The Fall of the Empire: 193–305 AD

A Semitic Dynasty

On the first day of January 193, a few hours after the murder of Commodus, the Senate convened in utmost joy and elected one of its most respected members, who had performed his duty as prefect of the city with justice and had remained faithful to the best traditions of the Antonines, as emperor. Pertinax accepted this lofty office, in which the slightest weakness brings a fatal end, against his will. Herodian says: “His behavior was like that of an ordinary man,” he attended the lectures of philosophers, encouraged literature, filled the treasury, reduced taxes, and sold at auction the gold, silver, embroidered cloths, silks, beautiful slaves, and everything with which Commodus had filled the palace. Dio Cassius writes: “In fact he did everything that a good emperor should do.” The freedmen whose profits his economies destroyed, and the imperial guards disturbed by the establishment of discipline, conspired. On March 28, three hundred soldiers stormed the palace, killed him, cut off his head, fixed it on a spear, and carried it to their camp. The people and the Senate grieved but sat quietly.

The leaders of the Guard announced that the crown would be given to that Roman who would give them the most money. The wife and daughter of Didius Julianus persuaded him to leave his meal unfinished and take part in this auction. When he went to the camp, he found a rival there who offered five thousand drachmas (three thousand dollars) to each soldier for access to the throne. The agents of the Guard went from one rich man to another, urging them to raise the auction price. When Julianus promised 6,250 drachmas to each soldier, the Guard proclaimed him emperor.

The people of Rome, outraged by this shameful coronation, appealed to the legions of Britain, Syria, and Pannonia to come and depose Julianus. These legions, angry at being deprived of Julianus’s money, proclaimed their commanders emperors and marched toward Rome. The commander of the Pannonian legions, Lucius Septimius Severus, seized the empire with boldness, speed, and bribery. He pledged to give each soldier 12,000 drachmas upon his accession; within one month he brought his forces from the Danube to within a hundred kilometers of Rome; he won over the detachments sent to stop him; and by promising pardon to the imperial guards on condition that they surrender their leaders, he made them obedient. With all his legions fully armed he entered the capital and thus violated previous customs, but he himself observed tradition by wearing civilian dress. A Roman tribune found Julianus terrified and weeping in the palace; he brought him to one of the palace baths and cut off his head (June 2, 193).

Septimius was born in 146 AD in Africa—in a conquered province where the worthiest defenders of Christianity had arisen. This man, reared in a Phoenician and Carthaginian-speaking family, studied literature and philosophy in Athens, and then practiced law in Rome. Despite his Semitic accent in Latin he was counted among the most educated Romans of his time and enjoyed gathering poets and philosophers around him. Yet he did not allow philosophy to hinder his wars nor poetry to soften his character. He was a man of handsome face and strong physique; he dressed simply, was accustomed to hardship and austerity, skillful in campaigning, brave in battle, and merciless in victory. He spoke with wit, judged with insight, lied without scruple, loved money more than all honors, and ruled with competence and ruthlessness.

The Senate had made the mistake of proclaiming Albinus his rival. Septimius with his six hundred guards forced the Senate to confirm his accession. Afterward he had the senators killed in groups, and confiscated so many estates of the nobility that he became owner of half the peninsula. With appointments made by the emperor from among the people of the East, who were inclined to monarchical (monarchic) government, the Senate, most of whose members had been removed, was refilled. The greatest jurists of that age—like Papinian, Paul, and Ulpian—employed all their arguments and reasons in defense of absolute power. Septimius ignored the existence of the Senate except when he commanded it. He himself supervised all the various treasuries, founded his government directly on the army, and transformed the empire into a hereditary military monarchy. During his reign the number of soldiers was increased and their pay raised, so that they became a plague on the treasury. Military service became compulsory, but it was forbidden for the inhabitants of Italy. From then on, the legions of the conquered provinces chose emperors for a Rome that had lost the power to govern.

Septimius, this realistic warrior, believed in astrology and was skilled in divination and the interpretation of dreams. Six years before his accession, when his first wife had died, he took a wealthy woman from Syria, because the throne was in her horoscope. This woman, Julia Domna, was the daughter of one of the priests of Elagabalus, the god of the city of Emesa. Long before, a stone had fallen from heaven in this city and a magnificent temple had been built for it. This stone was worshiped as the manifestation or even the embodiment of the god. Julia accepted marriage with Septimius, bore him two sons named Caracalla and Geta, and raised him to the throne that was in her horoscope. Julia was too beautiful to be content with one husband, but Septimius was too busy to be a jealous husband. Julia arranged a salon of scholars, promoted art and encouraged artists, and persuaded Philostratus to write and embellish the life of Apollonius of Tyana. The power and influence of this woman accelerated the inclination of the monarchy toward Eastern styles, which reached their peak morally in the age of Elagabalus and politically in the age of Diocletian.

Of the eighteen years of his reign Septimius spent twelve in war. He destroyed his rivals in swift and savage wars. After a four-year siege he razed Byzantium to the ground and thus removed the barrier that stood against the raids of the Goths. He conquered Parthia, took Ctesiphon, annexed Mesopotamia, and hastened the fall of the Arsacids. In old age and afflicted with gout but anxious lest his soldiers grow soft from five years away from war, he undertook a campaign to Caledonia. After expensive victories over the Scots he returned to Britain and remained at York, where he died in 211. He said: “I have been everything, and all this was worth nothing.” Herodian says: “Caracalla was distressed that his father’s death had been delayed… he asked the physicians to send the old man to the other world by any means.” Septimius reproached Aurelius for handing the empire over to Commodus. He himself left it with this pessimistic advice to Caracalla and Geta: “Enrich the soldiers and care for nothing else.” For the next eighty years he was the last emperor to die in bed.

It may be said that Caracalla, like Commodus, was made to prove that the share of one man’s power is not so great that he himself can be great in life and his descendants can become great men. This man was obedient and pleasing in childhood; when he reached maturity he became barbarous and enamored of hunting and war. He caught wild bears alive, fought alone with lions, always kept lions in his palace, and sometimes even took a lion to his table and bed. He especially valued the company of gladiators and soldiers; he preferred to keep senators waiting for an audience, but did not neglect to provide food and drink for his companions. Since he did not wish to share imperial power with his brother, he killed Geta in 212. This youth was beheaded in his mother’s arms, and his blood stained her clothes. It is related that not only did Caracalla condemn twenty thousand supporters of Geta to death, but he also killed many citizens and four Vestal Virgins on the charge of adultery. When a murmur arose among the soldiers because of Geta’s murder, he calmed them with a sum equal to all the money Septimius had gathered in the various treasuries. He protected soldiers and the poor against the commercial and noble classes; moreover, Dio Cassius’s writings about him may stem from the grudge of a senator. To increase his revenues he doubled the inheritance tax by raising it to ten percent, and when he realized that this tax applied only to Roman citizens, in 212 he made all adult men of the empire subject to it. Thus these individuals gained the right of citizenship precisely when they bore the maximum duty and received the minimum. Caracalla added to the beauties of Rome by erecting an arch in memory of Septimius Severus, which still stands, and by building public baths whose vast ruins testify to their former grandeur, but he left the greater part of the administration of state affairs to his mother and himself devoted himself to war and campaigning.

He appointed Julia Domna as “minister of petitions” and “minister of correspondence.” This woman joined Caracalla or replaced him when receiving great persons of the country or distinguished foreign dignitaries. Rumors circulated that she had gained control over her son through an incestuous relationship. What angered Caracalla was that witty people in Alexandria referred to his mother and him as Jocasta and Oedipus. On one hand to avenge these insults and partly out of fear that Egypt might revolt while he was fighting the Parthians, he visited Alexandria and is said to have ordered the massacre of all those who were inhabitants of the city and capable of bearing arms.

Nevertheless, the founder of Alexandria (Alexander the Great) was his model and envy. He formed a corps of sixteen thousand men and named it the “phalanx of Alexander,” equipped them with Macedonian weapons, and conceived the idea of conquering Parthia as Alexander had conquered Iran. He strove hard to be a good soldier, sharing with his troops in food, fatigues, marches, entrenchments, and bridge-building, and participating in brave battles and challenges to single combat with the enemy. But his soldiers were less eager than he for war with the Parthians and preferred plunder to battle. At Carrhae—the place where Crassus had been defeated—Caracalla was killed by his own soldiers with dagger blows (217). Macrinus, commander of the imperial guards, proclaimed himself emperor and ordered the Senate, which was averse to this, to count Caracalla among the gods. Julia Domna, who had been exiled to Antioch and deprived for six years of the throne, her husband, and her son, starved herself to death.

This woman had a sister named Julia Maesa who was as talented as herself. This second Julia, upon returning to Emesa, found there two grandsons who were her hope. One of them was the son of her daughter Julia Soaemias, one of the young priests of Baal. This boy was named Varius Avitus and later became known as Elagabalus (the creator god). The other, the son of Julia Mamaea, was ten years old and was called Alexianus. This person later became Alexander Severus. Although Varius was the son of Varius Marcellus, Maesa spread the rumor that he was Caracalla’s illegitimate son and named him Bassianus. The imperial throne was worth so much that she sacrificed her daughter’s reputation for it, and Marcellus was already dead. Half of the Roman soldiers in Syria had turned to the cults of this land and felt a respect mixed with piety toward this fourteen-year-old priest. Moreover, Maesa’s method suggested that if these soldiers made Elagabalus emperor, he would give them large sums. The soldiers were convinced. Maesa’s gold and silver caused the army sent by Macrinus to confront her to join her cause. When Macrinus himself appeared at the head of a large force, the Syrian mercenary soldiers hesitated, but Maesa and Soaemias leaped from their carriage and led the wavering troops to victory. In Syria men were women and women were men.

In the spring of 219, Elagabalus entered the city of Rome with a garment of purple silk embroidered with gold, with cheeks adorned with vermilion, with eyes artificially enlarged, with precious armbands on his arms, a necklace of pearls around his neck, and a crown of jewels on his head, displaying his beauty. Beside him his mother and grandmother rode solemnly on horseback. As soon as he appeared before the Senate he requested that his mother be allowed to sit with him and participate in the deliberations. Soaemias felt she should not accept these honors and contented herself with presiding over a small senate (senaculum) composed of women, which Sabina had founded in the time of Hadrian and which dealt with women’s clothing, jewelry, precedence, and the conduct of ceremonies. The rule of the country was assigned to Maesa, the grandmother.

The young emperor could charm his surroundings in some respects. He took no vengeful measures against Macrinus’s supporters. He loved music, sang well, played the flute, organ, and trumpet. Since he was too young to administer the empire, he wanted nothing but amusement. His god was not Baal but pleasure, and he decided to worship pleasure in whatever form it had. He invited each class of free people to see his palace; sometimes he ate, drank, and amused himself with them. He often distributed lottery prizes among them, from the furniture of a house to a few flies. He liked to play tricks on his guests, for example seating them on inflated cushions that suddenly burst; making them drunk and then awakening them among harmless panthers, bears, and lions. Lampridius emphasizes that Elagabalus never spent less than a hundred thousand sesterces (ten thousand dollars) and sometimes less than three million sesterces on a banquet he gave to his friends. He mixed gold coins with chickpeas, sardonyx with lentils, pearls with rice, amber with beans. He gave horses, chariots, or eunuchs as gifts. He often asked his guests to take the silver vessels and cups from the head of the table home with them. He always wanted the best things for himself. The water of his pools was scented with rose perfume, the furniture and equipment of his baths were of sardonyx or gold. He consumed the rarest and most expensive foods; his clothes were studded with jewels from head to toe. It was rumored that he never wore a ring twice on his finger. When traveling, six hundred carriages were used to carry his baggage, equipment, and the courtesans he took with him. Since an astrologer had told him he would die a hard death, he prepared means of suicide for the necessary time, such as: purple silk ropes, golden daggers, poisons hidden in sapphires or emeralds. But in the end he was killed in the toilet.

It is possible that his enemies, from the senatorial class, exaggerated in some of these statements. In any case, what was related about his sexual perversion cannot be confirmed. Certainly he adorned his lusts with appearances of asceticism and piety and intended to some extent to spread the worship of the Syrian Baal among the Romans. He had himself circumcised and wanted to castrate himself in honor of his god. He brought a black conical stone that he worshiped as Elagabalus from the city of Emesa. He built an ornate temple to house it. The jewel-studded stone was brought on a chariot drawn by six white horses, while the young emperor, sunk in a worship mixed with silence, walked backward before it. He wished to recognize all other religions. He took the cult of Yahweh under his protection and proposed to legalize Christianity, only, with praiseworthy sincerity, he insisted on the point that in his opinion this stone was the greatest of the gods.

His mother, absorbed in her love affairs, looked upon this Priapean farce with indulgence. But Julia Maesa, unable to keep control of affairs, decided to prevent the defeat that might end the reign of this distinguished line of Syrian women. She persuaded Elagabalus to accept his cousin Alexander as successor and Caesar. She and Mamaea trained this little boy for the duties entrusted to him, and by every means induced the Senate and the people to regard him as the desired successor to Elagabalus, this sensual man claiming sanctity who had offended the Romans not by his extreme or obscene acts but by subjecting Jupiter to the Syrian Baal. Soaemias discovered the plot and incited the imperial guards against her sister and nephew. Maesa and Mamaea offered richer arguments, so that the Guard killed Elagabalus with his mother, dragged his body through the streets and around the circus, then threw it into the Tiber River, and proclaimed Alexander emperor; the Senate also accepted him (222 AD).

Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander, like his predecessor, ascended the imperial throne at the age of fourteen. His mother strove with special devotion and care for his physical and spiritual growth and the cultivation of his character. Through work and sport he made himself strong. Every day he swam for one hour in cold pool water, drank a measure of water before every meal, and ate little and from the simplest foods. He became a handsome, tall, and strong youth skilled in all sports and also in the art of soldiery. He studied Greek and Latin literature, and moderated his attachment to this literature only at Mamaea’s insistence—who regularly read to him those passages from Virgil that called upon the Romans to abandon the graces and beauties of culture for others and to form a world state and govern it with peace and tranquility. Alexander “with competence” painted and sang. He played the organ and harp, but never allowed anyone except members of his family to be present at the performance of these acts. He dressed with great simplicity and his behavior was also very simple; “he did not exceed the bounds of moderation in the pleasures of love and in no way wished to have anything in common with perverted persons.” He showed deep respect to the Senate and behaved with the senators on a basis of equality, conversed with them in his palace and often visited their homes. He was lovable and cheerful and visited the sick without class discrimination. He easily granted audience to any citizen who was well-spoken. He very quickly forgave the sins of opponents and in fourteen years of reign did not shed a drop of civilian blood. His mother reproached him for his affability and said: “You have made the monarchy milder than it should be, and the people show less respect for imperial power.” And he replied: “But I have made the empire more stable and secure.” He had a golden heart without the intellectual alloy necessary to resist the harsh erosion of this world.

He confessed the unreasonableness of the effort his cousin had made to make Elagabalus the successor of Jupiter, and together with his mother took steps to repair the temples and establish the religious rites of the Romans. But his philosophical spirit was such that he believed all religions in reality addressed their prayers to a single power above all powers. He wished to respect all cults based on sincerity and purity. In his private chapel, where he prayed and worshiped every morning, he had hung images of Jupiter, Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, Abraham, and Christ. He often recited the moral precept of the Jews and Christians: “Do not do to others what you do not wish done to yourself.” At his command this advice was inscribed on the walls of the palace and on several public buildings. He recommended the ethics of the Jews and Christians to the Romans. For this reason witty people in Antioch and Alexandria jokingly called him “the head of the synagogue.” His mother assisted the Christians and supported Origen, bringing him to the imperial palace to explain the precise points of his theological principles.

When Julia Maesa died shortly after Alexander’s accession, Mamaea with her counselor and guide, Ulpian, defined the policy that Alexander followed and which involved his special administrative reforms. This woman ruled wisely and without severity, caring more for the success of her dynasty than for showing power; she attributed the merit of the results obtained in this reign to the prudence and competence of that great jurist and the young emperor. Mamaea and Ulpian chose sixteen distinguished senators to form an imperial council whose approval was necessary for all important measures. Julia had control over everything except her love for her son. When Alexander married and showed a partisanship mixed with excessive attachment to his wife, Mamaea exiled his wife and Alexander, forced to choose between the two, submitted to his mother. As he grew older he participated more in the administration of affairs. The author of his biography says in that period: “Even before dawn he attended to public affairs and continued this work until late, never becoming tired or angry, but always brisk and calm.”

The foundation of his policy was the weakening of the destructive domination of the soldiers through the revival of the prestige of the Senate and the nobility. Hereditary government seemed to him the only successor to government by money, myth-making, or swordplay. With the cooperation of the Senate he carried out numerous administrative economies, eliminated many officials in his palace, in government institutions, and in the administration of the conquered provinces. He sold most of the imperial jewels and put the money in the treasury. He legalized and encouraged workers’ and merchants’ organizations, reorganized them, and “allowed them to have advocates from among their own members”; the Senate probably did not fully approve of this. With strict supervision over public morals he arrested prostitutes and exiled those who had sexual deviations. While reducing taxes he revived the Colosseum and the baths of Caracalla, built a public library, a twenty-kilometer aqueduct, and new baths, and also gave financial aid to road-building, bridge-building, and the creation of baths throughout the empire. To forcibly lower the interest rate that was a calamity for debtors, he lent from public funds at four percent interest, and to the poor without interest, for the purchase of agricultural land. The whole empire was moving toward prosperity and well-being and the people admired him. It seemed that Marcus Aurelius had returned as a god to earth and to the throne.

But just as the Iranians and Germans had been able to take advantage of the philosopher king [Marcus Aurelius], they also profited from the existence of this sacred emperor. In 230 Ardashir, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty of Iran, conquered Mesopotamia and threatened Syria. Alexander wrote him a philosophical letter, reproached his violent acts, and declared that “everyone should be content with his own territory.” Ardashir accused him of weakness and in reply demanded all of Syria and Asia Minor. Then the young emperor went to war with his mother and, more with bravery than with skill, began a war whose outcome was uncertain. The history of his victories and defeats is not clear. In any case Ardashir, perhaps to face the raids that were occurring in the east of his land, withdrew from Mesopotamia. Roman coins of the year 233 showed Alexander with the crown of victory, while the Tigris and Euphrates flowed at his feet.

Meanwhile the Alamanni and Marcomanni, realizing that the number of soldiers in the garrisons of the Rhine and Danube had been reduced to strengthen the Syrian legions, seized the Roman border points and began to devastate eastern Gaul and kill its inhabitants. After celebrating his victory over the Iranians, Alexander, still with Mamaea, joined his troops and led them to Mainz. On his mother’s advice he entered into negotiations with the enemy and offered them an annual sum to sit quietly. His soldiers condemned this weakness and revolted against him. His economy, the establishment of discipline, his submission to the Senate and to the power of one woman were never forgiven. They proclaimed Julius Maximinus, commander of the Pannonian legions, emperor. Maximinus’s soldiers stormed Alexander’s tent and killed him together with his mother and his friends (235).

Chaos

It was not this caprice of history that in the third century gave supreme power to the soldiers. Internal causes had weakened the country and left it defenseless on all fronts. The cessation of conquest after Trajan, and again after Septimius Severus, was a sign of attack, and just as Rome had conquered the nations by dividing them, now the barbarians united with simultaneous attacks to open it. The necessity of defense raised the power of arms and the prestige of soldiery. Generals took the place of philosophers on the royal throne. Monarchy had slipped from the hands of the nobility and given way to the revived government of force.

Maximinus, the son of a strong-bodied peasant from Thrace, was a good soldier and nothing else; history testifies that this man’s height was eight feet and his thumb so thick that he could use his wife’s bracelet as a ring on this finger. He had received no education, despised education, and envied those who had studies. During the three years of his reign he never visited Rome; he preferred life in camp and beside the Danube or the Rhine. To continue the war and satisfy his soldiers, he imposed such heavy taxes on the well-to-do that after a short time the upper classes revolted against his government. Gordianus, the wealthy and educated proconsul of Africa, agreed that his soldiers should name him emperor rival to Maximinus. Since he was eighty years old he also made his son a partner in this fatal office. These two could not resist the forces sent by Maximinus. The son was killed in battle and the father also killed himself. Maximinus took revenge with exile and confiscation of property that almost destroyed the nobility. Herodian writes: “The richest persons of the previous day found their work today turned to begging.” The Senate, which had been refilled and strengthened by Severus, fought bravely; it declared Maximinus deposed, and chose two of its members, Maximus and Balbinus, as emperors. Maximus went at the head of an army hastily formed to confront Maximinus, who had crossed the Alps and besieged Aquileia. Maximinus was a better general and had more forces. It seemed that the fate of the Senate and the wealthy classes was dire. But a group of Maximinus’s soldiers who had suffered from his ruthless punishments killed him in his tent. Maximus returned triumphantly to Rome and there in turn was killed by the imperial guards and Balbinus suffered the same fate. The imperial guards proclaimed Gordianus III emperor and the Senate also confirmed this choice.

We do not go into the details of the names, battles, and deaths of these emperors of the period of chaos. In the space of thirty-five years between Alexander Severus and Aurelian, thirty-seven men were proclaimed emperors. Gordianus III was killed in 244 by his soldiers while fighting the Iranians. His successor Philip, surnamed the Arab, was killed in Verona by Decius (249). Decius was a wealthy and educated man from Illyria whose love and attachment to Rome made him fully worthy of his name, which is a lofty name in ancient Roman history. During the wars he waged with the Goths he drew up an ambitious program to revive Roman religion, morals, and virtues and issued decrees to destroy Christianity. Then he returned to the Danube, confronted the Goths, witnessed the killing of his son in this war, told his wavering soldiers that the loss of one individual did not matter much, attacked the enemy again, and himself fell in one of the most terrible defeats in Roman history (251). Gallus took his place, who was also killed by his soldiers in 253. Then came the turn of Aemilianus, who suffered the same fate in the same year.

The new emperor, Valerian, was sixty years old when he ascended the throne. Since he had to fight simultaneously with the Franks, Alamanni, Marcomanni, Goths, Scythians, and Iranians, he made his son Gallienus king of the western empire and kept the east for himself and marched to Mesopotamia. Since he was too old to cope with the task he soon fell. Gallienus, who was then thirty-five years old, was a brave, intelligent, and knowledgeable man, and his cultivation had no proportion with that century of savage and barbaric wars. He reformed the administration of the country in the west, defeated the enemies of the empire one after another, yet found time to support and promote philosophy and literature. In his time classical art was briefly revived; but even his various abilities could not withstand the numerous calamities of this period.

In 254 the Marcomanni devastated the province of Pannonia and northern Italy. In 255 the Goths seized Macedonia and Dalmatia; the Scythians and Goths penetrated Asia Minor, and the Iranians attacked Syria. In 257 the Goths captured the fleet of the Bosporan kingdom, destroyed the Greek cities on the shores of the Black Sea, burned the city of Trebizond and subjugated its inhabitants, then raided Pontus. In 258 they took Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Prusa, Apamea, and Nicaea. In the same year the Iranians opened Armenia, and Postumus named himself independent ruler of Gaul. In 259 the Alamanni invaded Italy, but Gallienus defeated them at Milan. In 260 Valerian suffered a severe defeat from the Iranians at Edessa and it is not known where and when he died in captivity. Shapur I and his countless horsemen advanced in Syria as far as the city of Antioch, surprised the people there in the midst of races and plundered the city, killed thousands of its inhabitants, and took more into slavery. Tarsus was captured and destroyed, Cilicia and Cappadocia were conquered, and Shapur returned to Iran with much booty. In the space of ten years, three shameful disasters had caused grief to the people: for the first time one of the Roman emperors had been killed in a defeat, another had fallen into enemy captivity, and the unity of the empire had been sacrificed to the necessity of facing attacks on several fronts simultaneously. Under these blows and the arbitrary selection and killing of emperors by soldiers the prestige of the empire was crumbling. The psychological forces that time gives an ordinary and obvious legitimacy gradually lost their effect on the enemies of Rome, and even on its subjects and citizens. Revolts broke out everywhere. In Sicily and Gaul the oppressed peasants rose in bloody and ruthless revolts. In Pannonia, Ingenuus proclaimed himself king of the eastern provinces. In 263 the Goths landed along the Ionian coast, plundered Ephesus, and burned the great temple of Artemis. The entire Hellenistic East was in terror and anxiety.

An unexpected ally in Asia saved the empire. Odenathus, who ruled in Palmyra as a Roman dependent, drove the Iranians back throughout Mesopotamia, defeated them at Ctesiphon in 261, and proclaimed himself king of Syria, Cilicia, Arabia, Cappadocia, and Armenia. He was killed in 266; his titles passed to his young son and his power to his widowed wife. Zenobia, like Cleopatra—whom she claimed as her ancestor—combined personal beauty with the competence of a statesman and several intellectual talents. She had studied Greek, literature, and philosophy. She learned Latin, Egyptian, and Syriac, and wrote a history of the East. Since she apparently combined chastity with strength she did not allow herself sexual relations except to the extent necessary for motherhood. She was accustomed to physical fatigues, loved the dangers of hunting, and walked kilometers of road on foot with her soldiers. She ruled decisively and wisely, made the philosopher Longinus her prime minister, gathered scholars, poets, and artists in her court, and adorned her capital with palaces in the styles of Greece, Rome, and Asia. The ruins of these palaces still amaze tourists and travelers of that desert today. Since Zenobia well sensed that the empire was heading toward destruction, she conceived the idea of founding a new dynasty and a new kingdom. She brought Cappadocia, Galatia, and most of Bithynia under her control, arranged a large land and sea force, opened Egypt, and captured Alexandria after a siege that resulted in the death of half its inhabitants. The “cunning queen of the East” claimed to be working for the benefit of Roman power, but everyone knew that her victories were in fact a veil for the sad and extensive drama of the fall of the Roman Empire.

The barbarians, seeing the wealth and weakness of the empire, turned to the Balkan provinces and Greece. While the Sarmatians plundered the cities on the Black Sea, a branch of the Goths with five hundred ships penetrated the Aegean through the Hellespont, took the islands one after another, landed at Piraeus, and in 267 plundered and destroyed Athens, Argos, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. At the same time their naval force returned some of the raiders to the Black Sea, and another group went overland toward their Danubian homeland. Gallienus met them beside the Nestos River in Thrace and won an expensive victory, but a year later his soldiers killed him. In 269 another horde of Goths landed in Macedonia, besieged Thessalonica, and plundered Greece, Rhodes, Cyprus, and the Ionian coast. Emperor Claudius II rescued Thessalonica from their clutches, drove the Goths back in the Vardar Valley, and defeated them with great slaughter at Naissus (the modern city) (269). Had he been defeated in this battle, no army could have kept the Goths away from Italy.

Economic Decline

Political chaos accelerated economic collapse, and economic decline fueled political decay. Each of the two was at once cause and effect of the other. Roman policy had never been able to provide a healthy economic life for Italy. Perhaps because the narrow plains of the Italian peninsula were never a suitable foundation for the ambitious goals of the Italian nation. Because of competition from cheap grain from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, people had no desire to produce cereals; and the large vineyards lost their markets in favor of the conquered provinces. Farmers complained that heavy taxes robbed them of their meager resources and left very little for repairing canals, drainage, and irrigation; the water of these canals rose, swamps took over the land, and malaria reduced the population of the suburbs of Rome and Rome itself. Vast fertile lands of the country were taken out of cultivation and turned into residential areas. The owners of latifundia, who were always absent, exploited others and the land as much as possible and excused themselves with philanthropic works in the cities; urban architecture, games, and competitions benefited from this situation while the villages became increasingly ruined. Many landowners who were themselves peasants and many free rural workers abandoned the fields and went to live in the cities, leaving Italian agriculture, most of which was in the form of latifundia, to uninterested slaves. But the latifundia themselves were heading toward ruin because of the Roman peace, the reduction of conquest wars in the first and second centuries, and consequently the decrease in the number and increase in the price of slaves. The great landowners, when forced to resort again to free labor for cultivation, divided their estates into units and rented them to coloni (cultivators). From these tenants they took a small cash income or one-tenth of the produce and also demanded a period of unpaid labor [corvée] in the owner’s house or on the private estate. In many cases it was to the advantage of the landowners to free their slaves and turn them into coloni. In the third century, the owners, tired of the multitude of enemy invasions and revolutions in the cities, turned more and more to residing in their country houses and gradually turned them into fortified castles that in time became medieval palaces.

The lack of slaves for a short time strengthened the position of free laborers, both in industry and in agriculture. But although war and the state destroyed the resources of the rich, nothing was reduced from the poverty of the poor. Compared with wages and prices at the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States, the wages of laborers were from six to eleven percent, and prices around thirty-three percent. Class struggle became more violent because the soldiers, formed from the poor of the conquered provinces, often joined attacks against the rich, and felt that the services they rendered to the country entitled them to take taxes as spoils and gifts or, more directly, to plunder the well-to-do. With the decline of trade, industry also suffered. Exports from Italy decreased because the conquered provinces, instead of being buyers, became more and more competitors with Italy in this field; barbarian raids and pirates made trade routes as unsafe as before Pompey. The devaluation of money and fluctuating prices caused people to have no desire for long-term plans and actions. Since the expansion of borders had stopped, Italian economy could no longer flourish through supplying needs or exploiting a developing territory. Previously Italy collected the money of the conquered countries and grew rich from this robbery; from then on money went toward the provinces with Greek culture and Italy became poor; the increasing wealth of Asia Minor required that an eastern capital replace Rome. The industrial products of Italy were pushed back to its domestic markets and the people were too poor to buy the goods they could produce. The existence of robbers, rising taxes, and the ruin of roads, which resulted from the lack of slaves, hindered trade. Palaces became more self-sufficient industrially, and barter competed with monetary exchange. Mass production year by year gave way to small shops that mainly met local demands.

Financial difficulties arose. Precious metals decreased: exploitation of the gold mines of Thrace and the silver mines of Spain had lessened and Dacia too, with its gold, would soon be handed over to others by Aurelian. Much gold and silver had been spent on arts and decorations. In the face of this scarcity, when war was almost constant, the emperors, from the time of Septimius Severus, repeatedly changed the rate of coinage to pay government expenses and military supplies. In Nero’s time the fineness of the Roman denarius was ten percent; in Commodus’s reign thirty percent; and in Septimius’s time fifty percent. Caracalla replaced it with the “Antoninianus” which had fifty percent silver. Around the year 260 this rate reached a low. The government minted unprecedented quantities of worthless money. In many cases the government set a compulsory rate for the nominal value of its cash and at the same time wanted taxes to be in kind or paid in gold. Prices rose rapidly. In Palestine, between the first and third centuries, the price increase was one thousand percent. In Egypt inflation had gone so far that a measure of flour that cost eight drachmas in the first century was worth 120,000 drachmas at the end of the third century. The other conquered provinces were far less distressed, but in general inflation in most of them destroyed most of the middle class, neutralized and rendered ineffective the loan funds and charitable endowments, caused despair in all kinds of commerce, and destroyed a considerable part of the investment funds and commercial capital on which the economic life of the empire depended.

After Pertinax the emperors were not displeased to see that the nobility and bourgeoisie had thus been damaged. They felt the hostility of the senatorial class and the great merchants with their foreign origin, military despotism, and their own severity. The war between the Senate and the emperor, which had ceased from the time of Nerva to Marcus Aurelius, was resumed. Governors with gifts, distribution of funds, and public works deliberately based their authority on the favor of the army, the poor, and the peasants.

The empire suffered less only in comparison with Italy. Carthage and North Africa, which were farther from the invaders, flourished, but Egypt declined because of destructive sectarianism, Caracalla’s massacre, Zenobia’s conquest, heavy taxation, forced labor without interest, and Rome’s annual demand for grain. Asia Minor and Syria had endured invasion and plunder, but the old and long-standing industries of these two countries had remained stable amid all hardships. Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace had been devastated by the barbarians, and Byzantium had not emerged unscathed from Septimius’s siege. War, by drawing Roman garrisons and resources to the German border, caused the emergence of new cities like Vienna, Karlsburg, Strasbourg, and Mainz along the rivers. Gaul was in disarray and discouraged by the attacks of the Germans, who had plundered sixty of its cities; most Gallic cities were surrounded by new walls and the wide streets, which had been laid out in the Roman style, disappeared and were replaced by irregular alleys that were easier to defend—like antiquity and the Middle Ages. In Britain too the cities became smaller and the palaces larger. Because of class struggle and heavy taxes and duties, wealth either disappeared or was hidden in the villages. The empire had begun with urbanization and the promotion of civilization, and now ended with a return to rural life and barbarism.

The Half-Light of Paganism

The cultural chart of the third century follows almost the same downward curve as wealth and power. Nevertheless, in these gloomy years of literal compulsion (parametric), the greatest names in the field of Roman law, the most beautiful examples of ancient literary criticism, several historical monuments from the most magnificent works of Roman architecture, the oldest romantic stories, and the greatest mystic appeared.

In the book “Anthology of Greek Literature” the life of Diophantus of Alexandria (250) is summarized with a algebraic jest as follows: his childhood lasted one-sixth of his life, after one-twelfth his beard began to grow, after another one-seventh he married, his son was born five years later and lived half the life of his father, the father died four years after his son, so Diophantus lived eighty-four years. The major work left by him is the book “Arithmetic,” which is a treatise on algebra and solves certain equations of the first degree, certain equations of the second degree, and indeterminate equations up to the sixth degree. The unknown quantity, which we denote by X, he called “arithmos” meaning number and marked it with the Greek letter sigma; and for other powers he used the Greek alphabet. An algebra without symbols also existed before him: Plato recommended for the exercise and amusement of young minds problems such as distributing apples in certain proportions among several people; and Archimedes in the third century BC had proposed similar puzzles. Egyptians and Greeks had solved geometry problems with algebraic methods but without using algebraic parameters. Probably Diophantus only systematized the methods familiar to his contemporaries; and chance preserved them. Thus, through the works of Arab algebraists, one can trace the history of the mysterious and bold notation that seeks to express all quantitative relations of the world with formulas up to Diophantus.

Papinian, Paul, and Ulpian, the proud triangle of Roman law, all rose to power in the time of Septimius Severus. All three, as commanders of the imperial guards, were in fact prime ministers of the country, and all three justified absolute monarchical government as the delegation of sovereignty from the people to the emperor. The “Questions” and “Answers” of Papinian were so distinguished in clarity, humanity, and justice that Justinian adopted many of them in his collections. When Caracalla killed Geta, he ordered Papinian to write a legal defense of this murder. Papinian refused and said: “Fratricide is easier to commit than to justify.” Caracalla ordered his head cut off. A soldier performed this with an axe in the presence of the emperor. Domitius Ulpian, as a jurist, continued Papinian’s work with the same spirit of humanity. By virtue of his legal opinions he defended slaves as naturally free and women as having the same rights as men. Like many outstanding works in the history of law, Ulpian’s writings were essentially a systematization of his predecessors’ works; but his rulings were so decisive that almost one-third of them appear in Justinian’s “Digest of Laws.” Lampridius says: “Since Alexander Severus basically ruled by following Ulpian’s views, the empire was so outstanding.” Nevertheless, Ulpian killed several of his enemies, and in return in 228 his enemies in the imperial guard killed him; although the legality of his murder was not equal to that of his killings, it was the result of the same. Diocletian encouraged law schools and gave them financial aid. He ordered the laws enacted after Trajan to be compiled in the “Gregorian Code.” From this time until the age of Justinian jurisprudence fell into a winter sleep.

Painting in the third century continued with the styles of Pompeii and Alexandria. The few works that remain from this period are Eastern and crude, and time has almost erased them. Sculpture flourished because many emperors ordered their statues to be made. In this age sculpture was confined to portraiture, but it reflected reality in a way that is astonishing and no age has surpassed it in this respect. That Caracalla allowed a sculptor to portray him with the face of a fierce savage with curly hair, as seen in the Naples Museum, must be counted among Caracalla’s good deeds, unless it indicates his dullness. Two colossal statues belong to this period: the “Farnese Bull” and the “Farnese Hercules,” both exaggerated and unpleasantly stiff, but showing a pristine technical mastery. Apparently some sculptors also remained faithful to the classical style, like the simple reliefs of the sarcophagus of Alexander Severus and the “Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus.” But the reliefs of the Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome set aside the simplicity and grace of the Athenian style in favor of a harsh and prominent masculinity that is a sign of Italy’s return to barbarism.

Roman architecture in this age brought the Roman instinct for grandeur to perfection by enlarging dimensions. Septimius built his last imperial palace on the Palatine Hill with a seven-story eastern wing known as the “Seven Halls.” Julia Domna provided the necessary funds for the “Vestals’ Court” and for the beautiful temple of Vesta, which is still seen at the top of the Forum. Caracalla built a temple for Serapis, companion of Isis, of which interesting fragments still exist. The Baths of Caracalla, completed in the time of Alexander Severus, are among the most astonishing ruins of the world. This building added nothing to architectural science, since it basically followed the style of Trajan’s baths, but its crowded mass well reflected the character of Geta’s killer and Papinian’s. Its main part, which was of brick and mortar, had an area of ninety thousand square meters, that is, more than the total floor area of the Palace of Parliament of England and Westminster Hall. A winding staircase led to the top of the walls. It was here that Shelley later wrote “Prometheus Unbound.” Its interior was decorated with many statues and had two hundred columns of granite, white marble, and porphyry. Scenes with mosaics were set in the floor and marble walls. Water poured from very large silver spouts into pools in which sixteen hundred people could bathe together. Gallienus and Decius also built such baths. For Decius’s baths, Roman engineers built a round dome on a ten-sided building and supported it on piles that were placed in the angles of the decagon. This method was not very common before, but later became more widespread. In 295 Maximinus began building the largest “baths” from eleven royal baths, and with strange humility named them the “Baths of Diocletian.” In these baths three thousand six hundred people could bathe at the same time. Gymnasiums, concert halls, and lecture halls were also built. It was from the “tepidarium” (the part of the large Roman baths for bathing with lukewarm water) of these baths that Michelangelo designed Santa Maria degli Angeli, which after St. Peter’s is the largest church in Rome. In the conquered provinces too buildings were constructed that were no less grand than these. Diocletian created many buildings in Nicomedia, Alexandria, and Antioch. Maximinus adorned Milan; Galerius, Sirmium; and Constantius, Trier.

Literature had less flourishing because it often could not use the wealth concentrated in the hands of the emperor. Libraries at least in number and size were increasing. A third-century physician had a collection of sixty-two thousand books and the “Ulpian Library” was famous for its historical archives. Diocletian sent scholars to Alexandria to copy classical texts there and bring their copies to the libraries of Rome. Scholars were also numerous and enjoyed popular popularity. Philostratus in his work “Lives of the Sophists” mentions them. Porphyry continued Plotinus’s work, attacked Christianity, and invited the world to vegetarianism. Iamblichus tried to harmonize Plato’s philosophy with pagan theology, and was successful enough in this field to inspire Emperor Julian. Diogenes Laertius turned the biographies and opinions of philosophers into very interesting excerpts and stories. Athenaeus of Naucratis, after reading all the books of the libraries of Alexandria, gathered his knowledge in a work called “Sophists at the Table” which is a tedious conversation about foods, sauces, courtesans, philosophers, and words, but occasionally describes ancient customs or recalls a great man that gives charm to the book. Longinus, who was probably from Palmyra, wrote a brilliant work called “On the Sublime.” In this book he argues that the special pleasure of literature results from the ecstasy that the author’s eloquence gives to the reader, and the author’s eloquence itself stems from the strength of his conviction and the purity of his character.

Dio Cassius Cocceianus, from Nicaea in Bithynia, began writing “Roman History” at the age of fifty (210?). When he finished it he was seventy-four years old; this work consisted of the history of Rome from the time of Romulus to his own time. Less than half of the eighty books of this history remain, but even this half is enough to fill eight thick volumes. This work has a wide scope but is not excellent in quality. It contains vivid narratives, enlightening speeches, and philosophical parenthetical sentences, most of which are not banal or conservative. But like the works of Livy it has been deformed by “prophecies.” Dio, like Tacitus, gives a detailed eulogy of the senatorial minority and, like all Roman histories, his storytelling is closely linked to the ups and downs of politics and war—as if life for a thousand years had been nothing but death and taxes.

For the historian of ideas what is more important than these honorable and proud men is the emergence of the romantic novel in this century. The romantic novel had undergone a long preparation with Xenophon’s “Cyropaedia,” Callimachus’s love poems, numerous legends about Alexander, and the “Milesian Tales” of Aristides and others in the second century BC and after that period. These love stories and adventurous tales greatly pleased the Ionian population of Rome who had classical traditions but whose temperament was Eastern, and perhaps now also Eastern in blood. Petronius in Rome, Apuleius in Africa, Lucian in Greece, and Iamblichus in Syria developed the picaresque novel in various ways without giving special emphasis to love. In the first century AD, with the increase in the number of women readers, love adventures also entered adventurous novels.

The oldest example existing in this field is the “Aethiopica” or “Egyptian Tales” by Heliodorus of Emesa. Opinions differ about the date of its writing, but we can tentatively attribute it to the third century. It begins with a style that commands respect because of its antiquity:

The day had begun its joyful smile and the sun was lighting the tops of the hills when a group of armed men resembling pirates who had climbed to the crest of the ridge overlooking the Heracleotic mouth of the Nile River stood and looked at the sea. When they saw no sail that could give them hope of taking spoils, they turned their eyes toward the shore that was beneath their feet and saw the following.

Then without introduction we meet the wealthy and handsome young man Theagenes and the lovable and tearful princess Chariclea. These two have been captured by pirates and among them so many unfortunate events, misunderstandings, battles, murders, and marriages occur that it could serve as the basis for a successful modern novel. In the works of Petronius and Apuleius the chastity of girls is a matter of no importance and is only touched upon in passing, whereas in this story this point is the axis and basis of the tale. Heliodorus in this story always preserves Chariclea’s virginity in the last moment during a series of events and writes convincing religious sermons about the beauty and necessity of chastity in woman. Probably this work was to some extent influenced by Christianity, and in fact narrators raised its author to the rank of Christian bishop of Thessalonica. In any case the “Aethiopica” unconsciously brought in its wake an endless series of similar stories: in fact this story became the model for Cervantes’s “Persiles and Sigismunda,” the story of Clorinda in Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” and the lengthy novels of Madame de Scudéry. In this book all the sweetnesses, tokens, laments and wailings, and fainting and weaknesses of love, and the happy endings of thousands upon thousands of charming stories have come; this book is a “Clarissa Harlowe” 1500 years before Richardson.

The most famous love story in ancient prose is “Daphnis and Chloe.” We know nothing of its author except his name, Longus, and we only guess that he lived in the third century. Daphnis, who was abandoned at birth, is rescued and raised by a shepherd. Daphnis himself becomes a shepherd. Many excellent parts in the description of villages lead the reader to think that Longus, like his model the Greek poet Theocritus, went to the village after a long stay in the city. Daphnis falls in love with a peasant girl who was also abandoned in childhood. These two tend their flocks with delightful friendship. They swim naked together innocently, then with a sudden kiss they intoxicate each other. An old neighbor explains to them why they have had fever since then, and tells them from his own youth and from the disease of passionate love. “I was not thinking of eating, nor caring for drinking, I could not rest, I had no sleep. My soul was weary with grief and sorrow. My heart was beating fast, a deadly cold seized my limbs.” Finally their fathers, who have now become wealthy, find these two lovers and free them from poverty. But Daphnis and Chloe do not accept and return to their humble shepherd life. This story, which was translated into elegant French by Amyot in 1559, became the model for Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s “Paul and Virginia” and inspired countless paintings, poems, and songs.

Similar to this work is a poem known as “The Vigil of Venus.” No one knows by whom or in what date this poem was composed, probably it belongs to this same third century. Its subject is the same as Lucretius’s address and Longus’s novel: the goddess of love, by igniting every living thing with an unmeasured passion, is the true creator of the world:

Tomorrow let him who has never loved love; tomorrow let him who has loved in the past love.

Sweet spring has come and sung the song of love;

the world has been born anew, and spring love

urges birds to mating, and all the waiting groves

open their hair under the spring rains.

Tomorrow let him who has never loved love,

and let him who has loved in the past love.

And thus these pure verses flow and seek the effect of love in fertilizing rain, in the shapes of flowers, in the songs of joyful festivals, in the clumsy efforts of eager youths, and in shy rendezvous in the groves and after each stanza repeat this charming and meaningful refrain: “Tomorrow let him who has never loved love, tomorrow let him who has loved in the past love.” In this last great lyric order of the pre-Christian era the strong-weak disyllabic rhythm of medieval hymns is seen and is heard as a melodious prelude to the art of the troubadours.

The Eastern Monarchy

When Claudius II died of the plague that was raging among the Goths and Romans in 270, the soldiers chose the son of an Illyrian peasant as his successor; this man was named Domitius Aurelian, and had risen from the lowest ranks through his physical strength and strength of will. His nickname was “Hand on Sword.” The choice of a man as emperor who expected the same strict discipline from others that he himself observed was a sign of the revival of common sense in the army.

Under his leadership the enemies of Rome were driven back everywhere except beside the Danube. There Aurelian gave Dacia to the Goths, hoping that in this region they would serve as a barrier between the empire and the wild tribes beyond the borders. Probably the Alamanni and Vandals became bold as a result of this surrender and therefore invaded Italy. But Aurelian defeated and routed them in three battles. Since he intended more distant campaigns and feared that they might attack Rome in his absence, he persuaded the Senate to bear the cost of erecting new walls around the capital, and urged the guilds to build them. High walls were built in all the cities of the empire, and this was a sign of the weakness of imperial power and the end of the famous Roman peace.

Aurelian, preferring attack to defense, decided to revive the empire by attacking Zenobia in the East and then Tetricus, who had succeeded Postumus as usurper in Gaul. While his general Probus recovered Egypt from Zenobia’s son, Aurelian passed through the Balkans and then the Hellespont, defeated the queen’s troops at Emesa, and besieged her capital. Zenobia tried to flee and seek help from Iran, but was captured; the city surrendered and was spared, but Longinus was killed (272). When the emperor was leading his troops toward the Hellespont, the people of Palmyra revolted and massacred the garrison he had placed there. The emperor, with Caesarean speed, turned back, besieged the city again, and quickly took it; this time he ordered it plundered, leveled its walls, destroyed its trade, and left it as a deserted village, which it was before and is today. Zenobia with golden chains adorned the triumph of Aurelian in Rome, and was allowed to spend the rest of her life in relative freedom in Tibur.

Aurelian defeated Tetricus at Chalon in 274 and restored Gaul, Spain, and Britain to the empire. Rome, happy at regaining its lofty position, cheered this conqueror as “restorer of the world” and blessed him. Aurelian then turned to peacetime affairs, restored some economic order by reforming Roman money, reorganized the government, and applied the same discipline that had revived the army to that organization. Since he considered the moral and political chaos of Rome to some extent due to religious division, and since he was influenced by the political services of religion in the East, he attempted to unify the old and new beliefs in the monotheistic cult of the sun god and the worship of the emperor as his representative on earth. He informed his soldiers and the Senate, which expressed doubt about this, that God had made him emperor, not their choice or approval. In Rome he built a magnificent temple for the sun, hoping that there the Baal of Emesa and the god of Mithraism would merge. Monarchical government and monotheism advanced side by side, and each sought to rely on the other. Aurelian’s religious policy indicated that the power of the state was declining and the power of religion was rising. Kings from then on were kings by divine favor. This was the Eastern concept of government that had long been prevalent in Egypt, Iran, and Syria. By accepting it Aurelian strengthened the Eastern aspect of monarchy, which had begun with Elagabalus and would reach its perfection in the time of Diocletian and Constantine.

In 275, while Aurelian was campaigning from Thrace to settle accounts with Iran, a group of his officers, who mistakenly thought he intended to execute them, killed him. The army, horrified by its repeated crimes, asked the Senate to appoint a successor for him. No one desired such an honor that so regularly led to death. Finally Tacitus, who was seventy-five years old, consented to this heavy duty. This man claimed to be descended from the famous historian and well embodied all the virtues that that pessimistic and concise-speaking historian preached. But he died of old age after six months of reign. The guards, repentant of their repentance, regained the privilege of force and chose Probus as emperor (276 AD).

This was an excellent choice and Probus deserved this name, for he surpassed his peers in bravery and purity. This man drove the Germans out of Gaul, freed Illyria from the trouble of the Vandals, built a wall between the Rhine and the Danube, frightened the Iranians with a word, and established peace and tranquility throughout the empire. Then he pledged to his people to make sure that there would be no more weapons, armies, or wars and that law would rule over the whole earth. As a prelude to this utopia, he forced his soldiers to cultivate the devastated provinces, drain swamps, plant vines, and perform other public works. The soldiers were outraged, killed him in 282, mourned him, and built a monument in his name.

Then Diocles, the son of a freed slave from Dalmatia, was proclaimed emperor. This person, who thereafter called himself Diocletian, had risen to the rank of consul, proconsul, and commander of the palace guard through his brilliant talents and cautious considerations. He was a man of genius who had no skill in war but was expert in statesmanship. He ascended the throne after a period of chaos worse than the anarchy between the time of the Gracchi brothers and the time of Antoninus. Like Augustus he reconciled all parties, preserved and protected all borders, expanded the role of the state, and based the administration of the country on the aid and sanction of religion. Augustus created the empire; Aurelian saved it; and Diocletian renewed its organization.

His first vital decision revealed the condition of the country and the decline of Rome. He removed the capital from Rome and established the headquarters of the empire in Nicomedia, located in Asia Minor a few kilometers south of Byzantium. The Senate remained in Rome, the consuls continued to hold ceremonies, races were held there, the crowded masses of people were still there, but power and administration had left this center of economic and moral decline. Diocletian justified this change on the basis of military necessity. It was necessary to defend Europe and Asia. This task could not be accomplished from a city that was very far away and located south of the Alps. In 286 he made a very capable general named Maximian his partner in the empire and assigned him to defend the west. Maximian too made not Rome but Milan his capital. Six years later, to make administration and defense easier, each of the two Augusti chose a “Caesar” as assistant and successor: Diocletian chose Galerius, who also made Sirmium (Mitrovica beside the Sava River) his capital and was responsible for the Danubian provinces; and Maximian appointed Constantius Chlorus (the Pale) to this position and he made Augusta Treverorum (Trier) his capital. Each Augustus undertook to abdicate in favor of his Caesar after twenty years, and the Caesar would appoint another Caesar to be in turn his assistant and successor. Each Augustus gave his daughter in marriage to the Caesar and thus added blood ties to legal ties. In this way Diocletian hoped to avoid wars of succession and keep the empire on alert at four strategic points against internal revolts and external attacks. This was a clever arrangement that had all virtues except unity and freedom.

Monarchical government was divided but absolute. Every law of every ruler was announced in the name of all four and was valid throughout the empire. The commands of the rulers immediately became law without needing the approval of the Roman Senate; all government officials were appointed by the four rulers; a vast bureaucracy sank its claws into the country’s territory. To strengthen the apparatus further, Diocletian turned the worship of the “genius” of the emperor into the worship of himself as the manifestation of Jupiter on earth, while Maximian was content with humility to be Hercules. Wisdom and power had descended from heaven to establish order and tranquility on earth. Diocletian wore a diadem that was a band decorated with white and pearl embroidery and wore clothes of gold-embroidered silk. His shoes were adorned with precious stones. He lived apart from others at the end of his palace. Those who wanted to see him had to pass through eunuchs of ceremony and titled curtain-bearers, in fact through a filter, had to kneel and kiss the hem of his imperial cloak. Diocletian was a clever man and undoubtedly laughed in private life at all these myths and ceremonies, but his monarchy lacked the sanction of time and he hoped to base it on a foundation, and by giving himself a divine aspect and completely religious prestige to prevent the rebellion of the common people and the revolts of the soldiers. Aurelius Victor says: “He called himself Dominus (Lord), but his behavior was paternal.” This acceptance of Eastern despotism by the son of a slave, this likening of king and god was a sign of the final severance and defeat of the foundations of the ancient republic and the abandonment of the results of Marathon; and, like the age of Alexander the Great, a return to the theories of the courts of the Achaemenids, Egyptians, Ptolemies, Arsacids, and Sasanians. The structure of the Byzantine and European monarchy until the French Revolution was taken from this Eastern monarchy. All that remained was to link the Eastern monarchy in an Eastern capital with an Eastern cult. With Diocletian Byzantinism (the style of Byzantine government) began.

Diocletian’s Socialism

Diocletian set to work with Caesarean force to renew every aspect of the state. He transformed the aristocracy by promoting many civil and military officials to the aristocratic class and turning them into a hereditary stratum with a completely Eastern hierarchy, numerous titles and epithets, and complex ceremonies. He and his colleagues divided the empire into ninety-six provinces that were grouped into seventy-two bishoprics and four commands, and appointed civil and military heads for each province. This was an openly centralized government that looked upon local autonomy like democracy as a luxury resulting from security and peace, and used the necessities of war in progress or imminent as an excuse for its dictatorship. The wars were pursued with brilliant successes. Constantius subdued rebellious Britain. Galerius defeated the Iranians so badly that they surrendered Mesopotamia and five conquered provinces beyond the Tigris. For one generation the enemies of Rome were put in their place.

In the years of peace Diocletian and his assistants faced the problems resulting from economic decline. To overcome stagnation and prevent revolution, he replaced the law of supply and demand with a planned economy. He put sound money into circulation whose weight and purity of gold in the coins were guaranteed. This money preserved these characteristics until 1453 in the Eastern Empire. He distributed foodstuffs among the poor, either free or at half the market price of food, and resorted to extensive public works to combat unemployment. To ensure supplies for cities and the army he placed many branches of industry under complete government supervision and began this work with the import of grain; he forced ship owners, merchants, and employees of merchant ships to accept this supervision; in return, the government guaranteed their jobs and income. For a long time the government had most stone quarries, salt works, and metal mines in its possession. From then on the export of salt, iron, gold, wine, wheat, or oil from Italy was prohibited and the import of these products was regulated.

Foundations that worked for the army, administrations, or the court came under supervision. The government demanded a minimum specified production from munitions factories, textile mills, and bakeries, bought it at the price it deemed appropriate, and made the manufacturers’ associations responsible for executing the orders and producing the goods with the required specifications. If this method did not yield the desired result, the factory was completely nationalized and workers tied to their profession were employed there. In the time of Aurelian and Diocletian, gradually the majority of industrial enterprises and institutions in Italy came under guild government supervision. Butchers, bakers, builders, manufacturers, glassmakers, blacksmiths, engravers were subject to detailed government regulations. Rostovtzeff says: “The various institutions were more like overseers of their own affairs on behalf of the government than owners of them; and they were under the subjection of employees of various departments and heads of various military units.” The guilds and craftsmen’s associations had various privileges from the government and often put pressure on government policy; in return, they worked as organs of national administration, provided labor for government affairs, and collected taxes from their members on behalf of the government. Similar government supervision methods were extended in the late third and early fourth centuries to the arms, food, and clothing industries of the provinces as well. Paul Louis says: “In every conquered province special procurators inspected industrial activities. In every large city the government became the most powerful employer, a head and shoulders above private industrial lords who were crushed under the burden of taxes and duties.”

Such a system could not work without supervision over prices. In 301 Diocletian and his colleagues issued an “Edict on Prices” that set the legal maximum price for all goods and wages for important works in the empire. Its preface attacks profiteers who have withdrawn certain goods from the market in “an economy based on famine and inflation” to raise their prices:

Who is there… who has so little humanity as not to see that exorbitant prices have become customary in the markets of our cities, and that the lust for profit is not diminished by abundant food nor by plentiful years? — so that… wicked men consider abundance and plenty a disaster for themselves. There are men whose aim is to reduce public welfare and comfort… and to profit through ruinous usury… Greed rages throughout the world…. Wherever our soldiers necessarily set foot for public security, profiteers raise prices not only to four or eight times the usual level but to a degree beyond imagination. Sometimes a soldier’s work reaches the point where he is forced to spend all his pay and bonus in one purchase. Thus the aid of all the world for maintaining the armies turns into shameful profits that flow into the pockets of these thieves.

This edict is the most famous example up to our time of an attempt to replace economic laws with government decrees. The failure of this program was swift and complete. Merchants hid their stocks, inflation intensified further. Diocletian himself was accused of implicitly causing the price increase. Revolts occurred, and it became necessary to reduce the severity of the edict so that production and distribution could resume their normal flow. Finally Constantine abolished this edict.

The weakness of this planned economy was that it was very expensive administratively. The number of clerical staff needed for this work was so large that Lactantius—certainly with political competence—estimated it as equal to half the population. The officials found their task for human decency beyond their power, and their supervision was too sporadic to overcome the deceit and trickery of the people. To cover the cost of bureaucracy, justice, the army, the building program, and the distribution of goods, taxes and duties reached an unprecedented dizzying height. Since the government was not yet familiar with the issue of resorting to public loans to hide its bankruptcy and postpone its obvious revelation, the expenses of each year’s work had to be met with the revenues of the same year. To avoid collecting revenues in the form of money, which was constantly losing value, Diocletian decided, wherever possible, to collect taxes in kind: taxpayers had to bring their quota to government warehouses, and again a vast organization was created to deliver the goods to the final destination. In every municipality the decurions or municipal officials were financially responsible for any decrease in the estimated tax payment for their neighborhood or area.

Since every taxpayer was trying to escape taxes, the government arranged a special tax police force to determine the amount of assets and income of each individual. Women, children, and slaves were tortured to reveal the hidden wealth or incomes of the family; and heavy punishments were imposed for every evasion or dodge. At the end of the third century, and more in the fourth century, tax evasion in the empire became an almost epidemic disease. Well-to-do persons hid their assets, local nobles presented themselves as members of the lowly or weak class to avoid being chosen for municipal jobs. Craftsmen fled their work, landowners who were peasants abandoned their properties because of the heavy burden of taxes and went to work as wage laborers. Many villages and towns (including Tiberias in Palestine) became depopulated because of heavy duties and taxes. At the end of the fourth century thousands of individuals fled beyond the borders to seek refuge with the barbarians.

Probably to stop this expensive movement, and to ensure proper food supplies for the soldiers and cities, and also to collect the taxes necessary for the country, Diocletian took measures that in fact led to the establishment of serfdom in the countryside, factories, and guilds. Since landowners, through the in-kind tax quota, were responsible for the production level of their tenants, the government ordered that the tenant must remain compulsorily on the estate until he paid his unpaid debts or tithes. We do not know the date of this historic decree, but a law that Constantine enacted in 332 considered it still in force and confirmed it, and considered the tenant tied to the land he cultivated; the tenant could not leave the land without the owner’s permission. When the land was sold, the tenant and his family were also sold with it. In this regard history shows no protest from the tenant. Perhaps this law was presented to them as a guarantee of their security, as is done in Germany today. In any case, with this arrangement and other methods, agriculture in the third century passed from the stage of slavery through freedom to the stage of serfdom and entered the Middle Ages.

Similar compulsory stabilization methods were also applied in industries. The workforce was “frozen” in its job, and changing profession without government permission was prohibited. Every association or guild was tied to its craft or duty, and no one had the right to leave the guild in which he was registered. Membership in this or that guild was compulsory for all who traded or were engaged in industry. The son was obliged to continue his father’s work. Whenever someone wanted to change his place or his occupation, the government reminded him that Italy was besieged by barbarians and therefore everyone must stay in his post.

In 305, in very magnificent ceremonies held in Nicomedia and in Milan, Diocletian and Maximian abdicated, and Galerius and Constantius Chlorus became emperors, one emperor of the East and the other of the West. Diocletian, who was then over fifty-five years old, took refuge in his very vast palace in Spalato and spent the last eight years of his life there watching the dissolution of his four-man government, which had fallen into civil war, without interfering in it. When Maximian pressed him to regain power and stop the struggle, he replied that if Maximian saw the beautiful word he had planted in his garden, he would not ask him to sacrifice this pleasure for the worries and fatigues of rule.

Comfort and the cabbage field were his right. He had put an end to half a century of chaos, re-established the state and law, given stability to industries and security to trade, and tamed Iran and silenced the barbarians. Despite the few murders he committed, on the whole he was a faithful legislator and just judge. He undoubtedly created an expensive bureaucracy; he destroyed local economy; he severely punished opponents; he persecuted the Church, which could have been an effective ally for him in public peace and order; and he turned half the population of the empire into a class society with illiterate peasants on one side and absolute monarchy on the other. But the situation Rome faced did not allow a policy based on liberality. Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus had tried this and failed. Since the Roman country faced enemies from all sides, it did what all nations are forced to do in decisive wars. Despotism accepted the strong leader, paid taxes beyond all endurance, and set aside individual freedom to provide collective freedom. Diocletian had repeated Augustus’s work at a higher price and in a harder situation. His contemporaries and successors, knowing what fate they had escaped, called him “the father of the golden age.” Constantine entered the house that Diocletian had built.