The `Third Century Crisis' used to be painted in the bleakest terms. It was a time when the Romans suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of new, more powerful foreign enemies. Persian armies took Antioch, fleets of Gothic pirates plundered Greece and Asia Minor, and other barbarians burst across the frontiers into Gaul, Italy and Spain. For years on end much of the east was controlled by the monarchs of Palmyra, and the western provinces broke away under the rule of a succession of their own emperors. There were also outbreaks of plague over wide areas, which may well have rivalled the Antonine epidemic in their virulence and the number of victims. At the same time the economy collapsed, as successive emperors massively devalued the coinage to pay for their wars. Society also changed, some of the poorer citizens in rural areas being reduced to little more than serfs. All of this was accompanied by a crisis of belief, as everywhere people abandoned the old faiths for new religions and wild superstitions.
However, academic fashions change and today few would accept such a grim picture, for the evidence can be understood in other ways. Some would argue that crisis is simply the wrong word, since it is clear that there was never any question about the survival of the empire in some shape or form. Yet no one doubts that this was a period of profound change. Diocletian's empire looked and functioned very differently to the one familiar to Marcus Aurelius. Before moving on to look at the system he created, it is worth pausing to consider some of the wider changes that seem to have occurred.3
Render Unto Caesar: Money and the Economy
Emperors were expected to spend lavishly. Almost the first act of any new ruler was to promise a cash gift (or donative) to the army. This was as true for Marcus Aurelius as it was for any usurper seeking power in later years. Even in normal circumstances maintaining the army was the greatest single expense in the imperial budget. Frequent warfare - most especially campaigns that were fought inside the empire and so produced little plunder - greatly added to its overall cost. On the whole, the troops remained loyal to any established imperial family, as long as their rule seemed reasonably effective and they did not suffer too many serious defeats. It was much harder for new emperors to gain this level of loyalty, which only added to their urgent need to treat the soldiers generously. Severus raised army pay for the first time in over a century, and Caracalla increased this again just a few years later. Macrinus struggled to cope with the cost of this and his clumsy handling of the situation prompted his rapid fall.
The emperor was the greatest landowner in the world, the imperial estates including vast areas of farmland, as well as such things as mines, throughout the provinces. Whatever its origins, this quickly ceased to be a personal possession and passed from emperor to emperor regardless of whether there was any family connection. Property confiscated from executed opponents was often added to this, but it was obviously dangerous for any ruler to kill too many rich and influential men. New taxes could be introduced - Dio believed that Caracalla's grant of citizenship was essentially a money-raising venture - or old ones reinterpreted in the government's favour. This, too, was dangerous. The revolt of the Gordians against Maximinus was provoked by resentment at the exactions of the official collecting taxes in Africa. On the whole, the level of taxation throughout the provinces remained remarkably static.4
Most of the methods of raising extra revenue quickly were dangerous for any emperor, and especially one who had recently seized power. Yet the need was always there to spend, and it was not just a question of the army. Maintaining even the small-scale administration of the empire cost money and the number of imperial bureaucrats grew steadily during this period. There were also many other things an emperor was expected to pay for. At Rome itself there were the distributions of free and subsidised food, public entertainments, as well as the maintenance of public buildings and the construction of new ones. Emperors were expected to be generous to communities and individuals. If they were perceived as mean and grasping, then that was an invitation for more lavish challengers to emerge. To make matters worse, a good number of third-century emperors could not even call upon the entire imperial resources, since parts of the empire were often under the control of rivals. One of the reasons for Gallienus' survival for so long was that he kept control of the prosperous North African provinces with their substantial imperial estates. Similarly, it was not until after his death that Zenobia took over Egypt, whose grain continued to supply a good part of Rome's needs.
Financial problems appear time and again in the record of the third century. Emperors controlled the minting of gold and silver coinage and there was a constant temptation to make their resources go further by debasing the currency. The change is most striking in the silver coinage. In Trajan's day, a silver denarius contained just over 9o per cent silver (the denarius was the penny of the Authorised Bible, hence the abbreviation before decimalisation of pence as d). Under Marcus Aurelius the percentage of silver as opposed to base metals dropped below 75 per cent at a time when the empire was ravaged by warfare and disease. Septimius Severus increased army pay and let the silver content of his coins drop to 50 per cent. Caracalla introduced a new silver coin, known as the antoninianus and probably worth 2 denarii, although its weight was only equivalent to one and half of these coins. This was abandoned under Elagabalus, but reappeared in the joint reign of Balbinus, Pupienus and Gordian III. By this time the silver content had fallen close to 40 per cent. Around the middle of the century the decline rapidly accelerated and was as little as 3.5-4 per cent silver by the time Aurelian came to power.5
The impact of this massive debasement is very hard to judge since, as is usual with the Roman economy, we lack any useful statistics. It is clear that prices by the end of the third century were massively higher than they had been at the end of the second - in some cases by several hundred per cent. There had never been inflation on such a scale in Rome's earlier history. However, the bulk of our evidence for day-to-day rises in costs comes from Egypt, which uniquely had its own system of coinage until Aurelian's reign, when it was brought into line with the rest of the empire.
Prices rose, perhaps suddenly. Farmers, both large- and small-scale, may have been insulated against the consequences of this, since they still had produce to sell or trade. Those who like to see barter as a major part of the rural economy tend to claim that large areas of the empire were unaffected by changes to the currency. Similarly, people involved in manufacture had products to sell, assuming that they, like the farmers, still found a market. Change probably occurred slowly, as the increased number of coins would have only started to circulate gradually, and perhaps people had time to adapt. Yet it was not the only factor. Wars were costly, perhaps especially civil wars, which involved the movements of armies through normally peaceful areas at a time when military discipline tended to slacken. Many suffered; a few probably profited. The population may have been declining - certainly, there must have been substantial local drops in numbers as a result of outbreaks of plague, even if over the long term there was little overall change.'
Ultimately, we simply do not know. It is worth bearing in mind that if we had the same amount of evidence for the twentieth century as we have for the third, then we would not have any real idea of the scale of the Great Depression or the impact of two world wars. For instance, Japan's and Germany's growing prosperity would doubtless be seen as inexorable and unbroken in the course of the century. Any talk in literary fragments of the devastation caused by war would doubtless be dismissed as wild exaggeration. It is clear that there were plenty of very wealthy people in the Roman world at the opening of the fourth century. This need not necessarily mean very much - after all, some people remained rich and prosperous throughout the Great Depression. There are no figures to tell us whether the number of wealthy individuals was smaller in the fourth century compared to the second. There were the very poor in both periods, and those at every stage in between, but again we know nothing of numbers or proportions in the overall population.
T
here are some indications that there was less disposable income around. There is a dramatic drop in the number of surviving inscriptions from the middle of the third century. Since these frequently commemorated civic benefactions by city magistrates and other leading local figures, this suggests that such things were also becoming far less common. While it is possible that it was simply the inscribed memorials that stopped, the archaeological record does confirm the impression that grand new public buildings were becoming rare. It is worth noting that most cities already had their bath houses, theatres, amphitheatres, basilicas and temples, and so perhaps no longer needed new monuments. Yet the ideology of the local aristocracies in the earlier periods would have seen this as a challenge to build still grander structures, even if this meant risking bankruptcy, like the cities Pliny described from his time as governor in Bithynia early in the second century. The one thing every sizeable city had acquired by 300 was a substantial circuit wall. That so many of these were made from material taken from demolished buildings does not suggest widespread prosperity.?
There are also signs that long-distance trade declined. Maritime archaeologists have discovered far more Roman shipwrecks dating from the first century BC through to the second century AD than for any subsequent period. We need to treat this conclusion with a degree of caution - most finds have come from the western Mediterranean because more teams have operated there. Yet it is clear that trade in this area peaked during the early Principate. Perhaps a different pattern will emerge over time as more work is done along other coastlines. Yet excavations on land also suggest that from the third century onwards there was a substantial decrease in the number of objects circulating that had been manufactured outside the province. In part, this was a sign of strong regional development. In Gaul, Britain, Spain and elsewhere there were now locals with the skill to manufacture fineware pottery and glassware, or to lay a mosaic floor. More exotic luxuries such as silks and spices continued to be transported over huge distances - once again, there is no way of knowing whether or not the quantities of such things had changed. However, the trade with India and beyond seems to have declined sharply in the third century, only to revive in the fourth.8
In some areas cities shrank in size and population, while villages and farms were abandoned. The fortunes of individual communities had always fluctuated and smaller ones had vanished in the past for various reasons, but in areas such as north-western Gaul such failure and decline undoubtedly became far more common in the second half of the third century. Other areas most directly exposed to frequent warfare also suffered. Dura Europos was abandoned and Palmyra's prosperity dwindled along with its independence. Some regions may already have been in decline before the disturbances of the third century. Italian agriculture was at its peak of productivity in the early Principate, until lucrative markets were lost as the provinces developed. Gauls who made their own wine no longer wanted the produce of Italian vineyards in such great quantities. When trade was booming even the less fertile land tended to be cultivated for profit, but by the second century such fields were no longer worth the effort of farming and we start to hear of deserted land. Spain flourished later than Italy, in part because it came to supply olive oil to Rome and also because of the widespread popularity of the pungent fish sauce, or garum, that it produced. In time, its farmers faced competition from other regions, most notably North Africa.
The African provinces were undoubtedly one of the greatest success stories of the third century, although even here there was considerable variation from area to area. On the whole North Africa was rarely disturbed by large-scale warfare - apart from the rebellion of the Gordians, the region was almost untouched by civil war and only parts of it were exposed to barbarian raids - and its economy flourished. Irrigation schemes kept large areas fertile to a degree rarely seen before or since, producing vast surpluses for sale, especially for the markets in Italy and Rome. Its cities show every sign of prosperity, evidenced by the continued construction of grand public buildings. Palestine and other parts of the Syrian provinces also seem to have prospered and show signs of a numerous population, especially in rural areas. Britain was another region that seems to have done well, and it is probably no coincidence that it similarly was generally peaceful. In contrast to Africa, a number of its cities show signs of decline, but this may well have more to do with the local aristocracy remaining at heart more rural than urban. Many villa sites in Britain were at their grandest in the early fourth century.
Fortunes varied from region to region and there were also marked differences within the same provinces. As more archaeological evidence is acquired it will almost certainly suggest an even more complex picture. There is no doubt that some areas suffered badly in these years and went into decline, while others fared much better. A few individuals and whole communities even in the worst affected regions did very well indeed. This is almost always true, even in apparently the bleakest of conditions. It is also probable that there were many tragedies, as those unable to cope with the changes in the economic climate - or subject to any one of many short-term misfortunes - failed and lost everything. Such risks were always there in any commercial enterprise, but became more common in these disturbed times. Those for whom the margins of success and failure were narrow were inevitably most likely to succumb, as indeed they are in any age. In Africa there were plenty of wealthy local men willing to take on civic office and to fund festivals and building work. In other regions there may have been far fewer such men willing or able to keep the cities going.
Roman currency had become hugely debased - the denarius was abandoned and replaced with new silver coins, while bronze coinage vanished altogether for a while - but in many respects it had long been a token coinage. All coins still carried the head of an emperor and throughout the empire were accorded value depending on their denomination and not the actual content of precious metal. (Outside Rome's borders things were different, and there is some evidence for a preference for older, purer coins.) At times there seems to have been concern over whether or not coins bearing the image of defeated emperors would be honoured, but the authorities were generally keen to stress that all properly minted coins were acceptable.'°
In the year 300 the economy of the Roman Empire was certainly more sophisticated and robust than anything that would be seen in the same regions for well over a thousand years. Without statistics we cannot say how it compared to the conditions of the second century, but it is unlikely to have been stronger and most probably had declined, probably by a large margin. The evidence of traces of pollution in the polar icecaps from the Roman period do suggest a massive boom in the first and second centuries AD, which fell sharply in the third. In most cases, for instance, in the cases of lead and copper, the same levels would not be reached again until the nineteenth century. A number of mine workings in Spain and Britain were abandoned in the late second or early third centuries, even though they still contained extensive deposits. Combined with the loss of the mines in Dacia, it does seem that the empire was producing and refining significantly smaller quantities of minerals. Underlying the problems of the coinage was a real shortage of silver and bronze."
Some of the third-century decline proved temporary and a few regions enjoyed greater prosperity than at any other time, but elsewhere the picture was far less rosy. In the end, the essential fact of the Roman Empire was its sheer size and wealth. Variations between different regions and over time were inevitable. Overall the economy probably did decline, and quite possibly the population had fallen. In spite of this the empire was still massively wealthier and more populous than any other state or people in the known world."
Senators and Knights
Senators remained extremely wealthy - some of them fabulously so - and continued to have influence, but their political role changed profoundly during the third century. Gallienus was said to have banned senators from holding military commands. This was probably an exaggeration, and it is unlikely that there was a specific dec
ree, although he may well have contributed to a well-established trend. Young men from senatorial families stopped serving as the senior tribune of a legion and senators were also no longer given command of a legion as legate. They continued to govern provinces, and in some cases controlled garrisons of troops, but over time ceased to hold command over major armies. The tradition of the chief agents of the state mixing civil and military posts dated back at least to the beginning of the Republic eight centuries before. Now it ended."
Instead, the trend was towards professionals or specialists. Men followed either a career in the army or one in administration and law. All of the senior posts in the army - and indeed the majority of those in the administration - passed to equestrians. To modern eyes professionals ought to be markedly more competent than amateurs. Therefore, on average, equestrians, who spent most of their career with the army, ought to have been better commanders than senators, who interspersed a few years of military experience in a much less specialised career. If so, then the rise of equestrian officers to exclusive control of the senior ranks of the army can be seen as necessary for military efficiency. It is often tied to the emergence of new, allegedly greater threats from Sassanid Persia and the Germanic tribes uniting into confederations under the pressure from new arrivals like the Goths. The Senate's amateur commanders were simply not up to dealing with such tough opponents and so emperors pragmatically turned to experienced equestrian officers instead.14
How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower Page 18
