A Tale of Two Periods

A tale of two periods Change and continuity in the Roman Empire between 249 and 324 Pictured left: a section of the Naqš-i Rustam, the victory monument of Shapur I of Persia, showing the captured Roman emperor Valerian kneeling before the victorious Sassanid monarch (source: www.bbc.co.uk). Pictured right: a group of statues found on St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, depicting the members of the first tetrarchy – Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius and Galerius – holding each other and with their hands on their swords, ready to act if necessary (source: www.wikipedia.org). The former image depicts the biggest shame suffered by the empire during the third-century ‘crisis’, while the latter is the most prominent surviving symbol of tetrarchic ideology. S. L. Vennik Kluut 14 1991 VB Velserbroek S0930156 RMA-thesis Ancient History Supervisor: Dr. F. G. Naerebout Faculty of Humanities University of Leiden Date: 30-05-2014 2 Table of contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3 Sources ............................................................................................................................................ 6 Historiography ............................................................................................................................... 10 1. Narrative ............................................................................................................................................ 14 From Decius to Diocletian ............................................................................................................. 14 The rise and fall of the tetrarchy ................................................................................................... 19 2. Foreign warfare ................................................................................................................................. 24 ‘Barbarians’ at the gates ................................................................................................................ 24 King of kings of Iran and non-Iran ................................................................................................. 36 Out beyond the desert .................................................................................................................. 44 3. Internal strife ..................................................................................................................................... 51 Robbery, assault and battery ........................................................................................................ 52 Rebels with a cause ....................................................................................................................... 57 Everything or nothing .................................................................................................................... 61 Better off alone?............................................................................................................................ 66 An empire divided ......................................................................................................................... 71 4. The economy ..................................................................................................................................... 78 An irrelevant disaster? .................................................................................................................. 79 Raging greed burns without end ................................................................................................... 83 Outer and inner provinces ............................................................................................................. 89 The army: costs and complement ................................................................................................. 91 Taking on the taxman .................................................................................................................... 94 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 98 Appendix: Roman emperors, 249-324 ................................................................................................ 101 Literature ............................................................................................................................................. 102 3 Introduction “From the great secular games celebrated by Philip to the death of the emperor Gallienus, there elapsed twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that calamitous period, every in- stant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous in- vaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal mo- ment of its dissolution.”1 Thus Edward Gibbon on the years between 248 and 268,2 a period which has since antiquity itself been seen as one of the darkest times in the history of the Roman Empire. Our scant literary sources for the period speak of enormous political and military upheaval, and for a long time modern authors have followed them, adding widespread economic dislocation to the list of evils. It is common to speak of the ‘third-century crisis’,3 and while the years dis- cussed by Gibbon are often seen as its lowest point, for many the ‘crisis’ only ended in 284. It was in that year that Diocletian became emperor. He reformed the empire to com- bat the problems of the ‘crisis’, most notably by appointing imperial colleagues to make gov- erning the empire more manageable. This system, with two senior augusti and two junior caesares, is known as the tetrarchy. Most authors have recognised that this period also had its problems, particularly the various internal conflicts that started shortly after Diocletian’s abdication in 305 and did not end until 324 when only one contestant, Constantine, was left standing.4 Nevertheless, this era, often called the ‘tetrarchic era’, has been contrasted with the ‘crisis’ that preceded it as a time of imperial recovery and renewed vitality. However, times change, and views on historical periods change with them. Just how much of a ‘crisis’ the third century was is currently the subject of much debate. Some argue that the traditional view needs to be heavily nuanced, sometimes even implying that there was never anything resembling a crisis at all. But others point to the basic events transmitted by the sources to show that there were in fact many things wrong back then. In recent years, 1 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (J. B. Bury ed., London 1897-1900) 1: 237. 2 All dates are AD unless listed otherwise. 3 The term ‘crisis’ has become controversial recently, as will become obvious from the rest of this introduction. But whatever position one takes, there is no denying that the period was far more tumultuous than what came before, and should be described by its own term. My solution is to always put ‘crisis’ in parentheses and use the term only in a descriptive manner (i.e. to describe the 249-284 timeframe). It thus owes much to the approach to the even more controversial term ‘Romanisation’ outlined in G. Woolf, Becoming Roman. The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge 1998), 4-7. I follow the same method with the term ‘barbarians’. 4 See e.g. Gibbon (Bury ed. 1897-1900) 1: 394. 4 several authors have also carefully suggested that the view of the tetrarchic period as a time of restoration perhaps puts too much faith in the propaganda of Diocletian’s government, although this line of thought has yet to be pursued thoroughly. But what is especially striking is the strict demarcation that most historians, regard- less of their views on these two periods, maintain between both eras at 284, something that is especially obvious in standard reference works like the Cambridge Ancient History and the recent Edinburgh History of Ancient Rome. There are some exceptions, but they are few.5 While the long-standing magical reputation of this date makes such a decision understanda- ble even for historians who view its significance critically, it does have the unfortunate con- sequence that thorough comparisons between the ‘crisis’ and the tetrarchic era remain rare, despite the valuable insights that these might produce. Such a comparison is therefore ex- actly what I will aim to do here, in order to cast a new perspective on the debate surround- ing the ‘crisis’ and give a push towards more discussion on the era of Diocletian and Con- stantine. The main drive will thus be comparative history. The specific kind of comparison un- dertaken here will be a diachronic variation-finding comparison: a comparison where two successive periods within in a single overarching phenomenon (the Roman Empire) will be contrasted.6 In addition, we will look at the way in which previous authors have written about these two eras, in order to see how their opinions have shaped the general views on these times. We will therefore also be dealing with comparative historiography.7 The timeframe of the second period is easily set: it will start with the accession of the tetrarchy’s founder Diocletian in 284 and end with Constantine’s final victory in 324 , which 5 A. K. Bowman, A. Cameron and P. Garnsey eds., The Cambridge Ancient History Vol. XII: The Crisis of Empire, AD 193-337 (Cambridge 2005) (henceforth CAH XII)

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