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Vespasian, devoted to work,
born 9 CE, died
79 CE
Titus, son of Vespasian,
born 39 CE, died 81 CE
The historian Tacitus, 56 to 117 CE
Trajan, lived from 53 to 117 CE, considered balanced.
Plutarch: "The mind is not a vessel
to be filled but
a fire to be kindled."
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, philosopher
His no-good son, Commodus
Severus, killed would-be opponents
and founded a murderous dynasty
Emperor Caracalla
resorted to
acts
that a
politician
would not
take in a democracy
The Emperor Varius Avitus (Elagabalus)
A critical time had arisen in Rome's history. Who or what was to replace Nero? It would not be another member of the family of Augustus. Nor would the Senate assume power in an effort to bring back the Republic. Instead, power was allowed to remain with military men. This began with the army of Servius Galba. Encouraged by their success in overthrowing Nero, soldiers under Galba arrogated to themselves the power to declare their commander emperor, and the Senate cooperated, conferring imperial powers on Galba.
Servius Galba, aged seventy-one, had a distinguished record as a military commander, but he did not know how to maintain political power. He began his reign viewed by many as a savior. Then he narrowed his support. He punished those who did not support his taking power, and he surrounded himself with advisors who managed to alienate more people. Galba tried to correct the misrule of Nero by restoring Rome's finances and restoring discipline to the military. His frugality alienated more Romans and military men, and he responded to their displeasure by complaining that he was the kind who levied troops, not bribed them for their support. Galba announced that he had adopted someone as his heir and failed to pay the Praetorian Guard the donation that it had come to expect for supporting a new emperor. A thirty-seven year-old senator, Otho, conspired to replace Galba, and Otho offered the Praetorian Guard the donation that it expected. Otho won the guard's support and the support of others. On January 15, 69, Galba was cut down in the street by guardsmen on horseback. His close associates were murdered soon after. And the Senate proclaimed Otho emperor.
Otho's rule went unrecognized among soldiers in Germany, who followed the precedent laid down by Galba's troops and hailed as emperor their own commander: Vitellius. Vitellius had become popular with his troops by having allowed them to bully civilians and to take anything they could get their hands on. Vitellius and his army marched toward Rome, and along the way they battled troops from Rome that supported Otho. Vitellius won. Otho committed suicide after only three months in office, and Vitellius marched into Rome as conqueror and as Rome's new emperor.
Vitellius did not know how to hold on to political power. He was unpopular with everyone but his troops. He executed everyone he believed had wronged him. His bloodbath disgusted the Romans, and picking up on Vitellius' unpopularity, another army selected its military commander to put things straight in Rome. That commander was Flavius Vespasian, aged sixty, who had led Rome's recent campaign against the uprising in Judea. Vespasian and his army marched on Rome. They found Vitellius hiding in the palace. Vitellius was taken to the Forum, and there the crowds ridiculed him before someone stabbed him to death.
By hard work, Vespasian had risen from small-town, middleclass origins. He was a tough, coarse-talking commander with an earthy humor and wit. He was impatient with incompetence but generally good natured. Vespasian offered Rome political stability. Whereas Nero had lowered taxes to win favor from the masses, Vespasian raised taxes. And he spent little on himself and restored Rome's treasury. He improved management of the courts, and court cases began to be handled more quickly. He invested in public works and started the empire on a course of economic prosperity. He built new temples, ostensibly to please the gods, and he began work on a new colosseum, the ruins of which are still in Rome, on the site where Nero had begun building his great mansion.
Vespasian worked long hours. He had lost his wife and daughter early in his military career, and now he lived quietly with his mistress. He was not easily provoked into taking harsh actions against others, and he never used his power for selfish or petty purposes. If Tiberius had been smothered to death and Claudius poisoned, Vespasian was the first emperor since Augustus to have died of natural causes. After nine years as emperor, at the age of sixty-nine, he came down with the flu and died, and rule passed to his son, Titus.
Titus, had been his father's aide, and he had won the admiration of the Romans for his devotion to his father. Like his father, Titus was bright and good natured, and he became one of Rome's more popular emperors. But his rule was plagued by disasters not of his making. For years geologic pressure had been increasing under Mount Vesuvius, pressure had caused the great earthquake that had shaken Pompeii and adjacent Italian cities during the latter part of Nero's reign. On August 24, 79, Vesuvius erupted, the pressure blowing off the top of the mountain. Some Christians saw the eruption as God's vengeance against recent persecutions. Some Romans believed that the gods had begun the doomsday that they had long been expecting.
The eruption buried towns at the base of Vesuvius. Titus provided relief and rehabilitation programs for survivors, and he paid for much of it with his own money. Then came another great fire that burned Rome, followed by an epidemic of disease. Titus made great efforts to find a remedy for the epidemic and to comfort his subjects. Then, after having been in power only two years, Titus himself died of fever, and the Romans responded with more genuine grief than they had with the death of any previous emperor, including Augustus.
Titus was succeeded by his thirty year-old brother, Domitian, younger than Titus by eleven years. Domitian was a good administrator who skillfully managed the state's finances and contributed more to public construction. He insisted on each individual being protected by law, and he was concerned with morality. He wanted senators and their families and the equites (families of wealth from commerce) to behave according to accepted moral standards and to avoid scandals. He severely punished Vestal Virgins who had given into the temptation of sexual intercourse. He drove prostitutes from Rome's streets and enforced a law against what was considered unnatural sexual practices, including homosexuality. In the interest of children he outlawed their castration, which had been the practice of some religious cults. And he sought to end the buying and selling of eunuchs.
Domitian became impatient with criticism and dissent and fearful of opposition, which started him down the same path as the failed emperors. His brother Titus had acted against subversion, banning anarchists and cynic-philosophers from Rome, but he had done so with confidence about Rome's security. Domitian, on the other hand, drew the wrong lessons from Rome's history of plots, intrigues and political turmoil. He feared that subversion was about to get out of hand. He banned philosophers from Italy, and he overreacted when some soldiers stationed on the Rhine River revolted against his rule. The revolt was easily crushed, but he began a reign of terror against imagined traitors, including burning books and listening more to informers.
With the public, Domitian remained popular, as most people were not the target of his campaign against treason. But his zeal in weeding out enemies created fear among those who were close to power, and after seven years of rule, palace officials who felt threatened by his terror joined a conspiracy that led to his assassination - now a familiar way of recalling an emperor.
A new emperor had to be found, and Senators and palace officials, including those who had conspired against Domitian, hoped for consensus rather than civil war. They joined in selecting an interim ruler: a sixty-six year-old senior senator named Nerva, who had not taken part in the conspiracy against Domitian but had probably been aware of it.
Nerva began his rule by seeking a return of calm and confidence. He allowed philosophers and other critics to return to Italy and Rome. He assured senators that only with their concurrence would one of them be tried and executed. But quarrels erupted between Nerva and the Senate. Praetorian Guards threatened to punish Domitian's assassins, and, to hold onto power, Nerva sought allies in army generals. Under the shelter of these generals, Nerva was able to stay in power. And as these generals wished, Nerva adopted one of their own as his son and successor, a forty-four year-old commander named Trajan. Two years later, Nerva died, and Trajan became emperor.
Similar to Vespasian, Trajan was a good soldier and a man of talent. He was also a man of tolerance and courtesy, and he had a balanced mind. His first love was the army, and after two years as emperor he pursued his soldiering by launching a campaign of expansion north across the Danube River into the hills and forests of Dacia. The Romans equated Trajan's daring as self-confidence with that of Julius Caesar, and four years after he entered Dacia the Romans gave Trajan a victory celebration that was the longest and most expensive that Rome would ever have.
Soon Trajan expanded Roman rule into the Arabian Desert, which included an important trade route. Then came conflict with the Parthian Empire on the Roman Empire's eastern frontier. The Parthian king, Osroes, deposed an Armenian king and put a king of his choosing in his place. Trajan interpreted this as breaking an agreement with Rome, and he made the incident a cause for war. He drove the puppet king of the Parthians from Armenia, and in 114 he made that area part of the Roman Empire. Then in 115 he took advantage of a dynastic struggle among the Parthians and sent his forces into northern Mesopotamia. The Parthian king, Osroes, was facing a rival from Persia and was too busy to counter Trajan's move. Then Trajan captured Osroes' capital, Ctesiphon, his troops taking the Parthian throne of gold and making a prisoner of a daughter of Osroes. Osroes escaped east, and Trajan conquered to the Persian Gulf, where he saw ships setting sail to India and must have thought of Alexander's great empire.
Trajan hoped that division among the Parthians would help his position, but instead his invasion united most Parthian princes with Osroes. The Parthians counterattacked against the Romans in Mesopotamia. Suffering losses, Trajan began to withdraw, leaving Rome in control of only a finger of land protruding into Mesopotamia.
Trajan put down the uprising by Jews that had been encouraged by the Parthians, and he persecuted Christians. But Trajan favored applying the law against only those Christians about whom people complained, or Christians who had created disturbances, and he declared that the accused were to receive a proper trial in which they were able to face their accusers.
More significant from his point of view, during his nineteen years of rule he improved the empire's roads and harbors, he beautified Rome, and he provided support for the children of Rome's poor. And although the Senate continued to have little real power, Trajan consulted it and maintained its good will. The historian Tacitus - who lived during Trajan's reign - praised Trajan for restoring Rome's "old spirit," including the feeling that one could express oneself freely.
While returning from the East to Rome in 117, Trajan, at the age of sixty-five, became ill and died. He had chosen as his successor a soldier-intellectual and Rome's military governor to Syria: Hadrian. Hadrian traveled across the empire, stabilizing local governments, patronizing the arts and adding to the beautification of cities. He continued Trajan's policy regarding law and the treatment of Christians. He penalized those who mistreated their slaves. He kept the army at peak efficiency through constant training and unannounced inspections. He was an able military man and did not shrink from taking action in defense of the empire, but he saw Trajan's abandoning Augustus' opposition to expansion as a mistake. He withdrew Roman control from the territory that extended into Mesopotamia, letting the Parthians retake it. He sent Osroes' daughter back to her family and began a peace with the Parthians that was to last forty years. He strengthened the empire's frontiers by building walls: a continuous wooden wall along the Danube frontier, a wall along the Rhine River in northern Germany, and stone walls in Numidia and across the narrow, 73-mile northern neck across the island of Britannia. (Hadrian's wall in Britannia was ten feet thick and in most places 15 feet high.) Four generals were disappointed with Hadrian's retreat from military aggression, and they plotted to overthrow him. But Hadrian learned of their conspiracy before they attacked, and he had the generals executed.
The peace that Rome had established contributed to the prosperity of its empire. The Roman Empire was the largest area in the world without internal customs barriers. Its roads had improved. Private industry was regulated but government did not interfere much in the economy, and the empire had prospered from internal trade in agriculture and in crafted goods. From one end of the empire to the other were bountiful farms. Improvements had been made in medicine and public health, and across the empire were good hospitals. Trade from the empire reached as far east as China, the caravan route from Parthia to China having opened in the year 115. The empire's trade reached eastern Africa, and it passed out through the Strait of Gibraltar (between Mauritania and Spain) to as far north as Norway. Gaul and Western Germany had become the workshop of Europe. Gaul was busy with metal working. The city of Cologne had a glass blowing industry. The eastern provinces of the empire, including Greece, exercised age-old skills in technology and trade, and Greek businessmen had become the wealthiest in the empire.
Rome's common people were still illiterate. They were still unequal before the law. Those whom the police detained as suspects might be tortured as the police attempted to attain the truth. Despite the empire's prosperity many still lived in narrow streets, amid overcrowding, noise, dirt, and in tiny quarters, but their tenement houses were now likely to be of concrete faced with brick. Some of Rome's common people grumbled, while government welfare allowed them to survive in the city. But to most Romans the world seemed a better place and more civilized than before. Rome had a good water supply, domestic sanitation and sewage disposal. The city of Rome now matched some cities of the east in grandeur, and the Romans were proud of it.
Roman aristocrats were proud, but this was not the same aristocracy that Polybius and Livy had thought superior. That aristocracy was disappearing through intermarriage and out-of-wedlock births. And Rome's common people were also becoming more of a blend. About four-fifths of Rome's plebeians carried some genes of former slaves. Augustus' attempt at racial purity had failed.
Plutarch was a Greek. He was a Delphi priest, a popular writer and a moralist whose popularity allowed him to become the acquaintance of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. And he would influence Christians, who liked his opinions. He wrote 227 works, most of it historical biography, including sixty essays on religion, morality, physical matters and literature. It would be through Plutarch that people in the Middle Ages would learn about antiquity. Reading him would help stimulate the Renaissance. Shakespeare would draw from his biographies. He would be read by Michelangelo, Martin Luther, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Montaigne, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
In his historical biographies, Plutarch attempted to describenoble deeds and characters to provide models of behavior. He wrote believing that men were responsible for their acts and that they should be brave, decisive, courageous, benevolent, creative, flexible and have a manly dignity. He thought Alexander had been a great man who had lowered himself by lack of moderation and self-discipline. Others whose lives he described were: Romulus, Solon, Pericles, the Gracchi brothers, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar and Cicero. Writing about both Greeks and Romans he hoped to encourage respect between them.
Plutarch was a Platonist who believed in the "Creator's magnanimity and solicitude." He believed that evil was the work of demons and that demons had damaged God's perfect plan. The force of goodness, he believed, was greater than the force of evil. He believed that atheism led to vice and that sex should be for procreation only. Like Plato and Aristotle he believed that with death the soul separated from one's body and became purified. He found grounds for such a belief in the Dionysian mysteries, which were widely accepted in his time. As his wife faced death he consoled her by referring to these mysteries.
Plutarch believed that truth in religion was the product of the Greek and Roman traditions and that religions outside of these traditions were superstitions, that they were the product of people not using their intelligence in thinking about the gods. He saw as superstitious those who attributed to the gods a power that overrode their own will and responsibility, and he saw as superstitious those who believed in the traditional Greek gods opposed by Plato: gods who treated people capriciously. The superstitious person, Plutarch wrote, believed in gods because he was afraid not to.
Plutarch's belief in tradition included a tolerance for slavery and an acceptance of monarchy as the best form of government. Philosophically, he sided with the Stoics, but foreshadowing developments within Christianity he forgave human frailty more than did the Stoics. And as would many Christians, he described Epicureanism as pernicious.
Cynics were numerous during Rome's Golden Age and prosperity. One of the more widely known of them was Peregrinus, an excommunicated Christian from a wealthy family. Peregrinus studied in Egypt under the philosopher Agathobulus. To enhance his contempt for the world he submitted to various humiliations including public floggings. Peregrinus arrived in Rome and began criticizing everything and everybody. Soon, Rome's prefect told Peregrinus to leave the city, and Peregrinus went to Greece, where he called on Greeks to rebel against Rome. He lived in a hut and claimed that for the sake of honesty and justice one should avoid sin, that avoiding sin should be made easier by remembering that eventually everything is revealed.
Peregrinus decided to make a show of his inner strength and defiance by announcing to a crowd outside the Olympic games in Greece that at the next games he would burn himself to death. With the approach of the games, the prospect of Peregrinus killing himself added to the excitement. In a solemn procession followed by a large crowd, the 65 year-old Peregrinus marched to his chosen execution site. Stripped to his dirty undershirt, Peregrinus cried out "Be gracious to me, gods of my father and my mother." Then he jumped into the flames.
Peregrinus' followers were deeply moved. Some claimed that they saw a vulture fly from his flames to Olympus. Some of his followers claimed that they saw Peregrinus after death, dressed in white, walking happily with a crown of ivy on his head. Peregrinus became a new Cynic saint around which a cult developed. Some others responded to Peregrinus' death with disgust, saying he was a lunatic driven by hunger for publicity and that he deserved to die.
In response to Peregrinus, a Greek writer named Lucian stated that a man should not run away from life and that if someone had to die they should do it quietly and with dignity. Lucian complained of cities being filled with Cynics. In a satirical play called the Runaways he described all Cynics as people who were running from life and as people who went from house to house begging for food and money while merely pretending to be philosophers. He described the Cynics as responding with verbal abuse when questioned on any philosophical point. A character in the Runaways asked what would become of the world if all working men left their jobs to live off others like the Cynics, and in the play Lucian described Zeus as sending Hercules to wipe out the disease of Cynicism.
The emperor Hadrian, ailing and childless, adopted as his son and heir, Titus Aurelius Fulvus, a competent, intelligent, fifty year-old who had been a consul, a governor and was Hadrian's personal advisor. Fulvus became the emperor Antoninus Pius, and he reigned during twenty-three years of peace and prosperity. He, in turn, adopted his nephew, Marcus Aurelius, as his son and made him heir. Aurelius admired his adoptive father for his thoughtfulness, his lack of vanity, his dedication and love of work and his open mind, and the Roman public admired Aurelius for his devotion to his adoptive father. Aurelius tried his own hand at reason and studied philosophy, religion and morality. He became a Stoic. The thoughts he wrote down from time to time in Greek were to be collected into a book called Meditations and considered a good account of Stoic belief.
Marcus Aurelius became emperor in 161, and he ruled for nineteen years. As a Stoic he believed in the brotherhood of man and he exercised power with a strong sense of duty and tried to avoid letting himself be ruled by passion. He realized that he was not the most clever of men, but he believed that he could reason well enough and that he was guided by God's "divine reason." Here was the philosopher-king of whom Plato and Aristotle might have approved, and Confucius too - Aurelius being an intelligent man who wanted to do right. Here was a man who would not be corrupted by power.
Within a year after Marcus Aurelius became emperor, Parthia began military offensives into Rome's empire: into Armenia and across the Euphrates River into Syria, where Parthian troops had not been seen for two centuries. Aurelius fought the Parthians from 162 to 166, his troops retaking Armenia and marching into Mesopotamia to Ctesiphon. The Roman army came in contact with an epidemic - perhaps smallpox - that had been raging for a decade among the Kushans east of Parthia. The disease had spread along trade routes to China, southern Arabia and into Mesopotamia, where the Romans had contacted it. Racked by illness, the Roman army was obliged to retreat. Returning soldiers spread the disease through the Roman Empire. The epidemic became known as the Great Pestilence and lasted fifteen years, killing as many 25 percent in some population centers, reducing the empire's manpower while Germanic peoples on the empire's borders were growing in number.
German tribes, attracted by the pleasant climate of the Mediterranean region and by the empire's higher standard of living, pushed across the empire's border, into the Danube region and into Italy. Aurelius saw it as his duty to control the empire's borders, and he dashed about with his armies from one area to another and successfully contained the invasions. Without booty or conquered people to tax, these were wars that had to be paid for by taxing Romans, with Marcus Aurelius making his contribution by auctioning off the crown jewels.
The harder times brought more fear, which in turn brought more denunciations of Christians, and more executions of Christians as Aurelius continued the policies of Trajan and Hadrian. Aurelius still wanted to improve the world, but in his later years he saw that the power to make the world right had to be collective. He blamed people in general for failing to reform themselves, and he become pessimistic, believing that humanity would repeat the sordid follies of the past. But Aurelius committed a sordid folly of his own. He believed in the system that made him emperor. He made his sixteen year-old son Commodus his heir. Two years later - in 180 - while at the front taking the offensive against Germans, he died, and Commodus became emperor. Beginning with Trajan, emperors had fathered no sons and had passed rule to men of proven quality, but, with Marcus Aurelius choosing his son as heir, the string of those called good emperors came to an end.
Commodus was a mediocrity, or worse, whose faults were magnified by the power he inherited. As a boy he was good-natured. He wished to emulate his father's devotion to virtue, but he had none of his father's mental drive or self-discipline, and he was less inclined to endure hardship. He became emperor while serving in the army along the Danube, but soon he gave a donation to the troops there, turned over the campaign against the Germans to his generals and returned to Rome, where the weather was better, where life for him would be easier and he would be able to enjoy the grandeur and pleasures that were available to an emperor.
When Commodus arrived in Rome, the public greeted their new emperor, assuming that the handsome, blond and well-built Commodus would be a good emperor like his father. Soon, the commander of the Praetorian Guard, Perennis, found that he could guide Commodus into sensual pursuits, and Commodus took advantage of the availability of numerous concubines and pretty boys. And Commodus began mismanaging governmental affairs, including the selling of government offices to highest bidders in order to acquire money for himself.
Commodus was pacifistic and liberal in his response to another incursion of German tribes into the empire. He approved of paying them to live peacefully within the empire. Then more Germanic tribes pushed into the empire, and, rather than endure the hardships of making war, Commodus made peace with them too. Senators and the upper classes saw this as treason and turned against him. Drawing perhaps on the precedence from previous assassinations, a conspiracy to assassinate Commodus developed that involved leading members of the Senate and Commodus' sister, Lucilla. Their attempt failed as the young senator who was assigned the task of killing Commodus felt compelled to make a long speech while his knife was in his hand, giving Commodus' bodyguards a good opportunity to apprehend him. The conspirators, including Commodus' sister, were executed. And the Senate was afraid and terrorized.
Commodus disliked anyone who reminded him of his failure to live up to his father's moral standards or that in his youth he had tried to pursue virtue. Like Nero, he sought recognition in personal performances: he took pride in his physical strength, and he entered the arena, wearing animal skins or elaborate costumes that many thought too feminine. There he stabbed or clubbed animals to death to the applause of the crowd, while many who were not applauding thought that he was demeaning his position as emperor.
Insensitive about the feelings of common people, Commodus allowed his Guard in Rome and soldiers elsewhere to be abusive toward civilians. And concerned about opposition from military governors, he had their children cared for under his custody, in effect taking the children as hostages to ensure the good behavior of those commanding the armies.
Soon Commodus had a list of those he believed were opposed to his rule, whom he planned to execute. Those on his list learned they were marked for death, and with nothing to lose they conspired to assassinate Commodus, a conspiracy that included members of the Praetorian Guard. The conspirators found that for a sizeable sum of money Commodus' bath attendant would become their agent. When Commodus most needed superior strength it eluded him: the only weapon the bath attendant had was his hands, and he strangled Commodus to death. The public was told that Commodus had died of apoplexy, and the public rejoiced.
With the death of Commodus and no one else claiming the throne, the Senate chose one of its own as emperor: Pertinax, a sixty-five year-old former aide to Marcus Aurelius and a senator with an excellent reputation. Pertinax was the son of a freed slave. He was cautious, modest and lived without extravagance. He tried to restore the kind of good government that had existed under Marcus Aurelius, and he issued orders against abuses by soldiers against civilians.
A group within the Praetorian Guard that had enjoyed favor under Commodus remained upset over Commodus' death. Again assassination was the means chosen to remove someone from office. On the eighty-seventh day of Pertinax's rule they confronted him at his palace, and a few among them lunged forward and killed him.
The assassination of Pertinax disturbed the Senate and much of Rome, but before any move was made against the assassins, the Praetorian Guard offered its support to the highest bidder. The ambitious daughter and wife of a senator named Julianus urged him to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire the glory of being emperor. And, with his great wealth, Julianus bought the support he needed.
Whenever Emperor Julianus appeared in public the Romans jeered him, and when news of what was happening in Rome reached the military-governors in the provinces a number of them became interested in replacing Julianus. The governor of Syria, Pescennius, was hailed emperor by his troops. Pescennius lost time in celebrations while Septimius Severus, the governor of Pannonia (much closer to Rome than Syria) made his bid for power by starting a march toward Rome. The Senate, realizing that Julianus' days as emperor were numbered, threw its support to Septimius Severus. Julianus tried to resign. The Senate ordered his death, and after having ruled for only two months, Julianus' executioners found him alone and cringing in fear in his palace.
Like Trajan and Hadrian, Severus had been born outside of Italy - in what is now Libya. And he had spent most of his career in the provinces, including serving as military governor in Sicily before holding the same position in Pannonia. Severus arrived in Rome, claiming that he was avenging the death of Pertinax and restoring Augustan government. In reality he was re-establishing the primacy of the military in Roman politics. Severus bolstered his support in the Senate by posing as another good emperor and by appealing to what most interested the senators: their own security. He promised them he would use no informers or summary executions against them.
To enhance his legitimacy, Severus adopted himself into the family of the emperors Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. He arranged a funeral for Pertinax and for Pertinax's deification. He punished Pertinax's assassins and he reorganized the Praetorian Guard. He took from the guard its role as Rome's police and reduced it to the nominal duty of guarding the emperor. He gave military power in Rome to his troops, whose support he reinforced by giving them a bonus in money.
Then Severus launched a campaign to secure his rule against competition from outside of Rome. As had Commodus, he took into custody the children of military-governors. He appeased the ambitions of the commander in England, Albinus, by giving him the title Caesar, and he made Albinus his heir. Then he moved against the governor of Syria, Pescennius, who still believed in his troop's proclamation that he was the emperor. Percennius requested help from Parthia and the independent Mesopotamian city of Hatra, and they sent him some soldiers. But most of Percennius' troops were inexperienced recruits from Damascus, and Severus' veterans won a series of battles against them in Asia Minor. Severus drove toward Syria and Perscennius fled to the city of Antioch, where he was found and beheaded.
With Pescennius eliminated as a rival, Severus felt secure enough to turn against Albinus. He took away Albinus' title as Caesar and dropped him as his heir apparent. Instead, Severus made his eight year-old son, known by his nickname, Caracalla, as his heir. Albinus retaliated by declaring himself emperor, and he and his army met Severus and his army in a battle at Lyon, in Gaul. Severus won a difficult but decisive victory, and he had Albinus' head displayed in Rome as a warning to would be rivals.
Severus had captured Albinus' personal papers, and unlike Julius Caesar, who for the sake of conciliation burned such papers, Severus used them for a list of enemies – those who had favored Albinus. Then, after his return to Rome and his victory celebration there, Severus launched a campaign in Rome to exterminate these enemies and also those who had supported Pescennius. His promise to the Senate proved false: twenty-nine Senators were condemned to death, and their property was confiscated and used to pay for the wars against Percennius and Albinus and as rewards to his soldiers. And with this, some senators decided that it would be prudent to remain on their estates in the provinces rather than concern themselves with matters in Rome.
To advance his own security and support, Severus removed aristocrats he distrusted from their military commands and their governorships. Severus made the promotion of commoners to military officers routine, and he abolished distinctions within the army between those from the provinces and those from Italy. And in increasing numbers, soldiers were being recruited from the frontier provinces where people were only superficially Romanized.
Severus made it possible for a military officer to become a civil servant and for military men to rise in the government's bureaucracy. During his rule, the office of Tribune disappeared. The duties of those who had been in charge of public works - the aediles - were absorbed by officials under the emperor. And as court functions passed to Severus and his underlings, Rome's jury system came to an end.
It was the support of his soldiers that had given Severus his power, and he favored his military above all else, advising his sons to "reward the army and scorn the rest." He increased the pay of his soldiers substantially - paid for by taxes from civilians, especially the middle class. To bolster the morale of troops on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, he allowed them to marry and to raise a family on land near their camps. And concerned with the morale of his soldiers, like Commodus he let them bully civilians.
Severus punished Parthia and Hatra with war for their support of Pescennius. Two years later - in 208 - he went to England to quell a revolt, and he took his two grown sons with him, hoping that their experience as soldiers would strengthen their character and tie them more closely with his troops.
In 211, while still in England, Severus, now sixty-five, fell ill. Caracalla - short, husky and twenty-three- asked the emperor's doctor to hasten his father's death, and the doctor refused. Severus finally died, and his two sons jointly succeeded him. Caracalla had the reluctant doctor executed. Within a year, Caracalla stabbed his brother to death in the presence of their mother, Julia Domna. Caracalla then told his army that he had been the target of a plot by his brother but had managed to save himself. To mollify the soldiers, he raised their pay - despite a lack of money in the empire's treasury. In a speech to what was left of the Senate he reported his version of events. Then he began a bloodbath in which he purged the army of his brother's supporters and executed others associated with his brother, including Senators and his brother's servants. And he had his wife executed.
Caracalla enjoyed the company of his soldiers, and following his father's advice he scorned the rest, letting his mother, Julia Domna rule in Rome and letting the army abuse civilians. He made bodyguards of German soldiers from his army, and admiring the Germans he sometimes wore a blond wig and a German cloak. Like Commodus he enjoyed showing off his strength - to the delight of his soldiers. He wished to be as admired a military leader as Alexander the Great. And to match Alexander's belief in unity among peoples and to increase revenues, Caracalla extended citizenship to all free persons within the empire. The Roman Empire was no longer Roman. The empire, dominated by men from outside of Rome, had swallowed Rome.
In sophisticated Alexandria, news of Caracalla comparing himself to Alexander the Great was treated as a joke. Making jokes about powerful people was common in Alexandria - a carryover from the old Greek comedies in which no public figure was safe from ridicule. But in hearing of his ridicule, Caracalla was not amused, and he developed a grudge against the city. During a visit to Alexandria in 215, at an outdoor assembly in his honor, Caracalla had a contingent of his troops make a surprise assault on a formation of the city's leading youths, butchering them - an act that only a autocrat would dare commit.
Caracalla traveled to the shrine of a moon goddess at Carrhae in northern Mesopotamia, accompanied by his German body guards and a praetorian prefect, Macrinus. Macrinus was from Numidia, and a seer in Numidia prophesied that Macrinus and his son were to be emperors. A dispatch from Rome was sent to warn Caracalla that Macrinus was a danger to him, but the letter went to Caracalla's mother, Julia Domna, instead. Macrinus received a letter from a friend in Rome warning him of the new danger to him, and Macrinus believed that he either had to engineer a coup against the emperor or he would be killed. He enlisted the services of a naive, disgruntled aide to Caracalla. When Caracalla dismounted to urinate, the aide began his job of helping Caracalla remount, and he stabbed Caracalla in the back. Immediately Caracalla's bodyguards killed the aide, and Caracalla died soon after.
Caracalla's ashes were sent to Julia Domna, who, too proud to return to being a common citizen, starved herself to death. The Senate was relieved to be rid of Caracalla and exercised its nominal duty of selecting the next emperor. Macrinus' own army hailed him as emperor, and the Senate accepted Macrinus - fulfilling the African seer's prophecy.
Caracalla's ambitious maternal aunt, Julia Maesa, from Syria like her sister Julia Domna, had become accustomed to wealth and influence in Rome. She claimed that Caracalla had been the father of her fourteen year-old grandson, Varius Avitus - as if Caracalla had fathered the boy when he was fourteen or fifteen. The emperor, Macrinus, fought a battle against the Parthians, was unsuccessful and settled with the Parthians to the disadvantage of Rome. This cost Macrinus the loyalty of his troops. Julia Maesa took advantage of this. She championed Varius Avitus as the legitimate heir to the throne, and she bribed military officers and some senators. Macrinus was captured and executed, and the Senate proclaimed Varius Avitus as emperor.
With her grandson emperor, Julia Maesa began ruling the city of Rome, as Julia Domna had before her. She sat in on Senate meetings. And Varius Avitus, perhaps already spoiled by favor, indulged his whims. This included dressing as a female, painting his eyes, wearing rouge and squandering public funds on effeminate boys and extravagant luxuries.
Julia Maesa was from a Syrian family of high-priests that worshiped a Syrian sun god named Heliogabal, also known as Sol Invictus, and the emperor followed the family tradition and became a priest in the worship of Sol Invictus. He made Sol Invictus the official god of the empire, and he built a magnificent temple in Rome to the god. He replaced the office of Pontifex Maxiumus with a fellow priest of Sol Invictus, and he named himself Elagabalus after the god.
Many of the new emperor's soldiers worshiped the deities of eastern cults and were not offended by these moves, but many in the army saw the Varius Avitus as ridiculous for other reasons. And, two years into Varius Avitus' rule, Julia Maesa feared that her grandson would not be able to hold the army's loyalty. She had Varius Avitus adopt his eleven year-old cousin, Severus Alexander, which made Severus Alexander the heir. The Senate accepted the arrangement and made it formal. Varius Avitus grew jealous of the attentions heaped upon his adopted son, and he ordered the executions of the boy's teachers. Varius Avitus began making outrageous appointments to high offices, including actors, dancers, and charioteers. Meanwhile, Severus Alexander's mother (Julia Maesa's daughter) was winning soldiers to Alexander's side through bribery. The army needed little encouragement to move against Varius Avitus, and it murdered both him and his mother (Julia Maesa's other daughter). The army turned the two bodies over to a mob that mutilated them, dragged them through the streets and threw them into the sewer, from which the bodies washed into the Tiber River and perhaps out to sea.
Severus Alexander, at the age of thirteen, became emperor. Alexander's mother and the grandmother, Julia Maesa, began ruling in his name. But they sensed that their support in the army was weak, and the two women courted the Senate, hoping it could provide them with adequate support. They replaced Varius Avitus' foolish appointments with able men, and they re-established Rome's traditional gods. They ruled with discretion and strict adherence to Roman law, while Alexander developed into a kind and considerate young man dominated by his mother.
After coming of age, Alexander still had his mother as his mentor, while he led an army against a new ruler in the east, a Persian named Ardashir (Ardeshir), who had replaced the rule of Parthians. Ardashir sent his armies into Armenia and Syria. Ardashir's army in Armenia was successful, but Alexander's armies threw the Persians back from Syria. Despite the success of this campaign, the Romans suffered heavy losses, some from illness and starvation, and the army experienced mutinies. Alexander's timidity had enraged some military leaders, and, rather than fight again under Alexander, many soldiers looked forward to a new emperor.
Meanwhile, Germans just outside of the empire's frontiers had begun taking advantage of what they perceived as Rome's weakness. German tribes crossed the Danube, and German tribes east of the Rhine broke through the defense line along the Rhine River and moved deep into Gaul. These Germans had become accustomed to farming and were searching for land, and they ravaged towns as they moved toward Italy. Frightened by the prospect of frontier wars along the Rhine and Danube rivers, Alexander attempted to pacify the Germans through bribery. This failed, and he went into the field again as military commander, accompanied by his mother. One of his leading officers, Maximinus Thrax, in conspiracy with other officers, led a coup against Alexander. The army backed Maximinus as emperor, and Alexander, twenty-six, was assassinated in his tent while cringing and crying in his mother's arms. His mother was also killed. Severan rule, originating from within the army, had been ended by the army. The military - Roman in name only - still ruled.
Like other recent emperors, the new soldier-emperor, Maximinus, was not from Rome. He was the son of Thracian peasants – a German and an Alan. [note] He had worked his way up in the military, and he had little respect for Rome's institutions, and he was the first emperor who did not win or seek Senate confirmation of his rule. He did not enter Rome. He was never to set food in Rome. But the senators, still afraid for their safety, were subdued and only silently antagonistic toward him.
Maximinus doubled the pay of his soldiers, and he upset Rome's civilians by giving money to the army that had been slated for welfare. Farmers in North Africa grew disturbed over Maximinus' high taxes, and they began creating disturbances. Romans in various parts of the empire saw him as a barbarian pretending to be an emperor. In Rome, angry packs of men hunted down and murdered his supporters. An army of North Africans, members of the Praetorian Guard, some senators, and some who saw themselves as the Romans of Old, went north from Rome to battle against Maximinus. They managed to isolate him and a section of his army. To buy their safety, these soldiers killed Maximinus and his son.
Maximinus ruled only three years – to the year 238. In the coming decades
the rule of others would also be short. Soldiers would continue to choose
their commanders as emperors, and some army commanders would become emperors
only reluctantly, sensing the danger in it. Some of these emperors would attempt
to bribe soldiers with gifts to ensure their continued loyalty, and the loyalty
of some soldiers would depend on their being allowed to satisfy their appetite
for booty at the expense of civilians. These new emperors would govern by decree,
and they attempted to reinforce their rule with spies, informers and secret
agents. In the coming five decades, only one emperor was to die a natural death,
and only one was to die in battle. The rest were to be murdered by soldiers.
Recommended Books
Roman Realities by Finley Hooper, 1979
Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, Vol. 1, (Modern Library Series)
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address of this article: http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch21.htm