The Disastrous Third Century.
From Marcus Aurelius to Diocletian stretches an evil century. The rocks upon which Rome was finally to be shipwrecked began to show their heads. Government again became a prey instead of a service. The “barrack emperors”—“the thirty tyrants” cursed the imperial chair. The German barbarians began to press hard upon the borders of the empire. Pestilence, imported from the East, thinned the already weakened population. The army came to be almost wholly recruited, and in a large degree officered by Germans. It was almost as if Great Britain depended solely for her defense upon Hindoo troops, for lack of men and mettle among the English themselves. Then came the spasm of reform under Aurelian. And meantime the barbarians by scores of thousands at first, and soon by hundreds of thousands, came drifting down from the north and east. Their comings were quiet enough at the first. They simply moved in where Romans had largely died out. We might compare it in some ways to what would happen if our country should allow a free immigration of Orientals into our Pacific slope.