Augustus’ Roman Empire flourished until about 160 AD. After that, there was continuous unrest at the northern and eastern borders; enemies even managed to invade the empire. At the end of the 2nd century AD, there were additional internal problems: the era of the adoptive emperors ended with the succession of the son, not the adopted son, of Marcus Aurelius, Commodus: alas, he proved a failure. The emperor’s megalomania, his violent death, and the ensuing struggle for power brought the 2nd century to an ominous close.
Initially, order was restored through the intervention of Septimius Severus, who had been a legate on the Danube. Septimius Severus, a forceful personality and capable soldier, was born in North Africa and was the first truly provincial emperor. He seemed to be able to turn both the internal and the external tide. His in-laws, however, were power-mad Syrians who were preoccupied by their own interests. His son Caracalla (211-217 AD) was an unstable and murderous man. After Caracalla was assassinated, chaos and anarchy increased, at first under members of the Severan dynasty. After Alexander Severus was murdered in 235 AD, the Thracian commander Maximinus was proclaimed successor by his troops. This brought dynastic rule to an end, and what followed was a long succession of usurpers, the so-called soldier emperors.
Army units advanced one imperial candidate after another; over a period of 50 years there were 25 emperors, not one of whom died in his bed. There was permanent civil war, and society was totally militarized. The economy collapsed because of inflation and impoverishment, partly caused by increasing fiscal pressure. Economic stagnation, or decline, went hand in hand with banditry. The population was ravaged by epidemics. Parts of the empire seceded, notably the so-called Imperium Galliarum (which comprised Gaul, Germania, Britannia, and Spain) and also Palmyra in the East. Goths, Alamanni, and Franks seized the opportunity and crossed the mostly undefended borders. The strong and aggressive Sassanids took over the role of the Parthians. Shortly after the middle of the century, the emperor Decius was killed in a battle against the Goths at Moesia near the mouth of the Danube; somewhat later, the Sassanids conquered Armenia, the Franks invaded Gaul and Spain, the Alamanni and Marcomanni threatened the Danube frontier, the Alamanni managed to reach Italy, the Goths overran Macedonia and the area of the Black Sea, and finally the Sassanids occupied Mesopotamia and Syria.
The empire showed signs of decline; that much is certain. One often speaks of “the crisis of the 3rd century,” but both the exact beginning and the nature of this crisis are debatable. It is also highly uncertain to what extent contemporaries felt they were living through “a crisis.” In any case, there was no question of defeatism; a seemingly unshakable confidence in its own strength and power undoubtedly contributed to the empire’s chances of survival. Nevertheless, the problems were considerable. Feelings of desperation were perhaps reflected in the rise of religious fervor aimed at personal salvation. In this period religions that preach such salvation as one of their main tenets, such as Christianity, blossom. There was also an increasing involvement of the state in the beliefs of its subjects, something we not only find in the Roman Empire, but also with the Sassanids. One example of such state interference is the large-scale persecution of the Christians, which was probably elicited by the rather sudden increase in their numbers. With their exclusivist monotheism, the Christians were the ideal scapegoat for the problems afflicting the empire.
The 50 years following the death of Alexander Severus were not only a low point in the history of the Roman Empire, but also a turning point. That the empire did not fall, but managed to make a strong recovery shows us how resilient it actually was. Recovery, however, was not possible without substantial reforms. These reforms were, in fact, so fundamental that Greco-Roman culture, the product of a millennium-long evolution, was completely rebuilt within a few centuries. For this rebuilding process, the existing
Foundations were used; despite profound change there was undeniable continuity, and many of the reforms had their roots in the developments of the 3rd century AD. But there were also striking discontinuities. A new society was emerging, what we call Late Antiquity, which was in many respects different from what went before and maybe seen as a prelude to the Middle Ages. Some of these discontinuities are highly dramatic, such as the eventual collapse of part of the empire and the ascendancy and victory of a new religion, Christianity.
As the 3rd century AD progressed, forceful figures entered the stage, who, through autocratic rule, managed to restore a modicum of order. These are the so-called Illyrian emperors, military die-hards from the Balkans. This development culminated in the reign of Diocletian, the architect of the aforementioned recovery. The era of recovery is therefore usually said to begin with his accession in 284 AD. The new social order is known as the Dominate; the emperor who had previously been the alleged princeps, was now openly called dominus, the absolute sovereign. The dominus ruled with divine authority and was surrounded by court ceremonial inspired by that of Eastern monarchs. The absolutism of the dominus is only one aspect of the totalitarian character of the new society. This is exactly as negative as it sounds: totalitarianism, even if never fully realized, was the high price that had to be paid for restoration of the internal order and the ability to defend the empire against external enemies. Its totalitarian features also formed the great weakness of the Dominate: in retrospect, for the Western half of the empire, the recovery of the late 3rd century was only a stay of execution. But it was a considerable stay; the West managed to keep its head above water for another century, now with and now without its Eastern counterpart. After that came a wave of “barbaric” invasions from the north that swept all away. The Eastern part of the empire proved more resilient; here, the reforms of the late 3rd and early 4th centuries were the foundation for another millennium of imperial history.
Diocletian’s recipe for the restoration of internal order and the reconstruction of border defenses was: more soldiers, more bureaucracy, and, consequently, more taxes. The latter could only be effected by even more bureaucracy. A new social and state order emerged that, as has been pointed out, built on 3rd-century developments: these were now formalized. The reparatio ascribed to Diocletian, the “second Augustus,” was therefore a relative matter, just as the first Augustus’ restoration had been. Diocletian did not restore, he transformed. All his reforms, later continued by the emperor Constantine, had a military background that, nonetheless, affected the whole of society. Government and succession took a new form: a separate Augustus was appointed for the Western and Eastern halves of the empire. This was soon replaced by the so-called tetrarchy (system of four rulers): next to the two Augusti there were two Caesares, who were the designated successors of the Augusti and, like them, responsible for part of the territory. The provinces were subdivided into smaller units, which were regrouped into 12 so-called dioceses. Border defense was strengthened, and mobile field armies were set up. Increasingly, Germans from across the borders were enlisted: as a matter of fact, the army underwent a process of “barbarization,” which would be of crucial importance for future developments. These reforms were financed thanks to the annona, a system of payments in kind (not to be confused with the wheat provision for the city of Rome of the same name) that had
Developed in the course of the 3rd century AD and was expanded into a regular tax system for the whole empire. In connection with this, attempts were made to completely regulate economic life and fix every individual’s social status not only for the present, but also for future generations. The state that resulted from these measures was totalitarian in concept, but never in practice, for the simple reason that it lacked the necessary practical and logistic means to control everybody and everything.
Diocletian’s arrangements for succession did not work: dynastic forces proved too powerful. After another civil war, Constantine, son of the Caesar, and later Augustus, of the Western half of the empire, became the absolute ruler in 324 AD. Constantine rejected Diocletian’s system of succession, but in other respects continued his policies. He even kept a token tetrarchy: he divided the empire into four prefectures and raised three sons and a nephew to the rank of Caesar. Through his reform of the coinage system and introduction of the golden solidus, he managed to bring about the recovery of the monetary economy that Diocletian had unsuccessfully pursued. As a symbol of the new order, Constantine founded a new capital at the location of the polis Buzantion (Byzantium): Konstantinoupolis (Constantinople), a second Rome. But, unlike Rome, the new capital was Greek, and Christian!
The fact that Constantine, for unknown reasons, converted to Christianity, is of crucial importance for its development from minority religion to dominant religion to state religion. It is possible that Constantine appealed to the Christian god in his struggle for the emperorship, most particularly before the battle of the Milvian Bridge just north of Rome, in 312 AD. Here Constantine beat his rival Maxentius, and he may have ascribed his victory to the interference of the god of the Christians. Despite his conversion, however, he remained tolerant toward heathendom for a long time. In the course of the 3rd century, Christianity had expanded: it has been suggested above that there may be a relationship with the situation of crisis within the empire. In the context of Diocletian’s reforms, persecution of the Christians was taken up again: Christian monotheism could not be reconciled with a new order under divine authority. But the anti-Christian mood was flagging. Constantine’s conversion meant that Christianity was no longer a counterculture: it would become the religion of the rulers and, as a result, undergo profound change.
There was another side to being “the religion of the rulers”: Constantine immediately attempted to subject the church to his authority, even where doctrine was concerned. It is clear that in the Christian empire the emperor remained the dominus. He could no longer be worshipped, but as he was in direct contact with the Christian god, he was definitely on a higher plane than an ordinary mortal. Because of its association with secular power, Christianity expanded even more. In 391-392, Theodosius the Great banned all pagan cults, and in this way Christianity effectively became the state religion. In the years before Theodosius’ measure, a firm line had been taken with internal dissidents in order to establish a uniform orthodoxy. Now it was the turn of the pagans. Over a period of 100 years, the persecuted Christians had turned into persecutors.
After Constantine, the Eastern and Western part of the empire grew ever more apart. He had been unable to arrange succession, and the resulting civil wars affected the West more than the East. Two or three emperors continuously fought each other. Rome no
Longer had the power to stop the advancing Germanic peoples. These had been set adrift as a result of local (lack of food in the Germanic territories) as well as Eurasian (the westward movement of the Huns across the Central Asian steppes) developments. At the beginning of the final quarter of the 4th century, the Huns invaded the territory of the Ostrogoths in southern Russia and caused the Visigoths to flee to the other side of the Danube. Once permitted to remain inside the empire, the Visigoths rebelled: in the battle of Hadrianopolis (378 AD), they won a sweeping victory over Emperor Valens, who was killed with many of his troops. General Theodosius, who was proclaimed emperor and was subsequently known as Theodosius the Great, managed to temporarily pacify the Visigoths. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over a united empire, but only for five months. After his death in 395 AD, the empire was divided between his two sons, and this partition turned out to be definitive. The formal division between East and West became a fact.
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