Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

I. EMPERORS MADE BY THE SOLDIERS.

We now enter upon a period of military license. The emperors are appointed by the soldiers. The rulers, when the soldiers fall out with them, are slain. In the course of ninety-two years, from 192 to 284, twenty-five emperors, with an average reign of less than four years for each, sat on the throne. Only two reigns exceeded ten years. Ten emperors perished by violence at the hands of the soldiers. A real advantage in this way of making emperors, was, that supreme power might thus devolve on able generals; but another, and a fatal result, was the demoralizing of the armies, by whose favor the rulers of the state were set up and pulled down.

TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS (A.D. 222).—The assassins of Commodus, with the assent of the praetorians, made a worthy senator, Pertinax, emperor; but his honesty and frugality, and his disposition to maintain discipline among the soldiers, caused them to murder him three months after his accession (193). It is said that they then sold the imperial office at auction to a rich senator, but the leaders of the armies in different regions refused their consent. Of these, Septimius Severus (193-211) made his way to the throne, and put down his rivals. The empire became a military despotism. A garrison of forty thousand troops, the prefect of whom was in power second only to the sovereign, took the place of the old prætorians. Severus was a good general. In a war against the Parthians, he captured Ctesiphon, their capital. Caracalla, his son (211-217), was a base tyrant. He was murdered by the prætorian prefect, Macrinus, who reigned for a short time (217-218), but perished in consequence of his attempts to reform the discipline of the army. Heliogabalus (218-222) was not more cruel than others had been, but his gross and shameless debauchery was without a precedent.

POWER OF THE PROVINCES: DISCORD.—In the reign of Caracalla is placed the Edict which gave the rights of citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The provinces had been steadily rising in power and influence. At Rome, among officials of the highest grade, as well as in the higher professions, there was a throng of provincials. The provinces were disposed to nominate emperors of their own. It was hard for the central authority to keep under control the frontier armies. To add to these sources of division, there was a growing jealousy between the East and West, owing to a difference in language, ideas, and interests. Persia was soon to threaten the empire on the East, and Gothic barbarians to invade its territories.

ALEXANDER SEVERUS: PERSIA.—Alexander Severus (222-235) was a man of pure morals, and sincerely disposed to remedy abuses and to govern well. But the evils were too great for the moderate degree of vigor with which he was endowed. The overthrow of the Parthian kingdom, in 226, created, in the New Persian Monarchy, a formidable enemy to Rome. Alexander did little more than check the advance of Persia. In a war against the Germans, he was slain by his own soldiers.

TO DECIUS (A.D. 249).—The fierce and brutal Maximin, who had excited the soldiers of Alexander Severus to mutiny, reigned from 235 to 238. The Senate roused itself to resist his advance into Italy; and he, and his son with him, were killed in his tent by his soldiers. Gordian (238-244) at least held the frontier against the attacks of the Persians. Philip, an Arabian, probably a Roman colonist, after reigning from 244 to 249, was supplanted by Decius, whom his rebellious Moesian and Pannonian soldiers raised to power.

DECIUS TO CLAUDIUS (A.D. 250-268).—The short reign of Decius was marked by the first general persecution of the Christian Church. During his reign, the Goths (A.D. 250) invaded the empire. They traversed Dacia, and crossed the Danube. They ravaged Moesia, and even made their way into Thrace. Decius was defeated by them in Moesia, and slain. The peril of the empire continually increased. The German tribes on the north, the Goths on the Lower Danube and the Euxine, and Persia in the east, arrayed themselves in hostility.

The reigns of Valerian (253-260) and of his associate and successor, Gallienus (260-268), were marked by continuous disaster. Numerous independent rulers—"the thirty tyrants"—established themselves, generally for a very short time, in different regions. In the East, one kingdom, the capital of which was Palmyra, and which had for a ruler Zenobia, the widow of its founder, lasted for ten years (264-273). The Goths occupied Dacia, and from the Cimmerian Bosphorus sent out their predatory expeditions in all directions, plundering cities, including Athens and Corinth, and carrying off immense booty to their homes south of the Danube. The Persians conquered Armenia, took Valerian prisoner, advanced into Syria, and burned Antioch.

TO DIOCLETIAN (A.D. 284).—It would seem as if the Roman empire was on the verge of dissolution. But a series of vigorous emperors—among them Claudius (268-270) and Aurelian (270-275)—quelled rebellion within its borders, and re-established its boundaries; although Aurelian gave up to the Goths Dacia, which had been of no benefit to the empire. Probus (276-282) was a prudent as well as valiant ruler. Carus (282-283) invaded Persia, captured Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and might, perhaps, have completed the conquest of the country, but for his death. Numerianus (283-284) was the last in the succession of rulers during this period of military control, of which the corruption of the army was the worst result.