The Later Roman Empire

Question 1

The dynasty of the Severi (ad 193–235)

Answer 1

• After the assassination of Commodus on Dec. 31, ad 192, Helvius Pertinax, the prefect of the city, became emperor.
• Septimius Severus belonged to a Romanized Tripolitan family that had only recently attained honours
• The administrative accomplishments of Septimius Severus were of great importance: he clearly outlined the powers of the city prefect; he entrusted the praetorian prefecture to first-class jurists, such as Papinian; and he increased the number of procurators, who were recruited for financial posts from among Africans and Easterners and for government posts (praesides) from among Danubian officers
• Severus’ social policy favoured both the provincial recruitment of senators (Easterners, Africans, and even Egyptians), causing a sharp decrease in the percentage of Italian senators
• The burden of taxes and forced government service was made weightier by numerous transport duties for the army and for the annona service and was regulated by the jurists through financial, personal, or mixed charges
• Caracalla, the eldest son of Septimius Severus, reigned from 211 to 217, after having assassinated his younger brother, Geta.
• Macrinus was accepted as emperor by the soldiers, who were unaware of the role he had played in the death of his predecessor.

Question 2

Religious and cultural life in the 3rd century

Answer 2

• On the right bank of the Tiber in Rome, in the least fashionable section of town among Lebanese and Jewish labourers, Elagabalus built an elegant temple to his ancestral god; he was no doubt in those precincts very well received when he presided personally at its inauguration.
• Official religion can hardly be said to have existed in the sense of being pressed on people by the state.
• the empire had been assembled from a great number of parts, whose peoples already had their own way of life fully matured
• During the 1st and 2nd centuries, Christianity spread with relative slowness.
• Latin literature enjoyed its “Silver Age” under the Antonines, with the majority of great authors, such as Tacitus, Juvenal, and Pliny the Younger, having begun their careers under Domitian
• A Greek renaissance, however, took place during the 2nd century. The Second Sophistic school reigned in every area: in rhetoric, history, philosophy, and even in the sciences.

Question 3

Military anarchy and the disintegration of the empire (235–270)

Answer 3

• The period from the death of Severus Alexander to the time of Claudius II Gothicus was marked by usurpations and barbarian invasions
• The Goths were Germans coming from what is now Sweden and were followed by the Vandals, the Burgundians, and the Gepidae.
• In the West the invasions were particularly violent. The Germans and the Gauls were driven back several times by the confederated Frankish tribes of the North Sea coast and by the Alemanni from the middle and upper Rhine.

Question 4

Economic and social crisis

Answer 4

• The invasions and the civil wars worked in combination to disrupt and weaken the empire over a span of half a century.
• Things were at their worst in the 260s, but the entire period from 235 to 284 brought the empire close to collapse.
• The severity of damage done to the empire by the political and economic destabilization is not easily estimated since for this period the sources of every sort are extremely poor.
• In the meantime, certain broad changes unconnected with the political and economic crisis were going forward in the 3rd century.

Question 5

The recovery of the empire and the establishment of the dominate (270–337)

Answer 5

• After Claudius II’s unexpected death, the empire was ruled from 270 to 284 by several “Illyrian” emperors, who were good generals and who tried in an energetic way to restore equilibrium.
• Diocletian may be considered the real founder of the late empire, though the form of government he established—the tetrarchy, or four persons sharing power simultaneously—was transitory
• In order to create a more efficient unity between subjects and administrators, Diocletian multiplied the number of provinces; even Italy was divided into a dozen small units of the provincial type
• The wars, the reforms, and the increase in the number of officials were costly, and inflation reduced the resources of the state.
• Diocletian’s reforms adumbrated the principal features of late Roman society: a society defined in all parts that could be useful to the state by laws fixing status and, through status, responsibility
• Diocletian also changed the administrative districts in Egypt, in keeping with the model found elsewhere, by designating in each a central city to take responsibility for the whole
• After a period of initial indifference toward the Christians, Diocletian ended his reign by unleashing against them, in 303, the last and most violent of their persecutions
• The first tetrarchy had ended on May 1, 305; the second did not last long.
• Constantine and Licinius soon disputed among themselves for the empire. Constantine attacked his adversary for the first time in 316, taking the dioceses of Pannonia and Moesia from him. A truce between them lasted 10 years.
• In order to reorganize finances and currency, Constantine minted two new coins: the silver miliarensis and, most importantly, the gold solidus, whose stability was to make it the Byzantine Empire’s basic currency
• Constantine’s immortality, however, rests on his founding of Constantinople. This “New Rome,” established in 324 on the site of Byzantium and dedicated in 330, rapidly increased in population as a result of favours granted to immigrants

Question 6

The Roman Empire under the 4th-century successors of Constantine

Answer 6

• Constantine’s three surviving sons divided the empire among themselves and had all the other members of their family killed. Constantine II kept the West, Constantius the East, and Constans, the youngest brother, received the central prefecture (Italy, Africa, and Illyricum)
• Constantius reigned alone as Augustus, aided by a meddlesome bureaucracy in which mission deputies, informers, and spies played an important role.
• Constantius was primarily interested in religious affairs. His interventions created a “caesaro-papism” that was unfavourable to the church, for after the Battle of Mursa the emperor had become violently Arian.
• During the 4th century the emperor’s power was theoretically absolute, the traditions of the principate having given way to the necessities of defense.
• In the last decade of the 4th century the harsh laws against the perpetuation of the old pieties promulgated by Theodosius gave impetus and justification to waves of icon and temple destruction, especially in the East

Question 7

The eclipse of the Roman Empire in the West (c. 395–500) and the German migrations

Answer 7

• After the death of Theodosius the Western empire was governed by young Honorius
• Honorius, seated in Ravenna, a city easier to defend than Milan, had only incompetent courtiers surrounding him, themselves animated by a violent hatred of the barbarians.
• During the first half of the 5th century the barbarians gradually installed themselves, in spite of the efforts of the Roman general Aetius at the head of a small army of mercenaries and of Huns
• After the death of Aetius, in 454, and of Valentinian III, in 455, the West became the stake in the intrigues of the German chiefs Ricimer, Orestes, and Odoacer, who maintained real power through puppet emperors
• Several barbarian kingdoms were then set up: in Africa, Gaiseric’s kingdom of the Vandals; in Spain and in Gaul as far as the Loire, the Visigothic kingdom; and farther to the north, the kingdoms of the Salian Franks and the Alemanni.
• Two great kingdoms marked the end of the 5th century. In Gaul, Clovis, the king of the Salian Franks (reigned 481/482–511), expelled Syagrius, the last Roman, from Soissons, took Alsace and the Palatinate from the Alemanni (496), and killed Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, at Vouillé (507)
• The causes of the fall of the empire have been sought in a great many directions and with a great deal of interest, even urgency, among historians of the West; for it has been natural for them to see or seek parallels between Rome’s fate and that of their own times.