The Ancients - Rome's Crisis of the Third Century

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

What happens when emperors are murdered more often than they die of natural causes? Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. David Gwynn to unravel the Crisis of the Third Century, a pivotal, turbulent era in Roman history that served as a turning point between the classical and early medieval worlds. It was a time where soldiers like Maximinus Thrax rose to power, only to face rapid turnover and murder.Tristan and David discuss the complex web of civil wars, external threats from formidable foes like the Sassanians, Franks, and Goths, and the ultimate capture and grotesque end of Emperor Valerian. This is the time of ancient Rome's economic collapse, devastating plagues, and the dramatic rise of Christianity.Presented by Tristan Hughes. The audio editor and producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Theme music from Motion Array, all other music from Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here:https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you would like the ancient ad free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting HistoryHit.com slash subscribe. It's The Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Today we're covering one of the most important yet complicated and catastrophic periods in Roman history, all in one episode, the 3rd Century Crisis. The 3rd Century AD is regularly seen as a period of great turmoil and transformation in the Roman Empire,

particularly between the years 235 and 285 AD. During that half century, more than 25 emperors rose and fell, almost always meeting a sticky end. There was plague, there was economic collapse, there was massive conflict both from powerful external enemies in places like Germany and the Middle East, but also from power-hungry leaders within Rome's borders seeking to carve out their own kingdoms. The third century crisis was this melting pot of different catastrophes that struck the Roman Empire. And yet, for all of these hardships, the Roman Empire did ultimately survive them, albeit emerging from it, radically transformed.

Now our guest today to untangle and explain this third century crisis is Dr David Gwynne from Royal Holloway University in London, where he is a reader in ancient and late antique history. David has been on the podcast once before. He was our guest for the episode we released in early 2024 all about the Goths, one of my favourite episodes of the last year I must admit. Now David, he's back to tackle the massive topic that is the 3rd century crisis and explain why this period of chaos was so significant and transformative for the Roman Empire. This was an extraordinary chat covering everything from the seven foot giant Barak's emperor that was Maximinus Thrax to Christianity and the empire-wise

persecutions of its followers at times during this period. I really do hope you enjoy. David, what a pleasure. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you very much. Great to be back. Well, I mean, good luck. This is quite a topic, the crisis of the third century. And yet, this feels like one of those pivotal, I don't want to say moments, because it's not a moment, it's decades long, but one of those pivotal times in the history of Ancient Rome. It's the turning point in many ways between what we call the Classical world and the early medieval world. A lot of universities, when they teach Classical history, stop at the

end of the second century with the Roman Empire, because the third century is so complex, so confusing, and what emerges out of it is what we call the later Roman Empire, the world of late antiquity. So a lot of classicists don't even get there. I see it sometimes with similarities with, let's say, the Wars of the Successors, where there's so many names following Alexander the Great's death and so many similar names that many people, you know, they refrain from focusing in on it because it is such a crisis. And it's quite daunting to approach. I can imagine with the crisis of the third century, with so many different players involved, it is

complicated and complex. That is one of the main reasons that sometimes we don't focus it on it as much as, let's say, Constantine the Great afterwards or Marcus Aurelius and Commodus before. Toby Hickman Absolutely. You can add to that. It's the worst documented period in Roman imperial history. That's not because people weren't writing. It's not such a crisis that no one could write, but almost none of the work survive. So the last two really good or solid historians of the earlier period, Cassius Dio and Herodian, they stop in 229 and 238, respectively. We're not going to have another

reliable narrative historian until Ammianus Marcellinus' surviving account begins in 354. So there's no historical narrative, even remotely contemporary, we can use. That's over 100 years where there's no narrative history. What we've got is we've got a church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, very useful but obviously specifically focused on the church and tending to judge emperors by did they persecute. We've got a number of fourth century writers who wrote very short biographies of emperors and just give us a very basic outline. And then we've got the one source that covers almost the entire third century crisis but that unfortunately is the work known as the history or august for you can i say that i know this is a collection of imperial biographies so it's written as lives of emperors.

It claims to be written by six different people working together around the year 300. It's actually written almost certainly by one person who invented all the other six persona and is doing this as a literary exercise either in the late fourth century or in the early fifth century. And it's not just that he's creating persona, he invents names, he fakes documents, he gives citations that don't exist. Basically, there is some genuinely useful material in the Historia Augusta, but finding it and identifying which bits you can trust has been a scholarly industry for a hundred years and has not stopped. What a difficult source. Almost going back to the Wars of Success as we have a similar source I'd argue with, adjusting a later epitome of someone called Pompeius Trogas.

But it's once again the thing of there are so many outlandish or just wrong statements in there. However, there is some beautiful little parts that you can glean from it. And that feels, I guess that is one of your challenges. It is figuring out what's real, what's fake. And I guess also archaeology, what can be corroborated with surviving archaeology? Exactly. And archaeology is utterly crucial here. It always is in ancient history, but particularly when your literary sources are at best unreliable. Not just trying to trace damage, but also of course trying to monitor things like population shifts, the debasement of the coinage. Can we see settlement patterns altering? One of the key things actually from the archaeology is it confirmed

that some areas of the Roman Empire are actually doing really well in the third century crisis. So Britain, famously, seems to be reaching a peak of prosperity because Britain was far enough away that it wasn't touched by the crisis. North Africa is largely prosperous and the archaeology seems to bear that out. Because it's such an interesting time. If it is actually a prosperous time in the Roman Empire for so many parts, the archaeological record surviving must be very, very rich, which is a godsend compared to the literary sources that you have surviving. And of all that archaeology, should we give

special mention to coinage right now because of the amount of emperors and different faces? Surely coinage must be so useful for this time period. Yes, and it would help if the coinage was better quality. So a lot of people who later hoarded coins didn't collect third century examples. They weren't good quality. And a crucial element of the wider crisis is that as the emperors come under strain, they need more money. What's the easiest way to create more money? You mint more coins. But the difference between an ancient coin and, say, a modern 50p piece is that an ancient coin is supposed to be worth its metal content. The silver coinage of the Roman Empire at the start of the third century crisis was still about 40% silver. By 270, it's

less than 5%. And so we can find coins that, you know, technically they're silver coins, but actually they're just made up of other metals. And we actually have laws passed by emperors complaining that money lenders or money exchanges won't take the coins. Because this, of course, is what you do if you're a money exchanger in the ancient world. You test a coin, you bite it, you test can you snap it. They're actually very good at working out whether a coin has lost its real value. So that is something, once again, I think we should really highlight right here before

we delve into it. So kind of getting out of the modern perception of coins, the material value of the coin denotes its actual wealth to the ancient Romans and people living in the ancient Roman Empire. That is so different to today. And after all, the original coins, the very first ones we have on record, are actually just lumps of gold with a stamp on them. Those go back to, indeed, earlier than the classical Greek period. And Croesus and Lydia, yes. The Romans have been minting coins, of course, of their history but if you go back to say Augustus the start of the Roman Empire the gold and silver coinage is 90%

it's very high quality gold and silver. rebuild trust in the coinage. So Diocletian, who's the great figure who tries to rebuild the empire at the end of the crisis, never solves the problem of how to mint reliable coinage. It's Constantine who did, the first Christian emperor, and that's because a Christian emperor could melt down gold and silver statues from pagan temples and gave him a supply of precious metal to rebuild the coinage. Now, with this whole topic, the crisis of the third century, we're not going to do a whole narrative, go emperor by emperor, because there are quite a lot and I think it would get a bit tedious after a while. What we're going to do is we're going to go thematically

and explore the big themes of this almost century long crisis. And we can focus in on a couple of particular case studies too. But it does make sense to start at the beginning. I mean David, when does the crisis of the third century begin and don't just say the third century please. It sounds like it should be a hundred years. Actually, the third century crisis is from 235 to 284. So it's basically a 50-year span in the middle of the century, because the period before that is the age of the Severan dynasty, the last major dynasty to rule the Roman Empire for any length of time before the crisis began.

This is the one found by Septimius Severus and famous from gladiator II recently, of course, and Caracallagita and so on. Exactly. The last of the Severans is Severus Alexander who dies in 235 and his death is usually regarded as the first date at the start of the crisis. In reality, three important things had happened under the Severans which will have a major influence and are already having an influence on the crisis. One is the Severans placed more emphasis on the army than previous emperors had. So they're very strong on army support, which is giving the army greater say in who should be emperor. The second is the Severans greatly cared about religion.

They're one of the first dynasties to link themselves to a specific cult. It's actually the Syrian cult of Baal. Or is this Elegar Barlus and that figure? Exactly, because Septimius Severus's wife, Julia Domna, is a priestess of that Syrian cult. And the longer the dynasty goes, the more it's emphasized. Now, obviously, some later emperors, including the Christian ones, are going to draw in part on this model of a dynasty linked to religion. So those are the two major Severan changes inside the Empire, the army and religion. Actually for the third century crisis the biggest change didn't happen in the Roman

world. It happened out in Iran-Iraq. Because in the 220s the Parthian Empire, which had been dominating what's now Iran-Iraq and had been in decline for 100 years, got overthrown by a new Persian dynasty called the Sassanians. And the Sassanian Persians immediately launch major attacks on the Eastern Empire and will continue to do so right through the crisis. Toby So, this is an imperial blowback to the extreme. I mean, it's the epitome of it, isn't it? The Romans contribute to the decline and fall of the Parthians, that preceding dynasty in

Iran and Iraq, but they're replaced by this even stronger, what will be a more deadly threat to their eastern provinces over these next 50 years or so. Trajan had attacked the Parthians, Septimius Severus did it, Caracalla did it. The Romans have directly undermined the Parthians. The problem is this new dynasty has a vision of its own ideology. What the Sassanians claim is they are the successors to the Achaemenid Persians. That's the old empire of Darius Xerxes from the Greco-Persian Wars. The problem is if the Sassanians claim to retake the old Persian empire, that includes

Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and arguably very briefly Greece. So the Sassanians can actually make a claim that all those territories should be theirs. And we know they're making this claim because although our Persian sources aren't great either, the older Kaimanid Persians had great rock-cut monuments. So they went to some of the great rock cliffs in Iran, notably if a place called Naqir Rushdhan, and they carved images of themselves there. Will the Sasanians go back to the same locations and put their own monuments below those of the Achaimans? They're making a very specific ideological claim. Interestingly, Cassius Dio, the Roman historian, knew that before he dies in the early 230s.

Dio already knows that is the claim of the Sasanians, which means they're coming and they're going to keep coming. And it feels like this is something we're going to be talking about, which is this crisis in the East, especially because the East of the Roman Empire at that time, it is rich, it is wealthy. And if that is under constant attack or constant strain, that is going to filter through to the West, to the rest of the Roman Empire and affect the stability and I guess the wealth, they said the coinage and everything of the Roman Empire as this period progresses. Exactly. I mean, some parts of the Roman Empire in the East are actually going to break away

temporarily and become quasi-independent because they've got to protect themselves from the Sassanians. The Sassanians are going to sack Antioch, the greatest city in the Eastern Roman area of Syria. Shapoor in particular, who's the second Sasanian Shah, the only rival he has for the greatest enemy Rome faced is Hannibal of Carthage. No one else strikes quite the same chord. I think you're right, and he is often overlooked Shapur, and maybe we'll talk a bit more about him as time goes on.

But before we focus in on the East, I feel kind of going back to that beginning. So Severus Alexander, last of the Severans, he's been assassinated, still quite young, AD 235. As I say, the first case study, because I think this also defines the nature of many of the emperors that will follow, let's focus in on the character of the person who succeeds Severus Alexander, because in many ways, this is a breaking from the norm in so many different ways for an Emperor character. Jason Bickley I mean, Severus was murdered in an army mutiny,

and his successor is just a soldier. As far as we can tell, he's not a noble, he's not even educated. The only thing the Historia Augusta says about him is that he was eight foot six, which seems slightly unusual. But Maximinus Thrax is simply a soldier who was charismatic enough to get other soldiers to agree with him. Eight foot six. According to the Historia Augusta. Okay. Okay. That's a good according to to put in there, to be fair. As I often say, whenever you say a fact that comes from the Historia Augusta, it always requires according to the Historia Augusta.

But he's probably tall. He's probably got a tall structure. But he was clearly, you know, he's a big, impressive man. And that seems to be his qualification. There must have been more to it, but we don't get any clear since he's just a soldier who's rallying the soldiers and they hail him emperor. Mason And is this where we get the term then, which seems to be important over those next few decades, the term barracks emperor?

Dr Cline One of the great features of the entire crisis is you're talking about a 50 year period. There are approximately 25 official emperors and about the same number of major usurpers. So it's an incredible imperial turnover. The average reign is about two years. The majority of those emperors are soldier emperors. So they're being hailed by the army, sometimes only by the part of the army that knows them. So you get a lot of civil wars between different parts of the army. These aren't people like wars between different parts of the army. These aren't people like Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius back in the second century. They're none of them emperors that are focusing on culture, art. Almost none of them even have time to present an image of themselves. They're

soldiers. And it's worth saying a number of them are clearly good soldiers. Even some of the ones who lose are clearly competent military leaders. But in a sense, that's all they are. The definition of a Roman emperor never used to be just a good soldier. Yet a lot of these third century emperors, that's all that really defines them. So it's not who has the royal blood anymore, or who belongs to this dynasty who's grown up in the palaces of Rome. It is very much who has the strongest army at the time and who is willing to make that play for power.

Exactly. There are no dynasties here. Of those 25 emperors, one maybe died of natural causes. Otherwise, a few disease, plague, most of them are murdered, a few die on a battlefield. That's what is happening in this period. No matter how you try and emphasise, you know, there were some aspects of prosperity, there are some aspects of culture. If you're only talking about imperial power, this is the greatest period of crisis in Roman

history. Well, how successful were some of these Baric Emperors? I mean, if we focus on Maximonius Thrax, we've been talking about him. crisis in Roman history. Toby with his qualifications that he's very quickly not up for the job? Yes. As far as we can tell, Maximinus never even makes it to Rome. It's not clear, but basically the army has hailed him, but the Roman Senate, who are still important, not as important as they had been back in, say, the Roman Republic, but they're the richest leading nobles, the Senate have no interest in having this kind of emperor, so they promptly hail their own. Who then gets murdered, so they hail another one who's also going to get murdered before Maxmin as Thrax himself gets murdered and then we get the grandson

of one of the predecessors until he gets murdered. I mean there are approximately seven emperors between 235 and 232-44 depending on who you count as an emperor. So Thrax never actually has authority. And this is one of the recurring themes of the third century crisis. And it's why one of the hardest things to judge is, is the Roman Empire struggling because of external pressure like the Persians? Or is it struggling because the constant civil wars and the lack of imperial authority are weakening the empire? In reality, it's a chicken egg scenario. Which do you think is coming first?

Well, let's focus in thematically. Let's then tackle all of these civil wars. I mean, how seismic do these civil wars become over these next few decades? Are they sometimes you get small scale where they actually don't end up in a pitch battle because they pay someone to assassinate their rival? Or do you also sometimes get massive battles and breakaways and so on? There are a few major battles. Mostly this is not a civil war in the sense of say the English Civil War or the American Civil War where it consumes everything about society. Basically these are individual armies, individual barracks emperors fighting over who wins. So for most of the common people

it's just a matter of how much of their land will get plundered by an army that passes through. Most of the emperors are murdered. So one leader's officers will decide no, the other leader's better so we'll kill ours. In a few cases there are actually defeats on a battlefield and obviously if you win a battle against a potential rival that rival does not survive. Perhaps a closer parallel would therefore be say the War of the Roses where you've got ongoing not huge scale battles and a lot of people in England who are just waiting to see who should we call emperor now, or who should we call king. Al-Khalili You see almost a period of

Tersi learning from these potential usurpers, these generals, when they have got their armies, because surely they're not so stupid to think, you know what, I'm now going to try Miloq, even though it didn't work for x or y or z before. Do they look at it okay it didn't work in the past because of this reason because of that reason i'm gonna now try my lock i'm gonna try and take this territory and i'm gonna do differently to try and make sure that my result is different to what's happened previous you see that was that. Education that learning curve from usurpers as time goes on? I mean, some of them really do just seem to be, oh, look, I have a dagger. There's a new, let's create a job vacancy. There doesn't seem to be a lot of forward planning, but there are actually some who quite clearly have thought through how you need a support base. In a sense, the irony there is the two most successful of these usurpers never become emperors at all.

What they actually did was create breakaway regions, which were regions now loyal to them. So in the heart of the third century crisis, so in the 260s, when it really looks like the empire could break, there are actually three rulers in what was the Roman Empire. The official emperor is Gallienus, but Gallienus only rules the central bit, so North Africa, Italy, the Balkans. Out in the east, the Persian attacks have got so bad that a local eastern leader has united most of Syria, Palestine, Egypt in his own breakaway kingdom because he'll lead the defense.

This is the Palmyran kingdom, Odenarthas and Zenobia. Exactly. This is Odenarthas, the leader who founds the Palmyran kingdom and then Zenobia, his widow. We actually had beautiful monuments from this. Unfortunately, Palmyra was badly hit by ISIS back in 2015. But Galeanus clearly made the conscious choice, it's not worth fighting Odinathus. Odinathus is doing the job that needs doing in the East.

And exactly the same thing happens in the West. So we get what's called the Gallic Empire, which is a breakaway group led by originally a Roman general named Posthumus, led by originally a Roman general named Posthumus, who unites at his peak Britain, Gaul and Spain. But just like Odinathus, what Posthumus is doing is providing the localised defence that the centralised empire is not delivering. So Posthumus deals with the Rhine frontier. And both Odinathus and Posthumus are very successful, but also never managed to create long-term stability. They're both eventually murdered. And once the central empire has strengthened, they take those regions back again.

I mean, shall we also talk about that other big case of usurper being pretty successful, which is of course usurpers in Roman Britain, because this is another area where it seems like they've learned, I mean, you've got an island basically kind of strengthening this part of the Roman Empire as the base of your new kingdom. Because there are two major regions in the Western Roman Empire where no major foreign threat can hit. One's Britain, the other's North Africa. In both cases, they've got slightly problematic people. In the case of Britain, it's in scotland in the case of north africa it's on the desert friends with the burgers but in neither cases are serious invasion threat. You can have the prosperity you can therefore use it as a resource space is that supposed to great challenge is one thing for you to say i'm emperor. And that's of course the great challenge. It's one thing for a user to say, oh, I'm emperor.

But if the tax revenue isn't coming in, then you don't have the resources to pay the army to keep your supporters loyal. So Posthumus uses Britain and the parts of Gaul and Spain that haven't really been hit as his key basis for resources. Odinathus in the east, well, Palmyra is a trading city and Egypt is the richest territory on the entire map and it's largely not being affected. So if you've got those resources, you can then build something up. Gallienus is trying to use Italy, North Africa, when he begins his recovery for the same purpose.

So we've kind of explored these civil wars and these usurpers and how fractured this period is for the Roman Empire. But let's talk about something which is closely linked to this and the external factors that you hinted at there. And we'll get to the East and the Sassanians in a bit because they feel really important to this story. But let's focus further west because you mentioned, let's say, posthumous, there's a Gallic Empire. One of the things is managing that Rhine frontier. So at that time, was there a bigger threat of peoples from beyond, let's say, the Rhine frontier, first of all? Yes. And what makes the third century crisis is it's the first real point, at least externally, that the Roman Empire has ever been squeezed on all three

major frontiers simultaneously. I'm Britain, North Africa, don't come into the reckoning here. There are three great frontiers where the Romans can face major attack. The Rhine River, the Danube River and the East. And for most of the second century, the German frontiers had remained stable until it cracks wide open back in the 160s under Marcus Aurelius. He then re-stabilised it. Septemius Severus works hard to stabilise it as well. So in the 230s the main threat's in the east, but in the 250s and 260s, three major Germanic groups become a threat and two of them are brand new. The only one for whom we have a previous track record is what's collectively known as the

Alamani, which is just really a collective name for Germanic peoples, usually around where the Rhine and Danube don't quite meet. What's completely changed the reckoning is on the Rhine River, a new people have emerged, particularly around the Low Countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and that is the Franks. It's the Franks. Ah, so this is when the Franks emerge, okay. The Franks first appear in our record as a clearly distinct group in the 250s. And in the 240s, for the first time, we meet the Goths.

Because the Goths, who originally came from somewhere around the Baltic region, late in the second, early third century, migrated down to what's now the Ukraine. And then, as the third century progresses in the 240s through to the 260s, Gothic pressure is growing on the Danube. So you've got Goths raiding across the Black Sea and down over the Danube. So you've got Goths raiding across the Black Sea and down over the Danube. You've got Alemanni and Franks raiding across the Rhine. And then you've also got the rise of the Sasanian Persians. Arguably no emperor, no matter how good, could actually have coped with that treble threat.

So is this something you see time and time again that certain emperors, when they're not battling against other Emperor wannabes or usurpers, rather than having a rest and dealing with the administration or whatever, they're having to march their armies beyond the borders or near the borders to fight other great potential enemy threats on either the Rhine, Danube or in the East? Yes. One thing I'd always emphasise, we've got lots of emperors. Most of them are highly intelligent, very active men. Rome is not a society that lies down and dies. You see that again when you get to the collapse of the eventual Roman Empire in the West in the

5th century. It doesn't fall because they just give up and stop fighting. The Romans know how to beat Germanic tribes. The key is you need enough of the resources to exploit the fact that your equipment and training is usually better, and crucially that you'd normally on a battlefield have reserves and very few tribal armies remember the importance of having a reserve. Maxminis Thrax does what he was originally hailed emperor to do, which would stabilize that German frontier. The problem is he'll never secure overall power.

Posthumus or Denarthus do what the local peoples looked to them to do, which was protect the Rhine or the East. And a number of the emperors, even quite short-lived ones, fight seriously hard and actually sometimes quite effectively against the Goths. Claudius Gothicus is a good example. His name, Gothicus, he wins quite a big victory, even though he's not around for very long. No. The Goths were a new threat. They were a new scale of threat on the Danube. So their initial attacks plough into the Roman provinces of the Balkans. But the Emperor Decius does actually manage to win several battles against him to try and push

them back, then gets caught in what appears to partly be an ambush battle and is killed. And he is the first Roman Emperor ever killed by a foreign enemy on a battlefield. Emperors have died in civil war battles before, but Decius in 251 is actually the very first emperor to die on a battlefield against an external enemy. With the result that Gallienus, who then effectively takes over, he campaigns against the Goths. Gallienus actually rules for 15 years. He's the only person to reach double figures in the third century. And there is a debate over did he win the major victory against the Goths or did Claudius II because it happened in the year in which Galianus is finally murdered, 268. Galianus is not popular in our sources. Claudius II gothicus was claimed by Constantine, so the first Christian

emperor 50 odd years later, as his ancestor. So the accounts we get of Claudius gothicus glorify Claudius in part because of, and as far as we can tell, totally fictitious claim of ancestry. But given that he takes the title, he must have certainly won some battles and crucially, after Claudius Gothicus, the Goths are not a threat again in the third century. Whatever's happened in 268, 269 has pushed the Goths back. I mean, interesting, because I was going to ask, would you argue that on all fronts, not just in the East, that the enemies that the Romans are facing in the third century AD are stronger than they'd been in previous centuries, or that the Roman army is

weaker? What would you argue there? Toby Hickman Certainly it's not helping the Roman army to have constant civil wars. The real damage of civil wars is how much it destroys your own military. But one of the problems actually with the Roman Empire's frontier policy when it comes to the Germans is it was much easier for the Romans to deal with organized tribal units because then you can sign treaties with leaders, you can try and influence their successes. But one side effect of that is the size of Germanic tribal blocks on the edges of the empire is going up. We've got Tacitus' Germania written right at the end of the first century AD, and Tacitus

is describing lots of small tribes. The Alemanni Federation seems to have emerged in part because it was easier for a larger federation to try and get things from the Romans. They're kind of uniting together. So it's partly the enemies right on the frontier who know the Romans are learning from the Romans. And then you've got the Goths who are a distinct and larger group. And like most groups that have just moved are still in the process of stabilizing, which means they're particularly warlike. Certainly the Goths seem to be much more of a threat than the Franks, at least in the middle years of the third century. The Franks are there, but as far as we can tell, they're really exploiting the Alemanni, destroying the Rhine frontier, and the Franks just raid over it. The Goths, on the you know, they're actually raiding all the way into Asia Minor, they sacked the city of

Athens. I mean, you know, the golfs are a real threat until they're finally driven back. Well, let's move on from the Franks, Alemanni and the Goths. I mean, the complicated relationship between the Franks and the Alemanni is certainly one for another tale, but let's do a case study of that Sasanian threat, particularly should we do the story of Valyrian, because I think this is an important one to cover at this time. The Persians, though, they've risen originally back at the end of the Severan dynasty. Cyrus Alexander tries to fight back, loses and that's actually what helps cause the mutiny that gets him killed in 235. From then on, the Persians are raiding. Ardashir is clearly a

very effective ruler. He's the one who pulls the dynasty together, and then his son, Shapur, is as good or better. So the pressure never really eases. Shapur wants to gain the prestige of taking over those eastern territory. You've got this ideology of conquest. So through the 240s, Shapur is still putting on the pressure. But then you've also got the Romans trying to juggle with multiple frontiers. And so what actually happened after Decius gets killed is for the first time, two Roman

emperors effectively split the empire in a clearly defined divide. There have been joint rulers before, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, for example. But what Valerian and his son Galeanus do is actually define areas of responsibility. It's a father and son. Interesting. So it's a father-son combination. Valerian, the father, takes the east because that's the immediate threat with Persia and leaves Gallienus to try and deal with the Danube Rhine. So Valerian goes off to try and face Shapur, but the Sasanian army is a serious threat. It's a combination

of very heavy cavalry, solid archers, and then a fair number of sometimes unreliable infantry. And the Roman army is not at its strongest. It's too divided in different places. They can't win. Indeed, in the entire third century crisis, they're not going to win a pitched battle against the Sasanian. It's not going to happen until Diocletian and the Tetrarchy. Valerian tried his best and he was another soldier. I mean he's an experienced soldier, a good one, but he's outmatched and his army is outmatched. So he tries to negotiate. The result is sort of a skirmish that gets out of hand and just as Decius became the first emperor to be killed by a foreign enemy, Valerian sets his own record by being the

first Roman emperor captured by a foreign enemy and taken off to Persia basically as a court monument. And he'll die in captivity and according to our sources, he's then sort of slightly skinned, stuffed, dyed purple and put up in the main Persian temple as an ongoing prize. And we've actually got a picture of the capture of Valerian by Shapur on Shapur's rock-cut monument with Shapur on his horse and Valerian with his hands bound. Now we have been focusing largely on the military and the figures of these emperors at that time, and usurpers and so on. But the crisis of the third century is not just

military battles, external threats and civil wars and so on, because also natural disasters, climate stress, all that. This is huge at this time, particularly plagues, and they play a big role in the whole course of this crisis. I mean, plague, after all, is endemic. It's a feature of the ancient world. You always have waves of illnesses, but there are certain points where basically the plagues become so prominent in our sources that they are clearly above whatever is considered normal.

So there was the major plague, sometimes called the plague of Galen in the second century, possibly smallpox, it's an ongoing argument. Actually identifying the specific disease is always a problem with these ancient epidemics. And then in the third century, because it is so unstable, even what would probably in previous times have been relatively minor epidemic

outbreaks are having a bigger impact because there's less strength. Valerian's army gets ravaged by plague before he gets captured. Claudius Gothicus, as you've already alluded to, that appears to be his cause of death. And he may well have died of illness rather than been murdered. We're not always certain, particularly with the very rapid turnover, but it's another factor in imperial mortality. And obviously it's also going to be weakening wider society, manpower, and that means both the army but also the tax base, and taxation is getting harder and harder to maintain. But taxation is what separates the Roman Empire from say smaller later medieval kingdoms. It's when you've got a solid tax system that you can have a professional standing army

and try and control it. So the instability of the army is linked to that wider issue of population, plague, famine. This famine as well as plague. Just another thing to add to this whole mesh of disasters that seem to be affecting various parts of the empire. So the plague, I've got my notes, the plague of Cyprian hits Egypt big and the east. Maybe not Roman Britain as much. So once again, it's focusing on particular parts of the empire that suffer more. It's an interesting feature of those plagues in the case of Carthage and Alexandria. The reason we're well informed on them is we've got Christian

writers for whom this is a major concern. Now in fact, Christianity is growing right through the third century, not least because Christians care for victims, and they care for victims regardless of their religion. They don't make that distinction when it's a plague victim or an orphan. Are they Christian? That's not the point. They need to be supported. So we hear about these plagues from Christian bishops who are actively promoting support for them. Cyprian of Carthage is simply the best documented because we've got a lot of Cyprian's letters and treatises. It helped, of course, that North Africa wasn't being greatly disrupted. Oh, so it's named after the person who documented this plague and what he witnessed.

Interesting. And particularly documents his own support methods. Because if we're thinking of this as a great period of dislocation, well, it's interesting that Cyprian can write letters to everywhere in the Mediterranean. So it's not actually destroying the communication network. Cyprian can write to Spain, to Gaul, to Alexandria, to Antioch. How do all of these factors that we've already discussed and you've hinted at it already, how do they affect the economy, the whole economy of the Roman Empire?

It's not good. And you can see it in wars down to present day. All the factors coming together leading to the equivalent of a massive economic crash. It's an economic crash for the imperial structure. This is where I think you'd get a lot of different answers from different scholars here. Because if we're focusing on the imperial structure, so the tax system, which relies on a stable coinage, It's collapsing. Buying things based on coins, well, debasement means inflation. If coins are worthless, you need more coins to pay for them. So inflation is going to be a major problem. But a lot of the Roman Empire is still an agricultural world where people are largely living by subsistence agriculture. Now, as long as an army doesn't

march over your fields, you can carry on doing that. So what seems to be really crashing is the empire-wide economic structures that allowed for a higher standard of living. Without a good coinage system, trade becomes problematic. The Silk Road is in a state of current flux, not least because the Sasanian Persians are still trying to work out exactly how best to profit from that famous great trade route that heads out all the way to China. And the Red Sea as well, the connection with India, does that continue? And the naval routes, so the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf routes are still trading. But the main thing that the Romans sent east was actually gold and silver coinage, because they didn't have the spices, the silk. And if you don't have that coinage, so that kind of luxury trade is going to diminish.

But what's likely to happen in say an Egyptian village is now you're just going to revert to a barter economy. So can we trade? What's the value between a sheep and a goat? How much food for this pot? And most of the Roman Empire can survive on that localized level. So it's not that there's a colossal collapse in standards of living.

We don't seem to see a huge decline in population. The Roman Empire by the end of the third century is still probably around the 60 million mark. So that's where I temper it. I knew I wasn't a great time to be alive? Well, especially if you're anywhere near the battlefields, definitely not. But for a lot of the Roman small farmers, so in Britain, in Spain, in North Africa, Egypt, but even say Asia Minor, they're able to carry on.

Mason- Do we think, because you've also talked about like transport routes and communication routes, you know, one of the things that is often defined with the Roman Empire is bands of people coming into the Roman Empire and then ultimately becomes too much almost. But people coming into the empire and then a lot of movement around the empire. Do we think that continues in the third century as all of this is going on, that people are still able to, let's say, go from somewhere, ideally like Hadrian's Wall, all the way to Syria or North Africa. Are those routes and roads and so on still open? Richard The routes are there, one suspects the number of people using them is diminishing. This world's becoming localised. So you get the Gallic Empire, the Palmyran Empire, so you're

getting more local distinctions there. Someone like Cyprian can still send messages with letters across these routes, so the routes are potentially available. But they're nowhere near as safe as, say, they were in the second century when you've got the 50 years of near total stability. And it's going to be more stable again in the fourth century. So the routes don't disappear. They're there to be revived when the Great Recovery fully takes effect. But during the heart of the third century,

so the worst years, which is basically 250 to 270. 20 whole years. I mean, it feels not that much time when we're looking at it back now, you know, when we cover an ancient history so many years in one episode. But 20 years, you know, that could be half a lifetime for many people back then. So to live there, you don't even want to think of it. Before we get to that great recovery, are there any other big contributions to this crisis that we should also mention? Because we talked about the military, we talked external threats, civil war, climate plague, economy. Are there any other things we should cover before we move on to the recovery?

The other great theme of this period is religion and the role religion is playing. Now, in older scholarship, and there's a famous book called The Age of Anxiety, that this is a period of superstition of different views, actually what seems to be happening is it's an age of quite active intellectual philosophy and also, unsurprisingly, people seeking answers in different directions. And there's no question the crisis is having an impact. And you do see it above all with Christianity, because Christians were a small minority at the start of the third century and still a small minority at the end. But at the start of the third century, they're perhaps

small minority at the end. But at the start of the third century, they're perhaps 2, 3% of the population. By the end of the third century, it's more like 10%. There's give or take 6 million Christians. Christianity grew in this period. Now, partly that is this emphasis on charity, welfare, in a time of crisis, of plague, of famine. The Christians provide support. crisis of plague, of famine, the Christians provide support. But it's also very noticeable that this is the same period where for the first time, Christians are really attracting detailed imperial attention. We often think of Christians as constantly persecuted by the Roman Empire. But actually, for the first 250 or so years, Christians could be easily persecuted anywhere, so we have major local outbreaks of violence. But what never actually happened was an empire-wide attack on Christianity.

Even say Nero, who's one of the few emperors to really try and persecute, basically does it in the city of Rome. But Decius, while he's trying to fight the Goths, is responsible for what becomes the first persecution of Christians. He's not even reigning that long. He's only got a two-year reign. And yet he's very prominent in, say, Eusebius and Caesarea's church history for this reason. To give Decius credit, we don't think he meant to launch a persecution of Christians. What he actually believed was this crisis has to be due to divine anger.

After all, almost everyone in this world, pagan or Christian, believes in divine providence, that the will of the gods is playing a key role. So Decius orders everybody to sacrifice in the Empire. Everyone to show their piety lets win divine support. The problem is there is one particular group who will not sacrifice to the old gods, so Decius's order to sacrifice becomes the Decian persecution. Now Decius then gets killed by the Goths, so the persecution stops. What's interesting is six years later, Valerian decides that's the right answer again. We need divine support, so you get the Valerian persecution of the Christians. And unlike Decius, Valerian definitely meant it. So he targets clergy.

Cyprian gets caught up in this. He targets churches as far as they exist because they're really just small house churches. But it's a targeted persecution. Then Valerian becomes a Persian monument and Galianus abandons it. I mean, you can see how the Christian writers are going to treat the fact that the two people who tried a persecution are Decius and Valerian. And then for the next 40 years, Christians just get left alone. Gallienus' view does seem to have been there are bigger priorities than this and the subsequent emperors like Aurelian Pacey just ignore Christians unless

they're forced to pay attention. It's something you forget, isn't it? Because of course following it afterwards you get Constantine the Great and Christianity starting to really take a foothold in the Roman Empire. But the rise of Christianity can actually be intertwined with the story of the third century crisis. And that is something, I must confess, I completely overlooked. Toby Hickman I mean, it's one of the problems that still religious history is often treated in slight isolation from wider history. After all, the Christians have been there ever since Augustus,

but they have been low profile except for those rare moments of persecution. The standard Roman view is the one that Trajan famously said to Pliny the Younger, which is if you meet a Christian who insists on being Christian and won't then back down, you can go ahead and execute them, but don't look for them. Is Trajan's explicit instruction, don't go looking, we're just otherwise going to let them get on with it. And it's interesting that it was in the heart of the third century crisis that they changed that, which does suggest the Christians are becoming higher profile, as well as this great concern with what the Romans called the Pax Deorum, the peace of the gods, which the Christians are disrupting,

well, by going around saying the gods don't exist. How does the great recovery, and it's fair to say, I think it is fair to say it's a great recovery, how does it begin? How does the crisis end? If you look at a map of the reign of Gallienus, 253-268 to the heart of the crisis, It looks like the empire is going. Gaul, Britain, Spain's going one way, Palmyra is going the other, Gallienus is in the middle. Gallienus in our sources is largely disliked, not least because he didn't make the slightest effort to get his father back from Persia. But actually, Gallienus is the start of the recovery. What he focused on was within his territories building up the imperial administration and above all reorganizing the army to have a much stronger cavalry arm and be much more mobile. Now by the time the Goths are beaten back by Galeanus and Claudius Gothicus, you're beginning to reap the benefits of that and then the man who sees it through is Aurelian. Now Aurelian only rules from 270 to 275, so it's not a hugely long reign.

But nonetheless, in that time, Aurelian beat the Goths and crushed both the breakaway groups. It helped that in both cases the original founder had been murdered by this point, but nonetheless, Aurelian, by the end of his reign, has actually pulled back almost the entire empire, at least on a map, to look as it had at the beginning. Only one territory is actually abandoned. It's the region of Dacia, so roughly speaking, modern Romania. To Trajan's conquest, the gold mines and everything, quite a rich province beyond the Danube. So the very last province that the Romans took and the only one beyond the Rhine and Danube. And basically Aurelian clearly decided you couldn't hold it, not with the Goths moving

into that region. So Dacia is the only region lost. And then Aurelian gets murdered. After what looks on paper like such a successful reign. The Historia Augusta simply summed up Aurelian by saying he was quote necessary rather than good end quote, which suggests he was efficient, effective and as soon as he'd done the job enough people wanted him dead that he gets killed. With the result that you then now get another six emperors in the space of about five years, you get a massive new series of murders, and then finally the recovery that Gallienus and Aurelian began gets completed

because the last emperors of the true third century crisis are Charis and his children Corinus and Numerion. Now according to our sources, Charis and at least one of his sons were struck by lightning. Oh wow. That seems statistically unlikely, which suggests we may be dealing with a euphemism. And interestingly, the guy who was technically responsible for their safety ends up being the next emperor. His name was Diocles.

He was a Balkan peasant farmer. He'd risen up through the ranks and he becomes Emperor Diocletian, who is one of the greatest emperors in the entire history of the Roman world. It's such a problem though for these ancient protectors of emperors. You're doing everything you can and then you can't help it. They're just out one day going off a walk and they both happen to get struck by lightning. I mean, good on Dark Legion, now it's just paved the way. Buddha thought something like that could happen. I mean, it's one of the great things about the Praetorian Guard, the old Imperial Guard.

They are responsible for the protection of the Emperor and are directly responsible for more Imperial debts than any other single factor. So Diocletian, Balkan peasant, now finds himself in the hot seat of the Roman Empire, but he's seen all these people come before him. How does he then decide, right, enough is enough, how do we restructure this so that stability can return long term? And he emphatically has learned those lessons. And actually, the key lesson he'd learned quite clearly before he took power, when things are in disarray, the Roman Empire is just too big.

You can't easily control it as one person. It doesn't matter where you are on the map. It's too big a map. So the first thing he does is appoint a co-ruler, another Balkan soldier who's risen through the ranks, who Diocletian knows he can trust, a man named Maximian, and they're going to share power. And then for the next almost 10 years, they keep control Diocletian in the east, Maximin in the west. And then Diocletian decided that actually even that's not enough. Not when there's a revolt in Britain, which is what happened, not when the Persians are a threat. So what Diocletian created, which was unique in the history of Rome is what is called the tetrarchy, the rule of four. So you still have Diocletian and Maximian, the two senior emperors,

but they each now appointed junior emperor, a Caesar. So Diocletian and Maximian are the Augusti, their title is Augustus, but Galerius is the Caesar to Diocletian and Constantius Chlorus is the Caesar to Maximian. Constantius Chlorus is the father of Constantine. And the reason he's done this is now you can have an imperial presence everywhere on the map. Maximian can watch the Rhine, while Constantius Clorus can deal with the British revolt of Ceraeusius and Alectus and does very effectively.

Yes, you have that coin, the first ever coin of London, shown when he retakes London. Precisely. Diocletian can make sure the Danube is staying safe and Galerius can achieve what no one has done in the entire third century and beat the Sasanians. For the first time, the Romans actually win a major pitched battle in 298, and that is in a sense the tribute to this organisation. Because it's all now stabilised, they could give sufficient resources. The army had been built up. But the Tetrarchy may be unique. Almost everything else Diocletian did is actually what worked earlier on, just made better organized.

So he used Galeanus' development of the mobile army. Small allegiance. The old big 5,000 plus man groups, you don't need those. You need small groups of about 1,000 men. But you need more forts so the frontiers can be stabilized. The tax system gets overhauled so that it's now effectively half barter, so it's half in kind in goods, not just in coinage. So although the coinage is still a problem, the army supply system's been fixed. The government, the provinces, get split up.

Diocletian actually doubled the number of Roman provinces, so create smaller administrative units because firstly, their governors aren't a threat, but secondly, they can do a better job because they've got a smaller region. So everything he's doing is drawing on earlier models, but stabilizing. What's interesting is he also drew on one earlier model that you'd have to say hadn't worked and doesn't work for him. Because it's under Diocletian at the Great Persecution, the last great imperial pagan attempt to crack Christianity is launched in 303 and fails. Looking at the big picture, it seems to be a massive success, isn't it? This is the great 3 and fails. Toby That century is that crisis almost a trigger point for the ultimate fall of Rome and I guess the Western Roman Empire, or at least the great change of the Roman Empire. It's certainly a great change. What we call the later Roman Empire is the remodeled empire of Diocletian, then with the promotion of Christianity from Constantine onwards. It's that combination.

combination. It's hard to argue that that left obvious weaknesses that would cause the subsequent collapse. The later collapse of the Western Roman Empire, indeed all the disruption of the 5th century, there are some factors that come out of these developments, including the rise of Christianity, but then there are also factors that no one could have scripted, which is above all the arrival of the Hums driving the Goths onwards on a scale that did not happen. Effectively, in the third century, the Romans have met their worst-case scenario, which is the Rhine and Danube getting out of hand at the same time as you suddenly get the rise of a new empire in the East. And it very nearly broke them.

But they do hold together. Of course, if they'd stayed stabler for longer, would they then have had an even stronger resource base going into the fourth century? Or actually, in the second century, when they're peaceful, they actually stagnate. So my own tendency is to argue that what comes out of the third century crisis is at least as well organized and structured as the empire before. It's arguably got a slightly better system for supporting the military. Christianity is going to add an extra layer of organization. It's also going to add a much stronger emphasis on welfare.

But the empire is too big. The third century crisis demonstrated that, so will the later crises. A single person ruling the empire will actually be very rare in the last 150 years of Rome because it is too large. You're too vulnerable. The basic structure was never able to cope against multiple shocks. never able to cope against multiple shocks. The East-West divide, now that is going to intensify over time. It's always there, partly linguistically, but it will potentially grow. And yet, if you took, say, Diocletian's provincial tax reforms, they're still there in Justinian's time in the Eastern Empire. That's Byzantine, so that's after the fall of the West. So, you know, by the sixth century, they're still, I mean,'s time in the Eastern Empire. That's Byzantine, so that's after the fall of the Western Empire.

By the sixth century, they're still, I mean, indeed, ironically, they were still dating by Diocletian. In the sixth century, it's why the man who came up with BCAD dating, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus, his original argument to the Bishop of Rome was, why are we still dating years from Diocletian? The man persecuted us and that's actually what causes the original realignment of that calendar. Dionysus Exiguus comes up with an estimated effectively year of our Lord and so you get that switch to

the dating system that the medieval world knows. But Diocletian, the organization he left, strengthened the Empire. So my own view would be it's remarkable they survived this. The real question is why couldn't they repeat this trick in the fifth century? You've got the same shattering effect happening, but Gallienus or Aurelian were able to dig in and pull it back together. And a key part of that does seem to be that Posthumus and Odinarthus never actually wanted to fully break away. They were proud of being part of a Roman orbit. Whereas when you've got a much larger migration of Germanic peoples who are creating independent groups, then you do get the breakaway.

But it's an awful lot more complex than that. And that is certainly an episode for another day. But I think you've done incredibly well, David, in tackling this topic and making a topic that is complex and daunting to so many people. Understandable, going through those different themes and how important they are for this half a century long time of crisis and the key figures and major players and major events and so on. David, this has been an absolute blast and it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast. My great pleasure, thank you. Well there you go, there was Dr David Gwynn giving you a masterclass talking you through the story of the third

century crisis, the key figures and events and why this chaotic period in Roman history it was so tumultuous but also transformative in the shaping of the Roman Empire. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for listening to it. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. And having mentioned Spotify, we will be putting a poll up with this episode and focusing in on particular figures and events of the third century crisis and you can vote for which figure you would like us to cover next, whether it be Maximinus Thrax, the massive Thracian,

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