and the Sarmatians, who had come over the Danube. Then, he marched against the Persians. He crossed the Euphrates, took Seleucia, and then crossed the Tigris to capture Ctesiphon (map, p. 387). This series of successes came to an abrupt halt in 284 with his mysterious death, attributed by the ancient sources to a bolt of lightning. It is far more likely that Carus fell victim to foul play at the hands of Arrius Aper, the praetorian prefect and father-in-law of Numerian. Later, Aper secretly arranged Numerian’s assassination, probably because the troops were reluctant to continue farther into Persia.
The army in the East acclaimed Diocles, commander of the emperor’s bodyguard at the time, as Numerian’s successor. The first act of the new emperor (who is better known as Diocletian [Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, 284–305]) was to run Aper through with his sword. Carinus, who had acquired the rank of Augustus in the West, refused to acknowledge Diocletian as his colleague and marched east in 285. The two foes clashed in Moesia in the valley of the Margus (Morava). In the fierce battle that ensued, the superior army of Carinus had almost achieved victory. Then, Carinus himself received a dagger’s thrust through the heart by a military tribune whose wife Carinus had seduced. His victorious but leaderless soldiers accepted Diocletian as their emperor. Diocletian, however, dated his reign from his initial acclamation in 284. He would finally bring an end to the political nightmare of the third century and would do much to set the future course of Roman history.
Suggested reading
Hekster , O. Rome and Its Empire, AD 193–284. Debates and Documents in Ancient History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
Potter , D. S. The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395. 2nd ed. Routledge History of the Ancient World. London and New York: Routledge, 2014.