Crisis of the Third Century
The murder of Severus Alexander by his own troops in 235 began fifty years in which the Roman Empire nearly ceased to exist. Something like twenty-six men were acclaimed emperor in that period and almost all died violently, most within months. The army made and unmade them, and the qualification became the willingness of one's own soldiers rather than any claim of law or descent. Everything went wrong at once. The Sasanian dynasty had replaced the Parthians in Persia in 224 and was far more aggressive: Shapur I took Antioch, and captured the emperor Valerian alive in 260 — a humiliation with no precedent, commemorated on Persian rock reliefs. Goths, Alamanni and Franks crossed the Rhine and Danube repeatedly and reached Athens, Spain and northern Italy. Rome built a wall around itself for the first time in five centuries. The Plague of Cyprian killed enormous numbers from 249. The coinage was debased until the silver content of the antoninianus fell to a few per cent, and prices rose accordingly, which destroyed the fiscal system and pushed taxation towards requisition in kind. The empire split into three. Postumus took Gaul, Britain and Spain as a separate Gallic Empire in 260; Palmyra under Zenobia took Egypt and the east. Aurelian reunited it in five years from 270 and was murdered. Diocletian ended the crisis after 284 by reorganising the whole state — the provinces subdivided, the army enlarged, the succession made collegiate, and prices fixed by edict. The empire that emerged was a different kind of thing.
- Category: Political
