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EMPERORSHIP IN A PERIOD OF CRISES. CHANGES IN WORSHIP, IMPERIAL IDEOLOGY AND PERCEPTIONS OF IMPERIAL AUTHORITY IN THE IN THE THIRD CENTURY A.D.

LUKAS DE BLOIS

In this paper1 I would like to argue that during the third century A.D. Roman emperor worship and imperial ideology were moving toward a view of the Roman empire as an organic, hierarchical structure with emperorship at the top, and away from personal merit of governing princes and traditional imperial cult, in a Roman world that came under heavy pressure, in which imperial authority was losing its grip on actual developments and its image of permanent success, but in which provincials nonetheless started to style themselves as hemeis and the emperor as “our emperor”, when speaking about the Romans over against foreign enemies like the Persian empire or Northern tribes. There is no doubt that the third century A.D. was a period of rising tensions, and from about 250 even crisis, in the Roman Empire.2 Under the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180), whose reign was characterised by epi- demics and warfare against invading tribes from the North and the Parthians in the East, prosperity seemed to have come to an end, although this period of problems and tensions was followed by a few decades of recovery, which lasted until about 230. From 230, and even more so from about 250, the Empire got into serious trouble again. In the East an aggressive, dangerous opponent, the new, well-organised Persian kingdom of the Sassanids, had taken the place of the less well-organised, less aggressive Parthian empire. From 230 to 266 the Romans and their allies fought one Persian after

1 I owe many thanks to Merton College, Oxford, where I was a visiting research fellow during Hilary Term, 2004, which gave me the opportunity to prepare this paper in excellent Oxford libraries. 2 On the third century crisis in the Roman empire see for example G. Alföldy, ‘The Crisis of the Third Century as Seen by Contemporaries’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 15 (1974), 98-103 (= Id., Die Krise des römischen Reiches. Geschichte, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbetrachtung. Aus- gewählte Beiträge ( 1989), 328-333); M. Christol, L’ empire romain du troisième siècle ( 1997); C. Witschel, Krise – Rezession – Stagnation? Der Westen des Römischen Reiches im 3. Jahr- hundert n.Chr. ( a.M. 1999); J.-M. Carrié – A. Rousselle, L’ empire romain en mutation des Sévères à Constantin, 192-337 (Paris 1999); L. de Blois, ‘The Crisis of the Third Century AD in the Roman Empire: A Modern Myth?’, in: L. de Blois – J. Rich, The Transformation of Economic Life under the Roman Empire. Proceedings of the Second Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire, Nottingham, July 4-7, 2001 (Amsterdam 2002), 204-217; D.S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay (London – New York 2004); A.K. Bowman et alii, CAH XII, 2nd ed., Cambridge 2005.

268 another. In the North previously small Germanic tribes had combined into large, dangerous conglomerates such as Franks, Alamanni, and , who had learnt much from Roman warfare and had become dangerous, able opponents, who repeatedly invaded Roman territory, more intensively so from about 238 in the Balkans and from 253 on the frontier. Epidemics returned with devastating force from about 250.3 After the death of the last emperor of the Severan house, which had reigned the empire with some success from 193 to 235, there was no longer a generally accepted strong , so that civil between rival armies who all wanted to give the imperial throne to their own generals – if only to lay hands on the returns of the imperial estate – were a constant threat. External and internal warfare brought devastation, death and impoverishment to many regions and put a heavy strain on the hinterlands of the war-zones. Regions that were not affected by warfare and extra requisitions, however, still could prosper in the third century. Such regions were, for example, Britain, Sicily and North Africa. A sign of rising tensions was the debasement of the imperial coinage.4 It had set in already under Commodus, who had to adjust the coinage to the rise of prices and wages that had come about between 160 and 190, as a consequence of the Antonine plague, and under Septimius Severus (193- 211), who raised the pay of the soldiers by 50 % in order to attract good recruits in sufficient numbers in times of shrunken populations and higher prices and wages. The debasement of the imperial coinage may have been caused by a lack of plate, decreasing tax returns and – particularly from 253 onward – the decentralisation and enlargement of imperial coin production. Surprisingly until about 274 the debasement of the coinage did not yet result

3 On the effects of the Antonine plague, see D.W. Rathbone, ‘Villages, Land and Population in Graeco-Roman Egypt’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 216 (1990), 103-142; R.P. Duncan-Jones, ‘The Impact of the Antonine Plague’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 9 (1996), 108- 136; C. Bruun, ‘The Antonine Plague in and Ostia’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003), 426-434. On the plague of about 250-280 see E. Lo Cascio, ‘La dissoluzione dell’ impero Romano d’ Occidente: la spiegazione demografica’, in: G. Cacciatore et al. (eds.), Filosofia e storia della cultura. Studi in onore di Fulvio Tessitore (Napoli 1997), 168 ff. and Carrié – Rousselle 1999, op.cit. (n.2), 521 ff. 4 On the debasement of the coinage see R.F. Bland, ‘The Development of Gold and Silver Coin Denominations, A.D. 193-253’, in: C.E. – D.G. Wigg, Coin Finds and Coin Use in the Roman World. The Thirteenth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, 25.-27.3.1993 ( 1996), 63-100; in the same volume; D.W. Rathbone, ‘Monetisation, not Price-inflation, in Third Century AD Egypt?’, in: King – Wigg 1996, op.cit. (this note), 321-339.

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