history

Lecture 10: The Later Roman Empire (180-476 C.E.)

Lecture 10: The Later Roman Empire – Chaos, Stability, Division, and the Decline and Fall of the Western Empire (180-476 C.E.)

Just to remind you, the Roman Empire can be divided many ways as befits a society that existed and ruled its world for over five centuries. For purposes of this class, we will divide the Empire into six periods: (1) The Principate of Augustus (31 B.C.E. – 14 C.E.), (2) The Era of the Cæsars (14-96 C.E.), and (3) the Five Good Emperors (96-180 C.E.), all of which combined to make up the Pax Romana and were the subject of the last lecture; and (4) The Dominate (180-284 C.E.); (5) The era of Diocletian and Constantine (284-337 C.E.); and (6) the Decline and Fall of the Empire (337-476 C.E.) which are combined to make up the subject of this lecture. 

 

A. The Dominate: the Severan Dynasty and Crisis of the 3rd Century (180-284 C.E.)

Not only did Commodus rule with incompetence, alienating all classes of Roman society, he also allowed provincial generals to pay their own troops to relieve pressures on the Roman treasury. As it did in the time of Marius and Sulla 300 years previously, this created war lords in the provinces with private armies. He was far too young and far too enamored with the good life and parties, and had no sense of responsibility to function as a good Emperor or administrator. In the third year of his reign, a conspiracy against him, led by his sister, was discovered and thwarted.  After this, Commodus reacted by ruling like a despot, selling offices to his friends and simply trying to pay off both the army and his enemies. He also resurrects the long dead Delatores and treason trials – which had not been a feature of Roman life in almost a century. Eventually, with the people of Rome opposed to his policies and the army and the Senate alienated, Commodus was assassinated by one of his Praetorian Prefects and a professional athlete (who likely did not look like Russell Crowe!), working with the knowledge of many of the powerful Senators, the night before New Year’s Day celebrations on Dec 31st, 192 C.E. This assassination brought on a new round of civil wars and ended the Principate – the men who would come after Commodus would be very different than the men who had followed Augustus and the Rome they would rule would be very different as well.

The general that won the civil wars that followed the assassination of Commodus was Septimius Severus, a general originally from North Africa and likely of Berber or even Punic descent. Unlike the Spaniards Trajan and Hadrian who had been educated at Rome, had been Senators, and had at least a few generations of family who had been within Roman culture and society, the first time Septimius Severus set foot in Rome was on the day he entered as its conqueror. This was one of the two reasons most often cited by contemporary historians and commentators for Septimius’ and his heirs’ actions and philosophies as Emperor; the other was their tendency to marry “Syrian” women – princesses from Eastern cultures where the tradition was of god-kings and absolute rulers, not emperors who disguised their power and worked with the Senate, patricii, and sometimes the equites. Septimius established a naked military dictatorship, calling himself Dominator and even created two new official social classes: the Honestiore and the Humiliore – I’m betting you can guess which one had all the rights and privileges from the names! – and made it clear that military service was the only path of social mobility in his Rome. He purged the Senate, having more than ⅓ of the Senators killed and seized their estates for himself, which he redistributed chiefly to the army and to military spending, used idle troops for construction of infrastructure like roads and buildings and raised their pay 33% while putting private contracting firms out of business, promoted only those who had served under him in the army into bureaucratic positions, oversaw a massive increase in military spending and dismantled most of the Alimenta as too costly and “without real purpose” according to his papers that survive. He also caused inflation by devaluing the Roman currency, done as the Roman state sunk into debt over his increased payments to the army. When he died in 211 C.E., his will split the government between his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, and advised then to “pay the army and scorn all others”.

Caracalla quickly had his younger brother killed and became sole Emperor, but after failures in warfare against the Parthians in the East and the Alemanni in the North, he was assassinated by his Prætorian Prefect (Commander), who himself was killed by Septimius’ Grandnephew Elagabalus less than a year later. All the while, the Roman equite class not involved in the military directly was losing ground classified as Humiliores, the conditions of the poor were getting worse, and the military was doing no better than holding the limes against threats from the Parthians, Sassanid Persians, and Germanics. This was also an era of vicious persecutions against anyone who held any different views than the family of the Emperors, collectively known as “the Severii” – Elagabalus even persecuted Christians and traditional Roman believers alike in the name of the worship of the ancient Phoenician/Punic deity Ba’al for the four years he was Emperor. Elagabalus also completed the dismantling of the Alimenta and his successor Severus Alexander cancelled the traditional Corn Laws as well. The final Severii Emperor was killed by his own troops after failing to fight a battle against a coalition of Germanic tribes in 235 C.E., which left no clear heir to the throne and ushered in a half century of near-constant civil war, known as “the Crisis of the 3rd century” which lasted from 235-284 C.E.

It began with the assassin of Severus Alexander, Gaius Maximinus Thrax, being named Emperor. “Thrax” was a Greek term for “slave”, he was illiterate, had been a common soldier, and never set foot in Rome even as Emperor, all dubious firsts for a Roman Emperor. Within a few months, Thrax had been assassinated, setting in motion the series of civil wars and assassinations that would mark the “Crisis of the 3rd century” – during this 49-year span, 25 different Emperors were recognized as such by the Roman Senate, all but 3 died in violence, either assassinated or killed in civil wars.  With an average time on the throne of around 17 months and no stability at all, government and authority became more and more local, a trend that would continue and come to dominate relations in the medieval Europe that would follow the fall of the Roman Empire. One colorful story of an Emperor in this era was one who purchased the Empire at auction – in other words, he promised the members of the Prætorian Guard more pay than his opponents – and, when deposed by a general a few months later, was killed by having molten gold poured down his throat to choke him to death – gain by money, die by money. About the only Emperor of this period who brought some marginal stability to Rome was Aurelian, who reigned the longest of any Emperor in the “Crisis” era, for nearly five years from 270-275 C.E. But while Aurelian was more successful than most in Rome itself, his legions were less than successful against raiding Germanic peoples such as the Franks and Saxons in northern Gaul and Britain, and a new opponent, the Goths from central western Asia, who raided Greece successfully during his reign. Not surprisingly, among those persecuted during this era were the Christiani who were seen as not only “different” but disloyal to whichever Roman general/Emperor who was fighting a losing battle to bring stability to an unstable condition. As we will see in the next lecture, it would be during this era that, understandably, the Christian Church started to look to Bishops outside Rome as possible leaders, given how unsafe and unstable Rome was for anyone, let alone persecuted Christians. After a half-century of chaos, the question seemed to be whether anyone could bring stability to Rome. The answer would come with two men who would do so, but, in so doing, would change the character of Rome fairly completely – to the point where some historians would argue that the “fall” of Rome had already occurred by the rise of Diocletian in 284 C.E.

 

B. The Era of Diocletian and Constantine (284-337 C.E.)    

Diocletian was a general from Dalmatia – the region that is part of modern-day Croatia along the Adriatic coast – who came to the throne of Rome like everyone else in the “Crisis of the 3rd century”, via military conquest. However, unlike the men who had come before him, Diocletian was able to rule in Rome for over two decades, partially due to the loyalty of his army, partially due to his military successes over his early rivals, and partially due to his radical plan to reorganize the Empire, along with the desires of the Roman people to re-establish some stability after a half-century of anarchy.

Diocletian defeated his closest rival for the throne after being named Emperor in 284 C.E., and then had the foresight to name his top commander, Maximian, as his partner the next year. Diocletian soon further divided the Empire into two additional parts, called The Tetrarchy, or “rule of four”, with Diocletian as senior partner and in control of Rome and Egypt – the capital and the food supply. Diocletian titled himself and Maximian as “Augusti” and titled the two junior partners, Constantius and Galerius, as “Cæsari” – and when the Augusti died or retired, the Cæsari would be elevated to take their place, with new Cæsari appointed to follow them, and so on. In this way, Diocletian believed that renewed civil wars could be avoided, just as the appointment system established by Nerva and Trajan had worked for the “Five Good Emperors”. In addition, the division of administration into the Tetrarchy would make what seemed like an ungovernable Empire more manageable. Diocletian solidified his rule with military victories over Rome’s rivals as well – defeating the Alemanni in 288 C.E. and sacking Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sassanid Persian Empire in 299 C.E., greatly weakening that traditional Roman enemy, and built new cities and administrative centers at Nicomedia, Mediolanum (modern-day Milan), and Antioch.

In Rome itself, Diocletian attempted two reforms to try to address the social problems that had arose in the Severan Dynasty and had become much worse during the “Crisis of the 3rd century”. The first was The Edict of Maximum Prices in 301 C.E. This law set a maximum price that could be charged for any good or service – everything from the price of bread to the price a person could demand as compensation for their labor was regulated. However, this proved to be a disaster on a number of levels. First, the Edict inspired the rise of a Black Market – stripped of incentive to produce higher quality goods, producers either produced goods of very low quality – bread leavened with sawdust for example, or shoes that fell apart – or only sold quality goods on the illegal “black market” for prices above the Edict’s maximum, much like buying tickets on Stubhub or the market for other illegal substances which I’m sure you can imagine on your own! The second problem was that, since labor compensation was also set at a maximum “price”, “unskilled” manual labor had no black market (as opposed to “skilled” or specialized labor – the reason Kobe Bryant makes more than a minimum-wage worker) so many of the most distasteful jobs simply went undone – since the person that would have to do it wouldn’t earn enough to pay for quality goods or food anyway, why bother cleaning toilets? Soon, Rome was inundated with trash and filth with no one willing to tend to it. This led to Diocletian’s second reform: The Doctrine of Origo. The Doctrine stated that whatever task your father performed, that would be the task you would perform and your sons would perform. This is great if you are the son of a lawyer or doctor, not so much if you are the son of a toilet cleaner! The one job one could perform to escape one’s Origo was to join the Roman military – after Rome became Christian and throughout medieval Europe, the one job one could do to escape their feudal station was to join The Church – which will be explained in a later lecture. This was not enforced in an iron-clad manner – Diocletian’s Rome lacked the ability to do that – but it certainly did help to inspire the feudal social structure that would eventually arise after the fall of Rome in medieval Europe. Finally, Diocletian was among the most intolerant of Roman Emperors when it came to the Christians, believing them disloyal and a part of the cause of the “Crisis” which had preceded him, Diocletian enforced the last official persecutions of the Christians, and it was among the most bloody in Roman history.

Diocletian retired in ill-health in 305 C.E., forcing his fellow Augustus Maximian to retire as well. Within a decade, his Tetrarchy system had collapsed into civil war between the son of Maximian and the son of Constantius, one of his original Cæsars, who was named Constantine. Diocletian died 6 years into his retirement in 311 C.E., by which time, Constantine had already defeated one of his rivals, been recognized as Emperor by the Roman Senate, and was preparing to do final battle with Maximian’s son Maxentius for control of Rome.

The decisive battle took place October 10, 312 C.E. at the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber River north of Rome. According to his contemporary biographer Lactantius, a soldier in his army, the night before the battle, Constantine had a dream in which a woman appeared to him and told him to mark the Greek letters Chi (Χ) and Rho (Ρ) – the first two letters of the Greek word “Christos” – on his shields and that “in this sign shall you conquer” – an account also recorded, with slight differences, by another contemporary biographer, Eusebius. Constantine, whose mother knew of Christian beliefs and had taught them secretly to her son, followed these directions and, after defeating Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, resolved to not only stop the persecutions of the Christians but to eventually make Christianity legal. First, however, Constantine had to accomplish two things: (1) solidifying his Empire and (2) defining what “Christianity” was – what beliefs were included and what was to be excluded.

Constantine moved towards the second of these goals in 313 C.E. when he issued the Edict of Mediolanum (Milan) which made Christianity one of the many legal religions in Rome. However, what still had to be decided is what beliefs were to be included within the definition of Christianity. After finalizing his conquest of Rome, Constantine called the various Christian bishops and philosophers together in Nicæa for a Council in 325 C.E. The resulting Nicæan Creed declared all forms of Christianity other than that practiced by the Roman Church as heresy, thus declaring the Roman form as “Catholic” i.e. “universal”, including the influential Arian form of Christianity, which held that the Trinity was not co-eternal, that the Father and the Holy Spirit were eternal but that Christ came into existence at a moment in time – upon His Virgin Birth. This “Arian Christianity”, so-named for its chief proponent, Arias of Alexandria, had spread widely among the Germanic peoples to the north of the Empire, indeed, conflicts between Arians and Roman Catholics would be prevalent and fierce for the next 400-500 years.

Finally, Constantine decided that the old city of Rome was too old and too threatened by potential opponents to maintain as the administrative capital of his Empire so he set out to build a “New Rome” which he would name, like Alexander had, after himself – Constantinople, on the strategic site of an old Greek village named “Byzantium” at the point where Europe and Anatolia met. The city was finished in 330 C.E., and Constantine ruled from there for the final 7 years of his Emperorship. This would establish Constantinople as the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was far more Greek than Latin in character and culture, and would last for over 1100 years, far longer than the Western Empire which would fall to invaders within the next century. Everything Rome had, Constantinople got, which meant, crucially, copies of all the books and works of Classical Greco-Roman culture and science – long after these were lost to Western Europeans, this classical heritage was kept alive by Constantinople. We will return to the story of the Eastern Roman Empire in Lecture 12, but now, we move to the final section of this lecture – on the fall of the Western empire in the 5th century C.E.

 

C. The Fall of the Western Empire (337-476 C.E.)

Historians differ on when the Roman Empire actually “fell” – the traditional date is taken from Edward Gibbon’s epic work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in 1788, which set the date of the “fall” as 476 C.E., when the Gothic conqueror of Rome, Odoacer, informed the Emperor of the East that it needed no more Emperors sent to Rome, that Rome was distinct from rule by Constantinople, an opinion which prompted the Court Recorder of Constantinople to write that “Rome is lost to us now.” Of course, some historians would argue that the “true” Roman Empire was lost as early as 193 C.E., with the rise of the Severans, or in 313 C.E., when Constantine made Christianity legal, or even in 410 C.E. when, as we will see, non-Romans sacked the city of Rome itself for the first time in 800 years. Others will argue for even later dates, like 526 C.E. and some even later, which will make more sense as the class goes on. You can decide for yourselves when Rome “fell” – which also means you have to decide for yourselves what Rome “was” or what it “means”, what makes up “Rome” as opposed to entities and states which exist in the same physical space – but for purposes of organizing this lecture and unit, we will use the traditional Gibbon definition of 476 C.E.

After Constantine’s death, a number of his relatives ruled without the skills that Constantine had brought to the throne of the Empire. In addition, the issues of a growing population, lack of social services, the need for a larger army, and dangerous enemies on the borders all plagued Constantine’s successors. Increasingly in the 4th century, Roman Emperors turned to foreign mercenaries as soldiers, with the promise of citizenship as the reward for service beyond simple pay. While this allowed the legions to grow, it also made many of the guards of the Roman limes the kin and cousins of those they were guarding against – a situation that would become increasing problematic as time went on. The most noteworthy of Constantine’s descendants to reign was Julian “the Apostate”, who was mentioned in the last lecture, who tried to re-establish traditional Roman paganism as the sole state religion of Rome and re-outlaw Christianity between 361-364 C.E. His attempt was prompted by what he saw as the hypocrisy of a religion that preached peace yet saw numerous battles between Arian and Roman Catholic sects of the Christian peoples. His policy failed miserably however, demonstrating that, just 50 years after Constantine had first made Christianity legal, it had become the dominant belief in Roman society and culture. It would not be until 390 C.E. however when Theodosius the Great made Christianity the only legal religion in Rome – and that action was in response to a threat to excommunicate the Emperor by Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. Imagine Augustus or Trajan being intimidated in such a way? Of course, as soon as Christianity became the sole legal religion, it began persecuting Arians, which it saw as heresy, though that dangerous heresy would be advancing on Rome very soon thereafter – Rome would be sacked within 20 years of Theodosius proclamation, clearly his title “the Great” was more about religion than Roman military glory, again, an indicator of how Roman culture had changed by the late 4th century.

The last powerful Roman leader was a general named Stilicho, who Theodosius the Great appointed guardian of his young son Honorius upon Theodosius’ death in 395 C.E. Stilicho was never Emperor in his own right, but instead served as commander of the Western Roman armies between the death of Theodosius and his own death in 408 C.E. Stilicho had been trying to negotiate with the Gothic leader Alaric who had been advancing on Rome after a revolt of Germanic and Gothic Roman allies, known as foederati, prompted by Rome’s inability to supply them food despite the terms of a treaty that had been agreed to years before when they had agreed to enter into alliance with Rome. After the murder of Stilicho, Alaric’s forces marched on Rome and, in August 410 C.E., the armies of Alaric the Goth breached the walls of Rome and sacked the city – the first such defeat since 390 B.C. Worse yet, Alaric’s Goths were Arians, not Roman Catholics so not only were Goths sacking Rome, but the heretics were sacking the home of the universal Church! While Alaric’s Arian Goths were assaulting the Roman walls, a process that took over a year, a North African Catholic Bishop named Augustine of Hippo (later St. Augustine) wrote an influential work called De Civitas Dei (The City of God). In it, St. Augustine argued that (1) man should keep the City of Man and the City of God distinct and separate but consider the City of God superior and (2) that one should be able to keep the City of God within one’s heart and soul, whether the City of Man was free or not. This work, along with many, many others, would make St. Augustine of Hippo one of the Fathers of the Church and of Theology, and one of the most venerated religious figures in medieval Europe.

Fortunately for Rome, the Goths of Alaric were more interested in plunder than in rulership, after sacking the city, they moved on and Romans tried to rebuild. However, Alaric would prove to be but the first in a series of barbarian conquerors in the 5th century, as various Germanic, Gothic, and other peoples all attacked and often defeated Rome in their turn. Germanic tribes such as the Alemanni, Saxons, Picts, Burgundians, and many others had been attacking the Roman frontiers for centuries, Gothic peoples, including the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and others, had been driven west by population pressures and pressure from both Persians and eventually Central Asian Huns, while the Vandal tribes had been driven west to attack Rome since the age of Constantine. In 451 C.E., the most dangerous foe yet, Attila and his Huns, having destroyed all in their path, including Goths and Vandals, arrived in Italy and set out to attack Rome – facing them was not a Roman legion but the Bishop of Rome, Leo, who ordered Attila to retreat in the name of the Cross. Either due to the intervention of God, an outbreak of disease in his army, a payment to attack elsewhere, fear of an attack against his camp, or some combination of all these factors, led to Attila not attacking Rome prior to his death in 453 C.E. However, two years after Attila’s death, in 455 C.E., the Vandals sacked Rome and did so much damage that their tribal name was given to those who loot and commit excesses. The Vandals eventually conquered Spain and then crossed into North Africa and established the seat of their kingdom at Carthage – ironic, eh?

By this time, Roman Emperors were being appointed by the Emperor at Constantinople, but none seemed to be able to stop the continuous waves of invasions and most were regarded as foreigners and commanded little loyalty from the Roman populace. Finally, in 475 C.E., the warlord Orestes seized the throne and named his son, grandiosely named Romulus Augustus, as Emperor. However, Orestes and Romulus Augustus refused to grant the Germanic tribe of Odoacer status as foederati, which prompted Odoacer, with the help of the Ostrogoths, to attack Rome. His attack was successful on September 4, 476 C.E., Orestes died in battle, Romulus Augustus was deposed, and Odoacer sent the Imperial insignia back to Constantinople, telling them that he would rule Rome and no further Emperors from the East need be sent. With this action, Gibbon states, the Fall of Rome was complete.

With the Western Empire no more – though the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople would thrive and continue to exist for nearly another 1000 years – Western Civilization came to a point of transition. The smaller states that would arise in its aftermath would be quite distinct from that of the Roman Empire, let alone the Classical Athenian, Spartan, and Roman states. It will be to those states and peoples – the era of medieval Europe and its neighbors, Byzantium and Islam – that our class now considers. But before moving on, not only should one consider what caused the Fall of the Roman Empire, but also what caused it to last and thrive as long as it did and all its many influences on contemporaneous societies as well as societies in the modern world.