Download The Calamitous Century: 180-284 CE

The Calamitous Century: 180-284 CE
From: Hooker, Richard. “The Calamitous Century.” World Civilizations. 1996. Web. August 1, 2004.
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/ROME/3RDCENT.HTM
When Marcus Aurelius died in 180 CE, his son Commodus assumed the imperiate.
Marcus Aurelius had been appointed by the Senate and proved to be a thoughtful and
highly efficient administrator. His son, however, was slightly imbalanced. Fancying
himself to be a reincarnation of Hercules, Commodus was both brutal and incompetent.
He openly defied the Senate and revelled in all sorts of perversities. He was so violent
and vicious, that the palace guards murdered him in 192 CE.
The Roman Empire at this time was in the teeth of a crisis. In the east, a new empire was
arising in Iran, the Sassanids, who were attempting to restore Persian glory. In the north,
the German tribes were beginning to migrate and were pushing past their borders in
raiding parties. The most dangerous of these Germanic tribes were the Goths, who
occupied southern Russia. By the middle of the third century, however, they had
managed to take territory from Rome in the area that is now Bosnia.
To fan the flames of this crisis, the internal politics of the imperiate fell into chaos. After
the death of Commodus, a military general, Septimius Severus (193-211 CE), seized
power after two others had tried their hands at the imperiate in the same year and ruled as
an absolute dictator. He decimated the economy by dramatically raising taxes, and he
dramatically changed the character of the Senate by directly attacking senators. He
replaced them with military men, so the Senate gradually began to look more like a
military aristocracy. He established a rigid class system which slowly solidified to the
point where social mobility was almost completely eliminated.
After the death of Septimius Severus, the imperiate fell to the next in line in the dynasty,
Alexander Severus. However, Septimius had set a precedent by seizing and retaining
power using the provincial army under his control. After the death of Alexander in 235,
Rome saw a half century of "barracks emperors"1 who were all generals and seized power
in the same way Septimius Severus had done. This half century, from 235 to 285, was the
most calamitous period in Roman history. Internal politics had fallen into complete
disarray, the economy had become a disaster, taxation in some cases approached nearconfiscation levels, and foreigners made tremendous inroads in capturing Roman
territory. The two last "barracks emperors," Claudius II Gothicus (268-270 CE) and
Aurelian (270-275 CE), stemmed the tide slightly by pulling back troops from the frontier
and hiring mercenary soldiers, but Roman government and stability would not be restored
and reconstructed until the imperiate of Diocletian (284-305 CE).
These were times of immense social crisis and fear. Even the statues of the emperors
show this fear; while imperial statuary of Augustus and the early emperors (all the way
up to Commodus) show heroic and powerful individuals, the statues of the emperors in
the third century show worry and resignation and their faces are deeply lined with
wrinkles and furrowed brows. They are amazing documents in Roman history, for the
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A barracks is a building in a military fort where soldiers live.
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purpose of statuary is to present the ideology of the government; the Romans seemed so
hopeless, that even the emperors were represented as weak and worried.
During this period, the Romans underwent deep religious and philosophical changes. The
fear and panic evoked by the loss of territory and the economic decimation of the country
led people to adopt far more mystical religions and philosophies. It is during this century
that eastern religions, particularly Christianity, really take hold in Rome. Christianity, for
instance, had hung on but was not a wildly popular religion in the Roman Empire until
the third century. With its promise of rewards in an afterlife, its emphasis on the
individual and on spirituality, and its explanation of suffering in this world, it was a
powerful world view in a world that seemed to be falling apart. Other eastern religions,
particularly Mithraism, which was derived from Persian Zoroastriansism, also promised
an afterlife and a meaning to suffering and were as popular as Christianity. In fact, there
were as many Mithraists in Rome in the third century as there were Christians; because
the two religions were so close to one another (they both involved the son of god taking a
human form to experience human suffering; the human life of this god involves a last
supper and an execution; both religions are concerned with the apocalypse and promise a
final judgement—the difference, however, is that Mithraism is at least three centuries
older than Christianity), they deeply influenced one another. There grew up several
species of Christian-Zoroastrian religions…but the interaction between these two
religions affected mainstream Christianity itself, such as the moving of the Sabbath day
to Sunday and the celebration of the birth of Christ on December 25, both of which have
no precedent in foundational Christianity and were taken whole cloth from Mithraism,
which had its day of worship on Sunday (Mithras was the god of the sun) and celebrated
his birth in human form on December 25 (there is no date given for the birth of Christ)…
The decline of Rome during this century seemed to point to an almost certain demise, and
the promise of an afterlife…seemed to be the only thing to hope for. However, the last of
the barracks emperors, a shrewd and practical man named Diocletian, radically
reconstructed the Empire and set the stage for the Christian Roman Empire in the fourth
century.
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