Rome's Crisis of the Third Century

Summary

Summary of "Rome's Crisis of the Third Century" Episode from The Ancients Podcast

Hosted by Tristan Hughes, featuring Dr. David Gwinn from Royal Holloway University, London.

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1. Introduction to the Third Century Crisis (02:10 - 05:03)

Overview of the Crisis

Tristan Hughes opens the episode by introducing the Third Century Crisis, a tumultuous period in Roman history spanning from 235 to 285 AD. This era is marked by political instability, economic collapse, and external threats, culminating in the temporary fragmentation of the Roman Empire.

Tristan Hughes (04:38): "This feels like one of those pivotal times in the history of ancient Rome."

Significance of the Period

Dr. David Gwinn emphasizes the crisis as a turning point between the classical world and the early medieval period. He notes the complexity of the era, making it less frequently covered in traditional classical studies.

Dr. David Gwinn (04:38): "It's the turning point in many ways between what we call the classical world and the early medieval world."

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2. Political Turmoil and Barracks Emperors (05:03 - 20:14)

Rapid Succession of Emperors

The period saw over 25 emperors rise and fall within fifty years, often through assassination or military defeat. These "barracks emperors" were typically soldiers without noble lineage, relying on military support rather than dynastic legitimacy.

Dr. David Gwinn (18:19): "They’re soldiers, and it's worth saying a number of them are clearly good soldiers... But a lot of these third century emperors, that's all that really defines them."

Lack of Stable Leadership

Tristan draws parallels with the Wars of the Successors post-Alexander the Great, highlighting the chaotic nature of leadership changes during the crisis.

Tristan Hughes (05:33): "It's complicated and complex... one of the hardest things to judge is is the Roman Empire struggling because of external pressure like the Persians, or is it struggling because the constant civil wars and the lack of imperial authority are weakening the empire."

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3. Economic Challenges: Coinage and Inflation (09:13 - 12:30)

Debasement of Coinage

Dr. Gwinn discusses the debasement of Roman coinage from 40% silver to less than 5% by 270 AD. This debasement led to widespread inflation and loss of trust in the currency.

Dr. David Gwinn (10:25): "The material value of the coin denotes its actual wealth to the ancient Romans... very different from today."

Economic Collapse

The debasement strained the tax system and trade networks, forcing regions to revert to barter economies. While localized agricultural communities survived, the imperial economy faced significant setbacks.

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4. External Threats: Sassanians and Germanic Tribes (14:15 - 35:17)

Rise of the Sasanian Empire

The overthrow of the Parthian Empire by the Sasanian dynasty introduced a formidable eastern adversary. The Sassanians, invoking the legacy of the Achaemenid Persians, launched continuous assaults on Roman territories.

Dr. David Gwinn (14:33): "Shapur wants to gain the prestige of taking over those eastern territories... they've got their own monuments below those of the Achaemenids."

Germanic Pressures on Multiple Frontiers

Simultaneously, new Germanic groups like the Franks and Goths intensified raids along the Rhine and Danube frontiers. The emergence of large federations such as the Alemanni made these tribes more organized and persistent threats.

Dr. David Gwinn (29:06): "The Franks first appear in our record as a clearly distinct group in the 250s."

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5. Plague and Societal Strain (40:30 - 43:49)

Impact of Epidemics

The episode highlights the role of plagues, particularly the Plague of Cyprian, which devastated regions like Egypt and the East. These epidemics weakened both the military and the tax base, exacerbating the empire's vulnerabilities.

Dr. David Gwinn (42:01): "Taxation is what separates the Roman Empire from, say, smaller, later medieval kingdoms."

Social and Economic Consequences

Plagues led to reduced population, strained labor forces, and impaired ** economic productivity**, further destabilizing the already fragile empire.

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6. Religious Developments and Christianity's Rise (47:50 - 51:38)

Growth of Christianity

During the crisis, Christianity grew from approximately 2-3% to about 10% of the population. Christians played a pivotal role in societal support during plagues and famines, fostering community welfare.

Dr. David Gwinn (52:49): "Christianity grew in this period... Because in a time of crisis, of plague, of famine, the Christians provide support."

Imperial Persecutions

Emperors like Decius and Valerian initiated persecutions aimed at restoring the pax deorum (peace of the gods), which inadvertently raised Christianity's profile.

Dr. David Gwinn (49:31): "Decius orders everybody to sacrifice in the empire... Decius then gets killed by the Goths, so the persecution stops."

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7. The Great Recovery: Gallienus, Aurelian, and Diocletian (52:57 - 63:05)

Gallienus's Reforms

Emperor Gallienus focused on strengthening the imperial administration and reorganizing the army, emphasizing a more mobile cavalry to respond to multiple threats.

Dr. David Gwinn (57:27): "Gallienus is the start of the recovery. What he focused on was within his territories, building up the imperial administration and... reorganizing the army."

Aurelian's Consolidation

Emperor Aurelian successfully reconsolidated the empire by defeating breakaway regions like the Gallic and Palmyran Empires, restoring imperial boundaries nearly to their pre-crisis state.

Dr. David Gwinn (54:27): "Aurelian... has actually pulled back almost the entire empire, at least on a map, to look as it had at the beginning."

Diocletian and the Tetrarchy

The recovery culminated under Diocletian, who established the Tetrarchy—a system of rule by four emperors—to ensure more effective governance across the vast empire. Diocletian's reforms included:

• Administrative Overhaul: Doubling the number of provinces for better management.
• Military Reorganization: Creating smaller, more mobile army units.
• Tax Reforms: Introducing a mixed coinage and barter system to stabilize the economy.

Dr. David Gwinn (56:23): "What Diocletian created, which was unique in the history of Rome, is what is called the Tetrarchy, the Rule of four."

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8. Conclusion: Long-term Impact on the Roman Empire (63:05 - 65:32)

Transformation and Resilience

Dr. Gwinn concludes that the Third Century Crisis, while catastrophic, led to a transformed and more resilient Roman Empire. The reforms initiated during the recovery period laid the groundwork for the Later Roman Empire and influenced its ability to survive subsequent challenges.

Dr. David Gwinn (60:24): "What comes out of the third century crisis is at least as well organized and structured as the empire before."

Legacy of the Crisis

The episode underscores that the crisis was not an irreversible decline but rather a transformative period that reshaped Roman institutions, military structures, and societal norms, setting the stage for the empire's endurance into Late Antiquity.

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Notable Quotes

• Tristan Hughes (04:38): "It's the turning point in many ways between what we call the classical world and the early medieval world."

• Dr. David Gwinn (18:19): "They’re soldiers, and it's worth saying a number of them are clearly good soldiers... But a lot of these third century emperors, that's all that really defines them."

• Dr. David Gwinn (10:25): "The material value of the coin denotes its actual wealth to the ancient Romans... very different from today."

• Dr. David Gwinn (52:49): "Christianity grew in this period... Because in a time of crisis, of plague, of famine, the Christians provide support."

• Dr. David Gwinn (60:24): "What comes out of the third century crisis is at least as well organized and structured as the empire before."

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Final Thoughts

The episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the Third Century Crisis, elucidating its multifaceted nature involving political instability, economic woes, external threats, and social transformations. Dr. David Gwinn's expertise offers listeners a nuanced understanding of how this period, despite its chaos, ultimately strengthened and redefined the Roman Empire.

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Transcript

[Tristan Hughes]

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[Tristan Hughes]

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[Dr. David Gwinn]

I'm Tristan Hughes, your host today. We're covering one of the most important yet complicated and catastrophic periods in Roman history, all in one episode. The third Century Crisis the third century AD Is regularly seen as a period of great turmoil and transformation in the Roman Empire, particularly between the years 235 and 285 AD. During that half century, more than 25 emperors rose and fell, almost always meeting a sticky end. There was plague, there was economic collapse. There was massive conflict, both from powerful external enemies in places like Germany and the Middle east, but also from power hungry leaders within Rome's borders seeking to carve out their own kingdoms. The third Century Crisis was this melting pot of different catastrophes that struck the Roman Empire. And yet, for all of these hardships, the Roman Empire did ultimately survive them, albeit emerging from it radically transformed. Now, our guest today to Untangle and explain this third century crisis is Dr. David Gwinn from Royal Holloway University in London where he is a reader in ancient and late antique history. David has been on the podcast once before. He was our guest for the episode we released in early 2024, all about the Goths, which one of my favourite.

[Tristan Hughes]

Episodes of the last year, I must admit.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Now David, he's back to tackle the massive topic that is the third century crisis and explain why this period of chaos was so significant and transformative for the Roman Empire. This was an extraordinary chat covering everything from the seven foot giant barracks emperor that was Maximinus Thrax to Christianity and the empire, wise persecutions of its followers at times during this period.

[Tristan Hughes]

I really do hope you enjoy. David, what a pleasure. Welcome back to the podcast.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Thank you very much. Great to be back.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, I mean, good luck. This is quite a topic, the crisis of the third century. And yet this feels like one of those pivotal, I don't want to say moments, because it's not a moment, it's decades long, but one of those pivotal times in the history of ancient Rome.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

It's the turning point in many ways between what we call the classical world and the early medieval world. A lot of universities, when they teach classical history, stop at the end of the second century with the Roman Empire, because the third century is so complex, so confusing, and what emerges out of it is what we call the later Roman Empire, the world of late antiquity. So a lot of classicists don't even get there.

[Tristan Hughes]

I see it sometimes with similarities with, let's say, the wars of the successors, where there's so many names following Alexander the Great's death and so many similar names that many people, you know, they refrain from focusing in on it because it is such a crisis and it's quite daunting to approach. And I can imagine with the crisis of the third century with so many different players involved, it is complicated and complex. That is one of the main reasons that sometimes we don't focus it on it as much as, let's say, Constantine the Great afterwards or Marcus Aurelius and Commodus before.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Absolutely. And you can add to that it's the worst documented period in Roman imperial history. That's not because people weren't writing. It's not such a crisis that no one could write. But almost none of the works survive. So the last two really good or solid historians of the earlier period, Cassius, Dio and Herodian, they stop in 229 and 238 respectively. We're not going to have another reliable narrative historian until Ammianus Marcellinus surviving account begins in 354. So there's no historical narrative even remotely contemporary we can use.

[Tristan Hughes]

That's over a hundred years where there's no narrative history.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

What we've got is we've got a church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, very useful, but obviously specifically focused on the church and tending to judge emperors by did they persecute. We've got a number of 4th century writers who wrote very short biographies of emperors and just give us a very basic outline. And then we've got the one source that covers almost the entire third century crisis. But that, unfortunately, is the work known as the Historia Augusta.

[Tristan Hughes]

I thought you were going to say that. Yep.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

This is a collection of imperial biographies written as lives of emperors. It claims to be written by six different people working together around the year 300. It's actually written almost certainly by one person who invented all the other six Persona, and is doing this as a literary exercise either in the late 4th century or in the early 5th century. And it's not just that he's creating Persona. He invents names, he fakes documents, he gives citations that don't exist. Basically, there is some genuinely useful material in the Historia Augusta, but finding it and identifying which bits you can trust has been a scholarly industry for a hundred years and has not stopped.

[Tristan Hughes]

What a difficult source. Almost going back to the wars of successes, we have a similar source. I'd argue with adjusting a later episode me of someone called Pompeius Trogus. But it's once again the thing of there are so many outlandish or just wrong statements in there. However, there is some beautiful little parts that you can glean from it and that feels, I guess that is one of your challenges. It is figuring out what's real, what's fake and I guess also archaeology. What can be corroborated with surviving archaeology?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Exactly. And archaeology is utterly crucial here. It always is in ancient history, but particularly when your literary sources are at best unreliable. Not just trying to trace damage, but also, of course, trying to monitor things like population shifts, the debasement of the coinage. Can we see settlement patterns altering? One of the key things actually from the archaeology is it confirmed that some areas of the Roman Empire are actually doing really well in the third century crisis. So Britain famously seems to be reaching a peak of prosperity because Britain was far enough away that it wasn't touched by the crisis. North Africa is largely prosperous and the archaeology seems to Bear that out, because.

[Tristan Hughes]

Actually it's such an interesting time. If it is actually a prosperous time in the Roman Empire for so many parts said the archaeological record, surviving must be very, very rich, which is a godsend compared to the literary sources that you have surviving. And of all that archaeology, should we give special mention to coinage right now? Because of the amount of emperors and different faces, surely coinage must be so useful for this time period.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Yes, and it would help if the coinage was better quality. So a lot of the people who later hoarded coins didn't collect third century examples. They weren't good quality. And a crucial element of the wider crisis is that as the emperors come under strain, they need more money. What's the easiest way to create more money? You mint more coins. But the difference between an ancient coin and, say, a modern 50 piece is that an ancient coin is supposed to be worth its metal content. The silver coinage of the Roman Empire at the start of the third century crisis was still about 40% silver. By 270, it's less than 5%. And so we can find coins that technically they're silver coins, but actually they're just made up of other metals. And we actually have laws passed by emperors complaining that money lenders or money exchanges won't take the coins. Because this, of course, is what you do if you're a money exchanger in the ancient world. You test a coin, you bite it, you test, can you snap it? They're actually very good at working out whether a coin has lost its real value.

[Tristan Hughes]

So that is something, once again, I think we should really highlight right here before we delve into it. So kind of getting out of the modern perception of coins. The material value of the coin denotes its actual wealth to the ancient Romans and people living in the ancient Roman Empire. And that is so different to today.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

I know, after all, the original coins, the very first ones we have on record, are actually just lumps of gold with a stamp on them. Those go back to, indeed earlier than the classical Greek period.

[Tristan Hughes]

And Croesus and Lydia, yes, the Romans.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Have been minting coins, of course, for most of their history. But if you go back to, say, Augustus, the start of the Roman Empire, the gold and silver coinage is 90%. It's very high quality gold and silver. And it's going to be a real problem for the emperors after the third century to try and rebuild trust in the coinage. So Diocletian, who's the great figure who tries to rebuild the empire at the end of the crisis, never solves the problem. Of how to mint reliable coinage. It's Constantine who did the first Christian emperor and that's because a Christian emperor could melt down gold and silver statues from pagan temples and gave him a supply of precious metal to rebuild the coinage.

[Tristan Hughes]

Now with this whole topic, the crisis of the third century, we're not going to do a whole narrative, go emperor by emperor because there are quite a lot and I think it would get a bit tedious after a while. What we're going to do is we're going to go thematically and explore the big themes of this almost century long crisis. And we can focus in on a couple of particular case studies too. But it does make sense to start at the beginning. I mean David, when does the crisis of the third century begin? And don't just say the third century.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Please, it sounds like it should be 100 years. Actually the third century crisis is from 235 to 284. So it's basically a 50 year span in the middle of the century because the period before that is the age of the Severan dynasty, the last major dynasty to rule the Roman Empire for any length of time before the crisis began.

[Tristan Hughes]

This is the one found by Septimius Severus and Famous from Gladiator 2 recently of course, and Karakalagita and so on.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Exactly. The last of the Severans is Severus Alexander who dies in 235 and his death is usually regarded as the first date at the start of the crisis. In reality, three important things had happened under the Severins which will have a major influence and are already having an influence on the crisis. One is the Severans placed more emphasis on the army than previous emperors had. So they're very strong on army support which is giving the army greater say in who should be emperor. The second is the Severans greatly cared about religion. They're one of the first dynasties to link themselves to a specific cult. It's actually the Syrian cult of BAAL.

[Tristan Hughes]

Or is this Elagabalus and that figure?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Exactly, because Septimius Severus wife Julia Domna is a priestess of that Syrian cult. And the longer the dynasty goes, the more it's emphasized. Now obviously some later emperors, including the Christian ones are going to draw in part on this model of a dynasty linked to religion. So those are the two major Severin changes inside the empire, the army and religion. Actually for the third century crisis the biggest change didn't happen in the Roman world, it happened out in Iran, Iraq, because in the 220s, the Parthian Empire, which had been dominating what's now Iran, Iraq and had been in decline for 100 years, got overthrown by a new Persian dynasty called the Sasanians. And the Sasanian Persians immediately launch major attacks on the Eastern Empire and will continue to do so right through the crisis.

[Tristan Hughes]

Is this is imperial blowback to the extreme. I mean it's the epitome of it, isn't it? The Romans contribute to the decline and fall of the Parthians, that preceding dynasty in Iran, in Iraq, but they're replaced by this even stronger, what will be a more deadly threat to their eastern provinces over these next 50 years or so.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Trajan had attacked the Parthians. Septimius Severus did it, Caracalla did it. The Romans have directly undermined the Parthians. The problem is this new dynasty has a vision of its own, its own ideology. What the Sasanians claim is they are the successors to the Achaemenid Persians. That's the old empire of Darius Xerxes from the Greco Persian Wars. The problem is if the Sasanians claim to retake the old Persian Empire, that includes Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor and arguably very briefly Greece. So the Sasanians can actually make a claim that all those territories should be theirs. And we know they're making this claim because although our Persian sources aren't great either, the older Caymanid Persians had great rock cut monuments. So they went to some of the great rock cliffs in Iran, notably of a place called Naki Rushta, and they carved images of themselves there. Well, the Sassanians go back to the same locations and put their own monuments below those of the Achaemenids. They're making a very specific ideological claim. Interestingly, Cassius Dio, the Roman historian knew that before he dies in the early 230s. Dio already knows that is the claim of the Sasanians, which means they're coming and they're going to keep coming.

[Tristan Hughes]

And it feels like this is something we're going to be talking about, which is this, this crisis in the east, especially because the east of the Roman Empire at that time, it is rich, it is wealthy, and if that is under constant attack or constant strain, that is going to filter through to the west, to the rest of the Roman Empire and affect the stability and I guess the wealth is at the coinage and everything of the Roman Empire as this period progresses.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Exactly. I mean some parts of the Roman Empire in the east are actually going to break away temporarily and become quasi independent because they've got to protect themselves from the Sasanians. The Sasanians are going to sack Antioch, the greatest city in the eastern Roman area of Syria. Shapur in particular. Who's the second Sassanian Shah? The only rival he has for the greatest enemy Rome faced is Hannibal of Carthage. No one else strikes quite the same chord.

[Tristan Hughes]

I think you're right. And he is often overlooked. Chapo. And maybe we'll talk a bit more about him as time goes on. But before we focus in on the East, I feel kind of going back to that beginning. So Severus Alexander, last of the Severans. He's been assassinated. Still quite young. AD 235. As I say, the first case study, because I think this also defines the nature of many of the emperors that will follow. Let's focus in on the character of the person who succeeds Severus Alexander, because in many ways this is a breaking from the norm in so many different ways for an emperor character.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Severus was murdered in an army mutiny and his successor is just a soldier. As far as we can tell. He's not a noble, he's not even educated. The only thing the Historia Augusta says about him is that he was 8 foot 6, which seems slightly unusual. But Maximinus Thrax is simply a soldier who was charismatic enough to get other soldiers to agree with him. 8 foot 6 according to Historia Augusta.

[Tristan Hughes]

Okay, okay, that's, that's a good according to. To put in there to be fair.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

And as I often say, whenever you say a fact that comes from the Historia Augusta, it always requires according to the Historia Augusta.

[Tristan Hughes]

But he's probably tall, he's probably got a tool.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

He was clearly, you know, he's a big impressive man and that seems to be his qualification. There must have been more to it, but we don't get any clear sense. He's just a soldier who's rallying the soldiers and they hail him Emperor.

[Tristan Hughes]

And is this where we get the term then, which seems to be important over those next few decades? The term barracks emperor, one of the.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Great features of the entire crisis. You're talking about a 50 year period. There are approximately 25 official emperors and about the same number of major usurpers. So it's an incredible imperial turnover. The average reign is about two years. The majority of those emperors are soldier emperors. So they're being hailed by the army, sometimes only by the part of the army that knows them. So you get a lot of civil wars between different parts of the army. These aren't people like Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, back in the second century. They're none of them emperors that are focusing on culture, art. Almost none of them even have time to present an image of themselves. They're soldiers, and it's worth saying a number of them are clearly good soldiers. Even some of the ones who lose are clearly competent military leaders. But in a sense, that's all they are. The definition of a Roman emperor never used to be just a good soldier. Yet a lot of these third century emperors, that's all that really defines them.

[Tristan Hughes]

So it's not who has the royal blood anymore or who belongs to this dynasty, who's grown up in the palaces of Rome. It is very much who has the strongest army at the time and who is willing to make that play for power.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Exactly. There are no dynasties here. Of those 25 emperors, one maybe died of natural causes, otherwise a few, disease, plague, most of them are murdered. A few die on a battlefield. That's what is happening in this period. No matter how you try and emphasize there were some aspects of prosperity, there are some aspects of culture. If you're only talking about imperial power, this is the greatest period of crisis in Roman history.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, how successful were some of these barracks emperors? I mean, if we focus on Maximinus Thrax, we've been talking about him, how long does his reign endure or do cracks start to emerge? Does he prove that he's not up for the task? Yes, he's a military man, but administrative wise, he's not able to control the Empire. Is it very clear with his qualifications that he's very quickly not up for the job?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Yes, as far as we can tell, Maximinus never even makes it to Rome. It's not clear, but basically the army has hailed him. But the Roman Senate, who are still important, not as important as they had been back in say, the Roman Republic, but they're the richest leading nobles. The Senate have no interest in having this kind of emperor. So they promptly hail their own who then gets murdered. So they hail another one who's also going to get murdered before Max minus Thrax himself gets murdered. And then we get the grandson of one of the predecessors until he gets murdered. I mean, There are approximately seven emperors between 235 and 244, depending on who you count as an emperor. So Thrax never actually has authority. And this is one of the recurring themes of the third century crisis. And it's why one of the hardest things to judge is is the Roman Empire struggling because of external pressure like the Persians, or is it struggling because the Constant civil wars and the lack of imperial authority are weakening the empire. In reality, it's a chicken egg scenario. Which do you think is coming first?

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, let's focus in like thematically. Let's then tackle all of these civil wars. I mean, how seismic do these civil wars become over these next few decades? Are they sometimes you get small scale where they actually don't end up in a pitched battle because they pay someone to assassinate their rival. Or do you also sometimes get massive battles and breakaways and so on?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

There are a few major battles. Mostly this is not a civil war in the sense of, say the English Civil War or the American Civil War where it consumes everything about society. Basically, these are individual armies, individual barracks, emperors fighting over who wins. So for most of the common people, it's just a matter of how much of their land will get plundered by an army that passes through. Most of the emperors are murdered, so one leader's officers will decide, no, the other leader's better, so we'll kill ours. In a few cases, the R actually defeats on a battlefield. And obviously if you win a battle against a potential rival, that rival does not survive. Perhaps a closer parallel would therefore be, say, the War of the Roses where you've got ongoing, not huge scale battles and a lot of people in England who are just waiting to see who should we call emperor now or who should we call king.

[Tristan Hughes]

Do you see almost a period of, dare I say, learning from these potential usurpers, these generals, when they have got their armies? Because surely they're not so stupid to think, you know what, I'm now going to try my lock. Even though it didn't work for X or Y or Z before. Do they look as okay, it didn't work in the past because of this reason or because of that reason, I'm going to now try my luck. I'm going to try and take this territory and I'm going to do it differently to try and make sure that my result is different to what's happened previously. Do you see that Almost that education, that learning curve from usurpus as time.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Goes on, I mean, some of them really do just seem to be, oh, look, I have a dagger, there's a new let's create a job vacancy. There doesn't seem to be a lot of forward planning, but there are actually some who quite clearly have thought through how you need a support base. In a sense, the irony there is the two most successful of these usurpers never become emperors at all. What they actually did was Create breakaway regions which were regions now loyal to them. So in the heart of the third century crisis, so in the 260s, when it really looks like the empire could break, there are actually three rulers in what was the Roman Empire. The official emperor is Gallienus. But Gallienus only rules the central bit. So North Africa, Italy, the Balkans. Out in the east, the Persian attacks have got so bad that a local eastern leader has united most of Syria, Palestine, Egypt in his own breakaway kingdom, because he'll lead the defence.

[Tristan Hughes]

This is the Palmyran Kingdom. Odenathus and Zenobia.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Exactly. This is Odenathus, the leader who founds the Palmyran Kingdom, and then Zenobia, his widow. We actually had beautiful monuments from this. Unfortunately, Palmyra was badly hit by ISIS back in 2015, but Gallienus clearly made the conscious choice. It's not worth fighting Odenathus. Odenathus is doing the job that needs doing in the east and exactly the same thing happens in the west. So we get what's called the Gallic Empire, which is a breakaway group led by originally a Roman general named Postumus, who unites at his peak, Britain, Gaul and Spain. But just like Odenathus, what Posthumus is doing is providing the localized defence that the centralized empire is not delivering. So Posthumus deals with the Rhine frontier, and both Odenathus and Posthumus are very successful, but also never manage to create long term stability. They're both eventually murdered, and once the central empire has strengthened, they take those regions back again.

[Tristan Hughes]

I mean, shall we also talk about that other big case of usurper being pretty successful, which is of course usurpers in Roman Britain, because this is another area where it seems like they've learned. I mean, you've got an island basically kind of strengthening this part of the Roman Empire as the base of your new kingdom.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Because there are two major regions in the Western Roman Empire where no major foreign threat can hit. One's Britain, the other's North Africa. In both cases, they've got slightly problematic people. In the case of Britain, it's in Scotland. In the case of North Africa, it's on the desert fringe with the Berbers. But in neither case is there a serious invasion threat. So you can have the prosperity, you can therefore use it as a resource base, because that's, of course, the great challenge. It's one thing for a usurper to say, oh, I'm emperor, but if the tax revenue isn't coming in, then you don't have the resources to pay the army to keep your supporters loyal. So posthumous uses Britain and the parts of Gaul and Spain that haven't really been hit as his key basis for resources. Odenathus in the east. Well, Palmyra is a trading city and Egypt is the richest territory on the entire map and it's largely not being affected. So if you've got those resources, you can then build something up. Gallienus is trying to use Italy, North Africa when he begins his recovery for the same purpose.

[Tristan Hughes]

So we've kind of explored kind of these civil wars and these usurpers and how fractured this period is for the Roman Empire. But let's talk about something which is closely linked to this and the external factors that you hinted at there. And we'll get to the east and the Sassanians in a bit because they feel really important to this story. But let's focus further west because you mentioned, let's say posthumous, there's a Gallic empire. One of the things is managing that Rhine frontier. So at that time, was there a bigger threat of people from beyond, let's say, the Rhine frontier? First of all, yes.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

What makes the third century crisis is it's the first real point, at least externally, that the Roman Empire has ever been squeezed on all three major frontiers simultaneously. Britain, North Africa, don't come into the reckoning here. There are three great frontiers where the Romans can face major attack. The Rhine river, the Danube river and the East. And for most of the second century, the German frontiers had remained stable until it cracks wide open back in the 160s under Marcus Aurelius. He then re stabilized it. Septemius Severus works hard to stabilise it as well. So in the 230s, the main threats in the east. But in the 250s and 260s, three major Germanic groups become a threat and two of them are brand new. The only one for whom we have a previous track record is what's collectively known as the Alemani, which is just really a collective name for Germanic peoples, usually around where the Rhine and Danube don't quite meet. What's completely changed. The reckoning is on the Rhine River. A new people have emerged, particularly around the Low Countries, Belgium, the Netherlands. And that is the Franks.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's the Franks. Ah, so this is when the Franks emerge. Okay.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

The Franks first appear in our record as a clearly distinct group in the 250s. And in the 240s, for the first time, we meet the Goths, because the Goths, who originally came from somewhere around the Baltic region late in the Second, early third century migrated down to what's now the Ukraine. And then as the third century progresses in the 240s through to the 260s, Gothic pressure is growing on the Danube. So you've got gulfs raging across the Black Sea and down over the Danube, you've got Alemani and Franks raiding across the Rhine. And then you've also got the rise of Sasanian Persians. Arguably no emperor, no matter how good, could actually have coped with that treble threat.

[Tristan Hughes]

So is this something you see time and time again that certain emperors, when they're not battling against other emperor wannabes or usurpers, rather than having a rest and dealing with the administration or whatever, they're having to march their armies beyond the borders or near the borders to fight other potential enemy threats on either the Rhine, Danube or in the East.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Yes, one thing I'd always emphasize, we've got lots of emperors. Most of them are highly intelligent, very active men. Rome is not a society that lies down and dies. You see that again when you get to the collapse of the eventual Roman Empire in the west in the 5th century. It doesn't fall because they just give up and stop fighting. The Romans know how to beat Germanic tribes. The key is you need enough of the resources to exploit the fact that your equipment and training is usually better and crucially that you normally on a battlefield have reserves and very few tribal armies remember the importance of having a reserve. Maxmanist Thrax does what he was originally hailed emperor to do, which would stabilise that German frontier. The problem is he'll never secure overall power. Postumus Odonathus do what the local peoples looked to them to do, which was protect the Rhine or the East. And a number of the emperors, even quite short lived ones, fight seriously hard and actually sometimes quite effectively against the Goths.

[Tristan Hughes]

Claudius Gothicus is a good example. His name, Gothicus, he wins quite a big victory even though he's not around for very long.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

No, I mean the Goths were a new threat, they were a new scale of threat on the Danube. So their initial attacks plough into the Roman provinces of the Balkans. But the Emperor Decius does actually manage to win several battles against them to try and push them back, then gets caught in what appears to partly be an ambush battle and is killed. And he is the first Roman emperor ever killed by a foreign enemy on a battlefield. Emperors have died in civil war battles before, but Decius in 251 is actually the very first emperor to die on a battlefield against an External enemy, with the result that Gallienus, who then effectively takes over, he campaigns against the Goths through a long. Gallienus actually rules for 15 years. He's the only person to reach double figures in the third century. And there is a debate over did he win the major victory against the Goths or did Claudius ii, because it happened in the year in which Gallienus is finally murdered. 268 Gallienus is not popular in our sources. Claudius II Gothicus was claimed by Constantine, so the first Christian emperor 50 odd years later as his ancestor. So the accounts we get of Claudius Gothicus glorify Claudius in part because of us and as far as we can tell, totally fictitious claim of ancestry. But given that he takes the title, he must have certainly won some battles. And crucially, after Claudius Gothicus, the Goths are not a threat again in the third century. Whatever's happened in 268, 269 has pushed the Goths back.

[Tristan Hughes]

Interesting, because I was going to ask, would you argue that on all fronts, not just in the east, that the enemies that the Romans are facing in the third century AD are stronger than they'd been in previous centuries, or that the Roman army is weaker? I mean, what would you argue there?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Certainly it's not helping the Roman army to have constant civil wars. I mean, after all, the real damage of civil wars is how much it destroys your own military. But one of the problems actually with the Roman Empire's frontier policy when it comes to the Germans is it was much easier for the Romans to deal with organized tribal units, because then you can sign treaties with leaders, you can try and influence their successors. But one side effect of that is the size of Germanic tribal blocks on the edges of the empire is going up. We've got Tacitus Germania written right at the end of the first century ad, and Tacitus is describing lots of small tribes. The Alemanni federation seems to have emerged in part because it was easier for a larger federation to try and get things from the Romans.

[Tristan Hughes]

They're kind of uniting together.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

So it's partly the enemies right on the frontier who know the Romans are learning from the Romans. And then you've got the Goths, who are a distinct and larger group and like most groups that have just moved, are still in the process of stabilizing, which means they're particularly warlike. Certainly the Goths seem to be much more of a threat than the Franks, at least in this middle years of the third century. The Franks are there. But as far as we can tell, they're really exploiting the Alemanni, destroying the Rhine frontier and the Franks just raid over it. The Goths on the other hand, you know, they're actually raiding all the way into Asia Minor. They sacked the city of Athens. I mean, you know, the Gulfs are a real threat until they're finally driven back.

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[Tristan Hughes]

Well, let's move on from the Frank Salamani and the Goths. I mean, the complicated relationship between the Franks and the Alemanni is certainly one for another tale, but let's do a case study of that Sasanian threat. Particularly should we do the story of Valerian, because I think this is an important one to cover at this time.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

The Persians though, they've risen originally back at the end of the Severan dynasty. Severus Alexander tries to fight back, loses and that's actually what helps cause the mutiny that gets him killed in 235. From then on, the Persians are raiding. Ardashir is clearly a very effective ruler. He's the one who pulls the dynasty together and then his son Shapur is as good or better. So the pressure never really eases. Shapur wants to gain the prestige of taking over those eastern territory. You've got this ideology of conquest. So through the 240s, Shapo is still putting on the pressure. But then you've also got the Romans trying to juggle with multiple frontiers. And so what actually happened after Decius gets killed is for the first time two Roman emperors effectively split the empire in a clearly defined divide. There have been joint rulers before, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus for example. But what Valerian and his son Gallienus do is actually define areas of responsibility.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's a father and son. Interesting.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

So it's a father son combination. Valerian the father takes the east because that's the immediate threat with Persia and leaves Gallienus to try and deal with the Danube Rhine. So Valerian goes off to try and face Shapur. But the Sassanian army is a serious threat. It's a combination of very heavy cavalry, solid archers, and then a fair number of sometimes unreliable infantry. And the Roman army is not at its strongest. It's too divided in different places. They can't win. Indeed, in the entire third century crisis, they're not going to win a pitched battle against the Sasanian. It's not going to happen until Diocletian and the Tetrarchy. Valerian tried his best and he was another soldier. I mean he's an experienced soldier, a good one, but he's outmatched and his army is outmatched. So he tries to negotiate. The result is sort of a skirmish that gets out of hand. And just as Decius became the first emperor to be killed by a foreign enemy, Valerian sets his own record by being the first Roman emperor captured by a foreign enemy and taken off to Persia basically as a court monument and he'll die in captivity. And according to our sources, he's then sort of slightly skinned, stuffed, dyed purple and put up in the main Persian temple as an ongoing prize. And we've actually got a picture of the capture of Valerian by Shapur on Shapur's rock cut monument with Shapur on his horse and Valerian with his hands bound.

[Tristan Hughes]

Now, we have been focusing largely on the military and the figures of these emperors at that time, and usurpers and so on. But the crisis of the third century is not just military battles, external threats and civil wars and so on, because also natural disasters, climate stress, all that. This is huge at this time, particularly plagues, and they play a big role in. In the whole course of this crisis.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

I mean, plague, after all, is endemic. It's a feature of the ancient world. You always have waves of illnesses. But there are certain points where basically the plagues become so prominent in our sources that they are clearly above whatever is considered normal. So there was the major plague, sometimes called the plague of Galen, in the second century, possibly smallpox. It's an ongoing argument, actually identifying the specific disease is always a problem with these ancient epidemics. And then in the third century, because it is so unstable, even what would probably in previous times have been relatively minor epidemic outbreaks are having a bigger impact because there's less strength. Valerian's army gets ravaged by plague before he gets captured. Claudius Gothacus, as you've already alluded to, that appears to be his cause of death, and he may well have died of illness rather than been murdered. We're not always certain, particularly with the very rapid turnover, but it's another factor in imperial mortality. And obviously it's also going to be weakening wider society manpower. And that means both the army, but also the tax base and taxation is getting harder and harder to maintain. But taxation is what separates the Roman Empire from, say, smaller, later medieval kingdoms. It's when you've got a solid tax system that you can have a professional standing army and try and control it. So the unstability of the army is linked to that wider issue of population, plague, famine.

[Tristan Hughes]

There's famine as well, as well as plague. Just another thing to add to this whole mesh of disasters that seem to be affecting, but also various parts of the empire. So the plague, I've got my notes. Plague of Cyprian hits Egypt big and the east, maybe not Roman Britain as much. So once again, it's focusing on particular parts of the empire that suffer more.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

It's an interesting feature of those plagues. In the case of Carthage and Alexandria, the reason we're well informed on them is we've got Christian writers for whom this is a major concern. Now, in fact, Christianity is growing right through the third century, not least because Christians care for victims, and they care for victims regardless of their religion. They don't make that Distinction. When it's a plague victim or an orphan, are they Christian? That's not the point. They need to be supported. So we hear about these plagues from Christian bishops who are actively promoting support for them. Cyprian of Carthage is simply the best documented because we've got a lot of Cyprian's letters and treatises. It helped of course, that North Africa wasn't being greatly disrupted.

[Tristan Hughes]

Oh, so it's named after the person who documented this plague and what he witnessed. Interesting.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

And particularly documents his own support methods. Because if we're thinking of this as a great period of dislocation, well, it's interesting that Cyprian can write letters to everywhere in the Mediterranean. So it's not actually destroying the communication network. Cyprian can write to Spain, to Gaul, to Alexandria, to Antioch.

[Tristan Hughes]

How do all of these factors that we've already discussed, and you've hinted at it already, how do they affect the economy, the whole economy of the Roman Empire? It's not good. And you can see it in wars down to present day, all the factors coming together leading to the equivalent of a massive economic crash.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

It's an economic crash for the imperial structure. This is where I think you'd get a lot of different answers interesting from different scholars here, because if we're focusing on the imperial structure, so the tax system which relies on a stable coinage, it's collapsing. Buying things based on coins, well, debasement means inflation. If coins are worthless, you need more coins to pay for them. So inflation is going to be a major problem. But a lot of the Roman Empire is still an agricultural world where people are largely living by subsistence agriculture. Now, as long as an army doesn't march over your fields, you can carry on doing that. So what seems to be really crashing is the empire wide economic structures that allowed for a higher standard of living. Without a good coinage system, trade becomes problematic. The Silk Road is in a state of current flux, not least because the Sassanian Persians are still trying to work out exactly how best to profit from that famous great trade route that heads out all the way to China and.

[Tristan Hughes]

The Red Sea as well. The connection with India, does that continue.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

And the naval route, so the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf routes are still trading. But the main thing that the Romans sent east was actually gold and silver coinage because they didn't have the spices, the silk. And if you don't have that coinage, so that kind of luxury trade is going to diminish. But what's likely to happen in say an Egyptian village is now you're just going to revert to a barter economy. So can we trade, you know, what's the value between a sheep and a goat? How much food for this pot? And most of the Roman Empire can survive on that localized level. So it's not that there's a colossal collapse in standards of living. We don't seem to see a huge decline in population. The Roman Empire by the end of the third century is still probably around the 60 million mark. So that's where I temper it. Was it a great time to be alive? Well, especially if you are anywhere near the battlefields, definitely not. But for a lot of the Roman small farmers, so in Britain, in Spain, in North Africa, Egypt, but even, say Asia Minor, they're able to carry on.

[Tristan Hughes]

Do we think, because you've also talked about like transport routes and communication routes, you know, one of the things that is often defined with the Roman Empire is bands of people coming into the Roman Empire and then ultimately becomes too much almost, but people coming into the Empire and then a lot of movement around the Empire. Do we think that continues in the third century as all of this is going on, that people are still able to, let's say, go from somewhere, ideally like Hadrian's Wall, all the way to Syria or North Africa? Are those routes and roads and so on still open?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

The roots are there. One suspects the number of people using them is diminishing. This world's becoming localized. So you get the Gallic Empire, the Palmyran Empire, so you're getting more local distinctions there. Someone like Cyprian can still send messages with letters across these routes. So the routes are potentially available, but they're nowhere near as safe as say they were in the second century when you've got the 50 years of near total stability and it's going to be more stable again in the 4th century. So the roots don't disappear. They're there to be revived when the great recovery fully takes effect. But during the heart of the third century, so the worst years, which is basically 250 to 270, 20 whole years.

[Tristan Hughes]

I mean, it feels not that much time when we're looking at it back now, you know, when we cover in ancient history so many years in one episode, but 20 years, you know, that could be half a lifetime for many people back then. So to live there, we don't even want to think of it before we get to that great recovery. Are there any other big contributions to this crisis that we should also mention? Because we talked about the military, we Talked external threats, civil war, climate, plague, economy. Are there any other things we should cover before we move on to the recovery?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

The other great theme of this period is religion and the role religion is playing. Now in older scholarship there's a famous book called the Age of Anxiety, that this is a period of superstition of different views. Actually what seems to be happening is it's an age of quite active intellectual philosophy and also unsurprisingly people seeking answers in different directions. And there's no question the crisis is having an impact and you do see it above all with Christianity because Christians were a small minority at the start of the third century and still a small minority at the end. But at the start of the third century they're perhaps 2,3% of the population. By the end of the third century it's more like 10%. There's give or take 6 million Christians. Christianity grew in this period. Now partly that is this emphasis on charity, welfare. In a time of crisis, of plague, of famine, the Christians provide support. But it's also very noticeable that this is the same period where for the first time Christians are rarely attracting detailed imperial attention. We often think of Christians as constantly persecuted by the Roman Empire, but actually for the first two hundred and fifty or so years Christians could be easily persecuted anywhere. So we have major local outbreaks of violence, but what never actually happened was an empire wide attack on Christianity. Even say Nero, who's one of the few emperors to really try and persecute, basically does it in the city of Rome. But Decius, while he's trying to fight the Goths, is responsible for what becomes the first persecution of Christians.

[Tristan Hughes]

He's not even reigning that long, he's.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Only got a two year reign and yet he very prominent in say Eusebius of Caesarea's church history for this reason, to give Decius credit, we don't think he meant to launch a persecution of Christians. What he actually believed was this crisis has to be due to divine anger. After all, almost everyone in this world, pagan or Christian, believes in divine providence, that the will of the gods is playing a key role. So Decius orders everybody to sacrifice in the empire, everyone to show their piety. Let's win divine support. The problem is there is one particular group who will not sacrifice to the old gods. So Decius order to sacrifice becomes the Decian persecution. Now Decius then gets killed by the Goths, so the persecution stops. What's interesting is six years later Valerian decides that's the right answer. Again, we need divine support. So you get the Valerian persecution of the Christians and unlike Decius, Valerian definitely meant it. So he targets clergy. Cyprian gets caught up in this. He targets churches as far as they exist because they're really just small house churches. But it's a targeted persecution. Then Valerian becomes a Persian monument and Gallienus abandons it. I mean, you can see how the Christian writers are going to treat the fact that the two people who tried a persecution are Decius and Valerian and then for the next 40 years Christians just get left alone. Gallienus view does seem to have been there are bigger priorities than this and the subsequent emperors like Aurelian Pacey just ignore Christians unless they're forced to pay attention.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's something you forget, isn't it, that actually this, you know, because of course following it afterwards you get, you know, Constantine the Great and Christianity starting to really make a foothold, take a foothold in the Roman Empire. But the rise of Christianity can actually be intertwined with the story of the third century crisis. And that is something I must confess, I completely overlooked.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

I mean it's one of the problems that, you know, still religious history is often treated in slight isolation from wider history. I mean, after all, the Christians have been there ever since Augustus, but they have been low profile except for those rare moments of persecution. The standard Roman view is the one that Trajan famously said to Pliny the Younger, which is if you meet a Christian who insists on being Christian and won't then back down, you can go ahead and execute them, but don't look for them is Trajan's explicit instruction. Don't go looking. We're just otherwise going to let them get on with it. And it's interesting that it was in the heart of the third century crisis that they changed that, which does suggest that Christians are becoming higher profile as well as this great concern with what the Romans called the pax deorum, the peace of the gods, which the Christians are disrupting. Well, by going around saying the gods don't exist.

[Tristan Hughes]

How does the great recovery? And it's fair to say, I think it is fair to say it's a great recovery. How does it begin? How does the crisis end?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

If you look at a map of the reign of Gallienus, 253, 268, so the heart of the crisis, it looks like the empire's going Gaul, Britain, Spain's going one way, Palmyra is going the other, Gallienus is in the middle. Gallienus in our sources is largely disliked not least because he didn't make the slightest effort to get his father back from Persia. But actually, Gallienus is the start of the recovery. What he focused on was within his territories, building up the imperial administration and above all, reorganizing the army to have a much stronger cavalry arm and be much more mobile. Now, by the time the Goths are beaten back by Gallienus and Claudius Gothicus, you're beginning to reap the benefits of that. And then the man who sees it through is Aurelian. Now, Aurelian only rules from 270 to 275, so it's not a hugely long reign, but nonetheless, in that time, Aurelian beat the Goths and crushed both the breakaway groups. It helped that in both cases, the original founder had been murdered by this point. But nonetheless, Aurelian, by the end of his reign, has actually pulled back almost the entire empire, at least on a map, to look as it had at the beginning. Only one territory is actually abandoned. It's the region of Dacia. So, roughly speaking, modern Romania to Trajan's.

[Tristan Hughes]

Conquest, the gold mines and everything, quite a rich province beyond the Danube.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

So the very last province that the Romans took and the only one beyond the Rhine and Danube. And basically Aurelian clearly decided you couldn't hold it, not with the Goths moving into that region. So Dacia is the only region lost, and then Aurelian gets murdered after what looks on paper like such a successful reign. The historian Augusta simply summed up Aurelian by saying he was necessary rather than good, end quote. Which suggests he was efficient, effective, and as soon as he'd done the job, enough people wanted him dead that he gets killed, with the result that you then now get another six emperors in the space of about five years, you get a massive new series of murders, and then finally the recovery that Gallienus and Aurelian began gets completed. Because the last emperors of the true third century crisis are Carus and his children, Carinus and Numerian. Now, according to our sources, Carus and at least one of his sons were struck by lightning. Oh, wow. That seems statistically unlikely, which suggests we may be dealing with a euphemism. And interestingly, the guy who was technically responsible for their safety ends up being the next emperor. His name was Diocles, he was a Balkan peasant farmer. He'd risen up through the ranks and he becomes Emperor Diocletian, who is one of the greatest emperors in the entire history of the Roman world.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's such a problem, though, for These ancient protectors of emperors, you know, you're doing everything you can and then you can't help it. They're just out one day going off for a walk and they both happen to get struck by lightning. It's, I mean, good on Diocletian, you know, now it's just paved the way. Who'd have thought something like that could happen?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Yeah, I mean, it's one of the great things about the Praetorian Guard, the old imperial guard. They are responsible for the protection of the emperor and are directly responsible for more imperial deaths than any other single factor.

[Tristan Hughes]

So Diocletian, Balkan peasant, now finds himself in the hot seat of the Roman Empire. But he's seen all these people come before him. How does he then decide, right, enough is enough, how do we restructure this so that stability can return long term?

[Dr. David Gwinn]

And he emphatically has learned those lessons. And actually the key lesson he'd learned quite clearly before he took power, when things are in disarray, the Roman Empire is just too big. You can't easily control it as one person. Doesn't matter where you are on the map, it's too big a map. So the first thing he does is appoint a co ruler, another Balkan soldier who's risen through the ranks, who Diocletian knows he can trust, a man named Maximian. And they're going to share power. And then for the next almost 10 years, they keep control. Diocletian in the East, Maximian in the west. And then Diocletian decided that actually even that's not enough. Not when there's a revolt in Britain, which is what happened, not when the Persians are a threat. So what Diocletian created, which was unique in the history of Rome, is what is called the Tetrarchy, the Rule of four. So you still have Diocletian and Maximian, the two senior emperors, but they each now appoint a junior emperor, a Caesar. So Diocletian and Maximian are the Augusti, their title is Augustus, but Galerius is the Caesar to Diocletian and Constantius Chlorus is the Caesar to Maximian. Constantius Chlorus is the father of Constantine. And the reason he's done this is now you can have an imperial presence everywhere on the map. Maximian can watch the Rhine, while Constantius Chlorus can deal with the British revolt of Carausius and Alectus and does very effectively.

[Tristan Hughes]

You have that coin, the first ever coin of London shown when he retakes London.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Precisely. Diocletian can make sure the Danube is staying safe. And Galerius can achieve what no one has done in the entire third century and beat the Sasanians for the first time. The Romans actually win a major pitched battle in 298. And that is in a sense the tribute to this organization. Because it's all now stabilized. They could give sufficient resources. The army had been built up. But the Tetrarchy may be unique. Almost everything else Diocletian did is actually what worked earlier on just made better organized. So he used Gallienus. Development of the mobile army, smaller legions, the old big 5,000 plus man groups. You don't need those, you need small groups of about 1,000 men, but you need more forts so the frontiers can be stabilized. The tax system gets overhauled so that it's now effectively half barter. So it's half in kind in goods, not just in coinage. So although the coinage is still a problem, the army supply system's been fixed, the government, the provinces get split up. Diocletian actually doubled the number of Roman provinces. So create smaller administrative units because firstly, their governors aren't a threat, but secondly they can do a better job because they've got a smaller region. So everything he's doing is drawing on earlier models but stabilizing. What's interesting is he also drew on one earlier model that you'd have to say hadn't worked and doesn't work for him. Because it's under Diocletian that the Great Persecution, the last great imperial pagan attempt to crack Christianity is launched in 303 and fails.

[Tristan Hughes]

Looking at the big picture, it is seems to be a massive success, isn't it? This is the great recovery at the end of the crisis of the third century. So it does beg the question, is the crisis of the third century, is there any part of it irreversible? Is it significant in the ultimate demise of Rome? Is this that century, is that crisis almost a trigger point for the ultimate fall of Rome? And I guess the Western Roman Empire, or at least the great change of the Roman Empire.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

It's certainly a great change. What we call the later Roman Empire is the remodeled empire of Diocletian. Then with the promotion of Christianity from Constantine onwards, it's that combination. It's hard to argue that that left obvious weaknesses that would cause the subsequent collapse. The later collapse of the Western Roman Empire, indeed all the disruption of the 5th century. There are some factors that come out of these developments, including the rise of Christianity. But then there are also factors that no one could have Scripted, which is above all the arrival of the Huns driving the Goths onwards on a scale that did not happen effectively in the third century. The Romans have met their worst case scenario, which is the Rhine and Danube getting out of hand at the same time as you suddenly get the rise of a new empire in the east, and it very nearly broke them. But they do hold together, of course. If they'd stayed stabler for longer, would they then have had an even stronger resource base going into the fourth century or actually in the second century, when they're peaceful, they actually stagnate. So my own tendency is to argue that what comes out of the third century crisis is at least as well organized and structured as the empire before. It's arguably got a slightly better system for supporting the military. Christianity is going to add an extra layer of organization. It's also going to add a much stronger emphasis on welfare. But the empire is too big. The third century crisis demonstrated that. So will the later crises. A single person ruling the empire will actually be very rare in the last 150 years of Rome because it is too large, you're too vulnerable. The basic structure was never able to cope against multiple shocks. The east, west divide, now that is going to intensify over time. It's always there, partly linguistically, but it will potentially grow. And yet if you took, say, Diocletian's provincial tax reforms, they're still there in Justinian's time in the Eastern Empire.

[Tristan Hughes]

That's Byzantine. So that's after the fall of the Western world.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

By the 6th century, they're still, I mean, indeed, ironically, they were still dating by diocletian in the 6th century. It's why the man who came up with BC AD dating, a monk named Dionysus Exiguus, his original argument to the bishop of Rome was, why are we still dating years from Diocletian? The man persecuted us. And that's actually what causes the original realignment of that calendar. Dionysus Exiguus comes up with an estimated, effectively year of our Lord. And so you get that switch to the dating system that the medieval world knows. But Diocletian, the organization he left, strengthened the empire. So my own view would be it's remarkable they survived this. The real question is why couldn't they repeat this trick in the fifth century? You've got the same shattering effect happening. But Gallienus, Aurelian were able to dig in and pull it back together. And a key part of that does seem to be that Postumus and Odenathus never actually wanted to fully break away. They were proud of being part of a Roman orbit. Whereas when you've got a much larger migration of Germanic peoples who are creating independent groups, then you do get the breakaway. But it's an awful lot more complex than that.

[Tristan Hughes]

And that is certainly an episode for another day. But I think you've done incredibly well, David, in tackling this topic and making a topic that is complex and daunting to so many people. Understandable going through those different themes and how important they are for this, you know, half a century long time of crisis and the key figures and major players and major events and so on. David, this has been an absolute blast and it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

My great pleasure. Thank you.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, there you go.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

There was Dr. David Gwyn giving you a masterclass, talking you through the story of the third century crisis, the key.

[Tristan Hughes]

Figures and events, and why this chaotic.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Period in Roman history. It was so tumultuous, but also transformative in the shaping of the Roman Empire.

[Tristan Hughes]

I hope you enjoy today's episode. Thank you for listening to it.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Please follow this show on Spotify or.

[Tristan Hughes]

Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

It really helps us and you'll be.

[Tristan Hughes]

Doing us a big favor.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

And having mentioned Spotify, we will be putting a poll up with this episode and focusing in on particular figures and.

[Tristan Hughes]

Events of the third century crisis.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

And you can vote for which figure you would like us to cover next, whether it be Maximinus Thrax, the Massive Thracian, or the Emperor Aurelian or potentially something else like Valyrian and his capture by Shapur Diocletian. You let us know. Whatever wins that poll, we will do an episode on in the future.

[Tristan Hughes]

And we may well do episodes on the others too. Who knows? It's one of the great things of ancient history and doing this incredible podcast now.

[Dr. David Gwinn]

Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV.

[Tristan Hughes]

Documentaries when you [e-mail] subscribe that's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode. The new Boost Mobile network is offering unlimited talk, text and data for just $25 a month for life.

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