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Rising threats

Contemporaries who lived through the third century upheavals looked back on the previous age as one of peace and prosperity, but in reality it could be said that Rome had lurched from crisis to crisis ever since its foundation in 753 BC.

There had always been famines and plagues, military disasters, civil wars, attempts to seize supreme power, rebellions within the provinces, raids and invasions from beyond the frontier, and migrating tribes pressing on the edges of the Roman world.

The Romans had dealt with all of these in the past and survived. The trouble was that in the third century many problems surfaced at the same time, some of them on a grander scale than ever before, and they proved more difficult to eradicate.

Two of the most serious threats to the empire in the third century were the developments taking place among the tribes of the northern frontiers beyond the Rhine and Danube, and the growth of a formidable centralising power in the east.

Northern frontiers

Relations with the northern tribesmen had never been stable, nor were they continually hostile. Rome maintained the upper hand by a combination of diplomacy and warfare, promoting the elite groups among the various tribes and supporting them by means of gifts and subsidies. Sometimes food supplies and even military aid were offered.

Various emperors had settled migrating groups of peoples within the empire and had often recruited tribesmen into the Roman army, where they rendered good service.

The very fact of the empire's existence influenced the way in which native society developed on the periphery. When all kinds of dangers threatened the tribes beyond the empire, it probably seemed safer and more lucrative to be on the other side of the Roman frontiers.

The ultimate aim of many of the tribes was not necessarily total conquest, but a wish for lands to farm and for protection. This became more necessary to some peoples in the first decades of the third century.

Climate changes and a rise in sea levels ruined the agriculture of what is now the Low Countries, forcing tribes to relocate simply to find food.

At about the same time, archaeological evidence shows that vigorous, warlike tribesmen moved into the more peaceful lands to the north-west of the empire, precipitating the abandonment of a wide area that was previously settled and agriculturally wealthy.

The northern world outside the Roman Empire was restless. Raids across the frontiers became more severe, especially in the 230s, when Roman forts and some civilian settlements were partially destroyed.

As the power of the tribal federations grew, the Romans began to feel nervous and to think of defensive walls for their unprotected cities.

Eastern frontiers

The east was also restless, but for different reasons.

The Parthian empire, bordering on the eastern edges of the Roman world, had been weakened by civil war, but this changed in the first years of the third century when the Sassanid Persians expelled the Parthian rulers.

By 226 AD, Ardashir, an Iranian prince descended from Sasan (from whom the Sassanids take their name) had established himself as Shahanshah, 'king of kings'.

His declared intention was to restore the ancient Persian empire to its former glory, pushing his borders westwards into Roman-controlled territories.

His son and successor, Shapur, followed these aggressive expansionist policies, which meant trouble for Rome. The search for a stable frontier between these two rival empires had been a continual problem.

(It must be acknowledged that the aggressors were nearly always the Romans, in response to perceived threats.)

The Persians were determined to deal with Rome more firmly, and by the middle of the third century they had defeated the armies of three Roman emperors.

Internal strife

Gallienus is depicted as a serious young man, unaware of the problems to come  ©

Under pressure on two frontiers, the Romans started to squabble among themselves. Civilians distrusted their own armies and the soldiers distrusted some of their commanders - even the emperor to whom they had sworn allegiance. So they proclaimed new emperors.

The army had always been able to make or break emperors, but never in such quick succession as they did now. After the assassination of Severus Alexander in 235 AD, the soldiers in various parts of the empire proclaimed fifty emperors in about the same number of years.

Some of these emperors survived for only a few months, despatched by rival armies or even by the troops who had recently proclaimed them. To be declared emperor once marked the apogee of a man's career. In the third century it was a death sentence.

The year 253 AD seemed to herald an end to the anarchy. Valerian and his son Gallienus were declared joint emperors, sharing power as some emperors had done in the past.

Here, an older Gallienus is frowning, concerned, determined - staring at an uncertain future  ©

It seemed possible to stem the raids from the north and also deal with the eastern question. Valerian departed for the Persian war, while Gallienus turned to the western provinces. But within seven years of their accession it had all gone wrong.

In the fateful year 260 AD, Valerian was captured by Shapur, leaving the eastern provinces unprotected. A Palmyrene nobleman called Odenathus gathered an army and fought off the Persians, temporarily stabilising the east. Gallienus acknowledged him because he was in no position to rescue his father or fight the Persians himself.

At around the same time, the western provinces of Gaul (modern France) and Germany set up their own Gallic Empire (Imperium Galliarum) under their chosen emperor, Postumus.

The empire was in danger of splitting up. Gallienus was deprived of control of two large areas and of the bulk of the armies, but he adapted the resources at his disposal, actively fighting off usurpers and tribesmen, dashing back and forth to meet each new threat.

He received no thanks for his efforts. Time was the one thing that he needed to reunite the empire, but he didn't get it. In 268 AD, Gallienus was assassinated.

Empire restored

Gallienus was succeeded by Claudius II, called Gothicus after he fought off an invasion of the Goths. Claudius was one of the few who escaped assassination, dying of plague in 270 AD.

The next emperor, Aurelian, self-proclaimed 'restorer of the world', brought the divergent parts of the empire back under his control. But the reunification did not halt the constant usurpations and rebellions.

With the accession of Diocletian in 284 AD, the empire enjoyed greater stability for the next two decades, and some of the material and financial damage was repaired, although not entirely successfully.

The province of Britain declared independence under Carausius, and held out for nearly ten years.

Prolonged civil wars broke out after Diocletian's death in 308 AD, brought to an end when Constantine finally emerged supreme in 324 AD.

Roman society was increasingly divided in the third century. Class distinction was accentuated, impoverishment of the middle classes created a reluctance or inability to play any part in local government, which was expensive to the point of annihilation.

Internal law and order broke down. Soldiers bullied and exploited civilians. Foreign peoples invaded Roman provinces, killing and destroying, carrying off people and plunder.

Fear escalated. Provincials passed on their grievances to the emperors, but faced with multiple problems, vast distances and slow communications the emperors could do very little to help.

Endemic insecurity bred its own problems. Any population that feels threatened, but cannot rely on the normal authorities to protect itself, usually ends by taking the law into its own hands.

Different world

The proclamation by the army of so many emperors is one aspect of this insecurity. There may have been power-crazed individuals who simply wanted to be emperor. In many cases the prime motive was not the desire to topple the whole Empire but to organise regional self-help.

Faith in the emperors declined in direct proportion to their inability to protect the provinces, so the soldiers and the provincials turned to other leaders who could provide protection and security.

The tragedy of the third century is that the chosen leader had to usurp imperial powers to assume the necessary authority instead of acting on behalf of a legitimate emperor who had lost all his credibility.

The result was constant disunity, forcing the Romans to spend valuable time and resources fighting each other, instead of working together to devote all their energies to solving the social, religious, financial and military issues that beset the empire in this time of crisis.

The fact that the empire came so close to disintegration, and yet recovered, is a tribute to the various emperors who put an end to the chaos. But in doing so, they created a different world.

The Roman empire entered the third century in a form that would have been recognisable to Augustus and his successors, but it emerged into the fourth century with all its administrative and military institutions changed, bureaucratic, rigid, and constantly geared for war, with its capital no longer at Rome but in Constantinople.

Find out more

Books

The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine by T D Barnes, (Harvard University Press, 1982)

The Age of the Soldier Emperors: Imperial Rome 244-284 by Brauer, (Noyes Press, 1975)

The Emperor and the Roman Army 31 BC to AD 235 by J B Campbell, (Routledge, 1984)

The Gallic Empire: Separation and Continuity in the North-west Provinces of the Roman Empire AD 260-274 by J F Drinkwater, (Stuttgart, 1987)

The Roman West in the Third Century. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports S109 by A King, and M Henig, (eds.) (1981. 2 vols)

Soldier and Civilian in the Later Roman Empire by Ramsay MacMullen, (Harvard University Press, 1963)

The Roman Empire From Severus To Constantine by Pat Southern, (Routledge, 2001)

Restorer of the World: the Roman Emperor Aurelian by John F White, (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2005)

Diocletian and the Roman Recovery by Stephen Williams, (London: Batsford, 1985. Reprinted by Routledge, 1997)

The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples by H Wolfram, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)

About the author

Pat Southern was educated at Altrincham County Grammar School for Girls in Cheshire, and then qualified as a librarian at what was then the Polytechnic at Newcastle upon Tyne, chosen principally because it was at one end of Hadrian's Wall, which was visited religiously by bus or train, every Saturday, in all weathers. Whilst working full time in various libraries, she studied ancient history and archaeology as an external student of the University of London, and later obtained two master's degrees from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where she worked as librarian of the Department of Archaeology from 1983 to 1996. For several years she also worked part time in the vacations for the University of Durham as guide for coach trips to Roman sites in the north east. Her interest in Roman history has always been a driving force, and in later life it found expression in writing books. Pat is the author, with Karen Dixon, of The Roman Cavalry and The Late Roman Army, and the sole author of books on Augustus, Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra and the Emperor Domitian.