The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine

Patricia Southern

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317496939
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The third century of the Roman Empire is a confused and sparsely documented period, punctuated by wars, victorious conquests and ignominious losses, and a recurring cycle of rebellions that saw several Emperors created and eliminated by the Roman armies. In AD 260 the Empire almost collapsed, and yet by the end of the third century the Roman world was brought back together and survived for another two hundred years. In this new edition of The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine, Patricia Southern examines the anarchic era of the soldier Emperors that preceded the crisis of AD 260, and the reigns of underrated and sometimes maligned Emperors such as Gallienus, Probus and Aurelian, whose determination and hard work reunited and re-established the Empire. Their achievements laid the foundations for the absolutist, sacrosanct rule of Diocletian, honed to ruthless perfection by Constantine, whose reign transformed the pagan Empire into a Christian state.

The successes and failures of the rulers of the Roman world of the third century, and the role of the armies and the civilians, are re-assessed in this revised and expanded edition of The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine, which incorporates the latest thinking of modern scholars and has been extended to cover the reign of Constantine and the foundations he laid on which the Christian empire was built. This is a crucial volume for students of this fascinating period in Roman history, and provides invaluable background for anyone interested in the "fall of Rome", the adoption of Christianity, and the establishment of the Byzantine Empire.

1 The third century

The nature of the problem

The third century opened and closed with the emergence of strong, vigorous Emperors victorious in civil war, each of whom survived long enough to consolidate his power and reorganize the state. Septimius Severus defeated his last rival and embarked on sole rule in 197.¹ Diocletian's turn came nearly a hundred years after Severus, in 284. Both made determined efforts to secure the succession, each in his own way, and not entirely successfully in the longer term. Both developed an autocratic style of government, and both relied upon a fabricated divinity and sacrosanctity of die Imperial household to bolster up their absolutist regimes. Both strengthened die frontiers and built or rebuilt fortifications. Finally, both reorganized die army in accordance witii their own immediate needs and those of the state. Constantine took the work of his predecessors to its conclusion, creating a sacrosanct, absolutist, dynastic regime, but the changes that he crystallized had already begun under Diocletian.

The similarities between the upheavals of the 190s and the 280s, and the parallel responses of the reforming Emperors, are very beguiling, giving rise to die immediate impression that die Diocletianic reformation was inevitable, if not preordained, a century earlier. The superficial resemblance between Severus and Diocletian tends to overshadow the important developments of the century that separated them. The problem is that the considerable contributions made by other Emperors from 211 to 284 suffer from a comparative lack of self-advertisement, except that Aurelian knew how to arrive at and maintain a pre-eminent position by means of a publicity campaign presenting himself as saviour, lord and god, but he did not reign for long enough to achieve a lasting effect. In many cases there was and is a complete dearth of reliable information, either because none existed at the time or what did exist has been lost, and on occasion the extant information has been subjected to deliberate falsification by contemporary or later authors. Even where some information is available it has been manipulated for ease of use, with the result that the emphasis has sometimes shifted or been distorted. The artificiality of modern chronological divisions in Imperial history imbues certain episodes witii more weight than they perhaps deserve. Aurelius Victor pinpointed the assassination of Severus Alexander in 235 as a deeply significant event, before which all was reasonably well and after which things were irretrievably damaged.² Following his lead, 235 is still seen as a turning point, but in reality changes were never so sudden nor so starkly defined; they had longer histories and continuing developments that are somewhat masked by tire acceptance of tire single date used as a dividing line. Christol points out that the date of 235 and the elevation of Maximinus Thrax was chosen by Aurelius Victor and other fourth-century historians as a decisive and significant event because of its shock value, but there was a considerable gap between Maximinus and tire later military anarchy and the rise of the soldier-Emperors, and therefore there was no continuity of anarchic disruption from 235 onwards. It cannot be said that the acclamation of Maximinus was anything more than a historical accident.³ Garnsey and Humfress challenge tire date of 235 as tire ending of the Principate, and note that it was not obvious to contemporaries that the assassination of Severus Alexander was as deeply significant as the fourth century historians and modern authors have seen it.⁴

It is true that the rapid turnover of Emperors after the reign of Severus Alexander compromised the Empire; continuity was shattered, and there was no time for the establishment of consistent or constructive policies. Beating off rivals, plugging gaps, and general emergency fire-fighting occupied much of each successive Emperor's time. There was no time for long-term planning in defence or administration.⁵ These external and internal upheavals can be traced to several causes, all firmly established in the past. Not all of them were self-generated. Events outside the Empire stretched Roman ingenuity and resources to breaking point, with the consequence that the pressures on the population and army engendered dissensions of increasing magnitude. But other dates apart from 235 could be advocated as portents of change. The response of Marcus Aurelius to the Marcomannic wars led to changes in die military command structure and in social mobility; the elevation of the first equestrian Emperor, Macrinus in 217, was a tremendous departure from the normal routine. In the search for significant turning points in Roman history, it is often only the internal events that are utilized, but the Roman Empire did not exist in isolation, and was subject to external influences as well as internal ones. The most important external developments, witii die most far-reaching consequences, were on the one hand, the rise of die vigorous and aggressive Persian Empire after the change of dynasty in die early years of the third century and, on the other hand, the expansion of power bases and the growth of the great tribal federations among the nortiiern tribes beyond the Rhine and Danube. Rome had no control whatsoever over these factors, and could only respond to each attack or perceived threat, without being allowed the luxury of negotiation from a permanent and all-pervading position of superior strength. Gains in one sector were offset by losses in another.

The events of the third century are generally catalogued under the all-embracing heading of crisis, though the hyperbole implicit in this term has been challenged in favour of less emotionally charged descriptions such as 'transformation' or the more simplistic expression 'change'. This viewpoint should not be interpreted as a denial that the third-century crisis existed, along with all the attendant destruction, damage, pain and suffering. On the one hand, crisis does not necessarily embody disaster, and on the other, change is not necessarily a peaceful, anodyne process even if the end results are benign. Indeed, crisis as defined in the dictionary implies a turning point of some kind, as in a patient with a high fever, which reaches a critical point and then subsides, leaving the patient on the road to recovery. Crises are part of the natural process; it could be said that the Roman Empire simply lurched from crisis to crisis as part of its natural evolution. The argument becomes one of semantics rather than a historical discussion. It is the historian's task to decide whether the third-century crisis was more serious, longer in duration, or engendered more changes than any other crisis before or after. Seeking for the correct term with which to categorize the events of the third century, whether crisis, transformation, change, or any other word, is not perhaps the most useful task. Historians usually deal with the Empire as a whole, but it was made up of many disparate peoples and places. It was governed as far as possible as a unified entity, but the effects of the so-called crisis would not be universally felt or experienced simultaneously all over the Empire. To the owners of farms and villas close to the Rhine, in those areas where the attacks of the tribesmen who crossed the frontiers were most devastating, the events would be legitimately interpreted as a crisis in tire lives of the survivors, but in other parts of the Empire the news might be disturbing but not interpreted as catastrophic with regard to daily life. In Egypt or Spain, where government went on as usual, and in Britain where there may have been an economic decline but as yet no serious external attacks, the population would be able to view the events dispassionately, and the term crisis would probably not occur to anyone, even to the military and administrative personnel in unaffected areas. In twenty-first-century daily life, reading the newspapers or watching the news on television could give the impression that the modern world, even if that concept is limited to the territory that once comprised the Roman Empire, is constantly in turmoil somewhere or other, and could lead to the impression that there is a crisis in economics, civil and military defence and internal policing and peace keeping. Two thousand years hence, historians working with only those media items would probably interpret our own era as one of perpetual crisis.⁶

The 260s saw the nadir of the Empire's fortunes, with all the frontiers threatened or overrun, the senior Emperor a prisoner of the Persians, and Gaul and Palmyra breaking away from Rome under independent rulers of different status. Yet the Roman Empire did not collapse and die at that point. It survived because determined Emperors such as Gallienus, Aurelian and Probus threw their energies into reconstituting it. The first of these, the Emperor Gallienus, received a very bad press from the ancient authors, perhaps even from contemporaries, or those who followed immediately after him. He was not only blamed for causing the misfortunes of the Empire but also condemned for failing to pull it all back together. This was far from being the case, since Gallienus did make considerable efforts to prevent the Empire from falling apart any further, but there was noo mmediately obvious success that could be directly attributed to these efforts.⁷ Successive Emperors benefited from his work, without which it is likely that Aurelian and Probus would have faced a much more uphill struggle than they actually did. The achievements of Gallienus are tremendously underrated, largely because of the overwhelmingly hostile sources which are not balanced by any remotely moderate information. Gallienus' modern champions cannot bring hard evidence to bear in his defence, but can put together inferences and nuances to attempt a reconsideration. Some of the changes that eventually transformed the Empire can be detected in their nascent forms in his reign, in the adaptations that he made to the army and the government, which he made out of necessity. Gallienus was forced to improvise because he was denied access to the full resources of the Empire and was threatened on several fronts at once. He adapted what was available, and in doing so he pointed the way to some of the solutions that Diocletian proposed, less than two decades later.⁸ Thus at die beginning, the middle, and the end of the third century, three separate Emperors set in motion political, military and social changes in response to a series of problems, and though their measures were dissimilar when examined in great detail, in broad general outline it could be said that first Gallienus and then Diocletian continued what Severus had begun, leaving Constantine to complete the whole.

This simplistic statement demands qualification. It should not be taken to imply that from 197 onwards the Emperors of Rome moved unerringly in a direct line to their goal of absolutism, each making preconceived adjustments on the way, consciously striving towards what has been termed the new Empire of Diocletian and Constantine, The Empire had a limited repertoire of responses to the dangers it faced, and every adaptation or change was firmly rooted in the customs of the past. Though there was considerable continuity of government thanks to the maturing civil service of the Empire, long-term planning did not feature largely in Roman life, and it was not a luxury that was granted to the government of the third century. In many instances, rapid and decisive reactions were needed, leaving no time for consideration of the possible long-term consequences. Modern historians, with the benefit of hindsight, identify certain turning points where, for better or worse, fundamental changes became irrevocable. The blame for detrimental developments is sometimes attributed to unavoidable circumstances, and sometimes to the overweening ambition of tyrannical Emperors. Economic factors have been advocated as a reason for crisis and decline, along with stagnation of technique, and the inevitable decline of a slave-owning society. Single factors such as these are highly unlikely to have led directly to decline, nor is any one fault likely to have led to changes in every sector of Imperial government and social life, since human existence consists of multiple, inextricably linked and mutually dependent aspects, some of which can shore up deficiencies in other areas. A decline in Roman living standards has been detected in the second or even in the first century, and it has been inferred that the so-called crisis of the mid-third century was an inevitable consequence.⁹ It remains largely a matter of opinion, involving speculation as to whether things could have turned out any other way, if only a different Emperor had ruled or a different response had been made to a given set of circumstances.

Considered individually, the various troubles which afflicted the Empire in the third century were not new, nor did they cease once the century ended. Military disasters, folk migrations, hit-and-run raids across the frontiers, external and internal rebellions, civil wars, bankruptcy, famines and plagues, were recurrent and familiar events in the history of Rome. One has only to utter the names of Crassus, who met defeat at Carrliae, or Varus, who lost three legions in Germany, and Fuscus, who lost troops on the Danube, to recall die fact that Roman armies did not always prevail over their adversaries. Folk migration, peaceful or belligerent, was not a new phenomenon engendered by the events of the third century. The invasions of Italy by the Celtic Cimbri and Teutones at the end of the second century BC were averted only after die energetic Gaius Marius had campaigned for six unrelenting years to prevent the devastation of the whole peninsula and even of Rome itself.¹⁰ If that was not die aim of the Celtic tribes, the Romans can be excused for thinking that it was, and were entitled to defend themselves. In other cases it is possible that the aggressive wars of the Romans precipitated folk movement. In the midst of his Gallic campaigns, Gaius Julius Caesar had to deal with a wholesale migration of the Helvetii, who burned their homes and looked for lands on which to resettle.¹¹

These threats from external sources were encountered wherever Rome extended her influence. Contact with new peoples was not always smooth. Occasionally, perceived threats from neighbouring peoples were used as excuses for aggressive expansion, but the establishment of Roman rule was often prolonged, involving periods of bitter fighting. An enumeration of the names of some of the tribal leaders who rebelled against Rome, such as Jugurdia, Vercingetorix, Civilis, Arminius, Tacfarinas, and Viriathus, serves to illustrate the constant need for vigilance and occasional adaptation on the part of the Roman state. Some of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of maps
• Introduction and acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Map of the Empire at the end of the second century
• 1 The third century: the nature of the problem
• 2 Emperors and usurpers: 180-260
• 3 Schism and reunification: 260-284
• 4 A world geared for war: 284-306
• 5 Constantine: the Empire reshaped, 306-337
• 6 Beyond the northern frontiers
• 7 Beyond the eastern frontiers
• 8 The Empire transformed
• Bibliography
• Index