August 24th, 410 C.E.
For the first time in 800 years, barbarians are in Rome.
This is personal.
This is revenge.
Some of these Visigoths had been Roman soldiers until the emperor, questioning their loyalty, had their wives and children murdered.
They burned churches and sacked imperial tombs, scattering the emperor's ashes from their burial urns.
They torture the population to give up their valuables, and take citizens as slaves.
It is the fate that Rome has been trying to stave off for centuries.
An undeniable symbol that the western empire is falling.
And it had nearly happened before; over a century earlier during a time of division and chaos.
Germanic tribes nearly reached the city, Rome was torn by civil war, and the economy had freefallen.
But then, just as the empire seemed destined to tear itself apart,
a pair of remarkable emperors managed to preserve the stricken empire for another two centuries:
Aurelian and Diocletian.
"Birth of the People" by Demetori
This is the story of how Rome nearly tore itself apart:
a time when the greatest empire of the western world entered what is known as "The Crisis of the 3rd Century",
a 50-year tailspin that sent it spiraling toward disaster.
And it's also the story of two emperors, Aurelian and Diocletian,
who managed, against all odds, to reverse the trend and save the empire,
at least for a while.
The 3rd Century crisis was a terrible time,
but with 1700 years of distance,
it can also look a little bit like a comedy of errors,
and explaining why the 3rd Century crisis happened also takes a bit of time
because despite its name, it wasn't a single crisis.
Rather, a series of overlapping crises that both magnified and fed on each other,
and that's why Rob actually tends to prefer the less academic, more descriptive term, of 'The Military Anarchy'.
But the many, many problems Rome had all centered around one thing:
the Roman Empire was too big!
Because while the so-called 'Bad Emperors' deserved blame for the state falling into disrepair and neglect,
the 'Good Emperors' still had been the ones that stretched the bounds of the empire
to encompass the entirety of the Mediterranean and all the way to Britain.
Even Rome, which spent half of its entire budget each year on the military,
didn't have enough troops to secure that territory.
Shoring up one part of the empire often meant neglecting another.
And due to the great distances, armies dispatched to reinforce local troops against uprising or invasion often arrived too late.
And this weakness did not pass unnoticed by the people living on Rome's borders.
Sassanid Persia invaded the east, only to be turned back by a Roman alliance with Palmyra, which you can hear about in our 'Odenathus' episode.
Also, Germanic tribes raided the northern borders and occasionally coalesced into powerful groups that stormed south, at times even into Italy.
Matching these external pressures were internal ones, particularly Rome's method of imperial succession,
which Rob assures me was very unique and intricate.
You know, what let me just read it verbatim to make sure I get it right.
*Rustles papers*
Um..
Rob, this page is blank, buddy.
*Whispers*
Oh, oh wow..
Turns out there was absolutely no codified method for imperial succession.
There were traditions, of course.
A lot of emperors chose a successor, trained him for years,
adopted him as a son, and installed him as a sort of junior co-emperor,
known as a caesar, so he could learn the job and take over, but that wasn't a law.
It was more of what we'd call today a sort of norm.
Technically, if you could get an army to declare you emperor, and then the Senate to confirm it,
then you were just the emperor.
And this was a real problem, especially when the army, particularly the emperor's bodyguard,
known as the Praetorian Guard, realized that they could serve as kingmakers,
killing the Emperor and installing a popular general in his place.
The reasons for launching a coup could be many:
From disagreements about policy, to simply wanting a payday.
Because you see when a new emperor came to power, he was expected to financially reward his troops and officers,
meaning you could get very rich by giving your general the imperial robe
and then you could get paid again by killing him and bringing in a new guy.
Easy money.
Now, imperial assassinations had happened before, but generally,
the beneficiaries were family members of the Emperor; aristocrats steeped in politics.
In the 3rd Century Crisis, however,
a long line of soldiers would end up running the empire.
And though the underlying issues had been there for decades,
This problematic time began with Emperor Severus Alexander.
It's the year 235, the 13th year of the young Emperor's reign.
He'd come to the throne as a teenager, fought the Persians to a standstill in the east,
and watched with disquiet as the army grew ill disciplined and restless.
Now, Alexander is in Germania, ready to confront barbarians who have raided across the border.
His commanders have a meeting in his tent to lay out their grievances:
His monetary policies, the way he'd listened to his mother for political advice,
and his plan to bribe the barbarians into disbanding rather than crushing them.
Then, with a shout, the swords unsheath.
Alexander's guards make a noble stand,
but within minutes, the Emperor and his mother have been slain.
The army then declares its general, a man with a peasant background named Maximinus Thrax, as Emperor.
Now, he would only rule for three years and never set foot in Rome before the Senate revolted,
naming another man and his son co-emperors, stripping Maximinus from his throne.
Thus began 'The Year of Six Emperors'.
Wait, wait a minute six emperors? In one year!? And we're gonna do them all in this episode?
I mean, okay, but that's kind of a lot for nine minutes.
Hold on, how many emperors were there during The 3rd Century Crisis?
26?!
26 legitimate emperors?!
Like, were there also illegitimate ones?
(Yup.)
All in 50 years?
How are we supposed to get through all that?
We're scheduled to do Aurelian next episode!
*Rustling papers*
Ahhhh, I see!
Jazzy, I like it.
All right Extra Historians, get ready to get up and move.
Because we're gonna blaze right through the 14 emperors between Maximus Thrax
and our good boy Aurelian in the most efficient and groovy way possible.
You ready?
A one,
A one, a two,
A one, two, three:
(To the rhythm of 'Dem Bones')
(It was Walpole.)
(You can tell they had fun)
Thank you, thank you! Vinyls and t-shirts are in the animated lobby.
So even with just that song, you can kind of see that things weren't going great.
But the crisis wasn't just a political one.
Even before that mess, Emperors had played with debasing Roman currency,
lowering the amount of silver content in each coin.
And now with Emperor after Emperor scrambling to reward the people who'd put them on the throne,
they did it as a way of basically printing money.
This then created an economic crisis as people hoarded the coins that were not debased and only spent the debased ones.
So on top of everything else,
you have inflation.
And then right on time came plague,
possibly Smallpox or Flu,
that devastated the population and made military recruitment difficult.
Thus, more and more German tribesmen were inducted to fill the army's ranks.
In the chaos, Rome could no longer reliably support local leaders in Gaul or the east,
who started deciding that they were sick of being part of an empire that no longer came to their aid.
If they had to stand alone, they'd do it as their own empires.
And by 268, the empire had torn into three pieces:
the Roman Empire in Italy,
the Gallic Empire in Gaul and Britain,
and the Palmyrene Empire under Queen Zenobia to the east.
But fighting in Eastern Europe, under the command of the Emperor himself, was a man who would begin to turn the tide.
Who, though born under humble circumstances, would eventually be made emperor himself.
And during his short reign, he'd cross the Mediterranean world to stitch the Roman Empire back together:
Aurelian.
And we'll tell you all about him next time.
Also, we'll be signing autographs out back.
A big, legendary thanks to:
Ahmed Ziad Turk,
Alicia Bramble,
Casey Muscha,
Dominic Valenciana,
Gunnar Clovis,
Kyle Murgatroyd,
and Orels1!
Writer: Robert Nath
Editors: Nick Rieth, Mac Owens
Narrator: Matthew Krol
Artist: Nick DeWitt.
Intro Music: "Birth of the People" by Demetori
Outro Music: "Hold the Phalanx!" by Tiffany Roman