Emperors Don't Die in Bed by Fik Meijer

Author:Fik Meijer [Meijer, Fik]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Royalty
ISBN: 9780415312011
Google: ygQgBaVYZj8C
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2004-01-15T22:35:54+00:00

6

THE SOLDIER EMPERORS

Maximinus the Thracian is the kind of emperor who dominated the third century: a career soldier, unencumbered by any loyalty to the Senate. His reign marks the beginning of a period in which the weaknesses of the Roman Empire, which until then could to some extent be papered over, became visible. This period of crisis, during which the armies called the shots, putting forward their commanders as new emperors, lasted fifty years. It was an age of violence. With a single exception every one of the soldier emperors met a violent end. Not one of them was able to stop the decline. The Empire sank deeper and deeper into a morass of political, military, economic and financial problems.

The question has often been asked how things had been allowed to reach this point, how it was possible that the stable Empire of the first two centuries had fallen so far in a space of fifty years. To this day there is no generally accepted explanation for the crisis of the third century, which is not surprising, given the complexity of the problems. The most disparate reasons have been proposed to explain the decline: the moral laxity of the citizens of a welfare state, the loss of the old Roman virtues, a drop in population as a result of the Persian and German invasions, civil wars, the government’s inept financial policies, the high cost of maintaining the armies, a widening rift between the urban bourgeoisie and the peasants, who could count on the support of the armies, and the fact that Roman society was unable to increase production.

If one thing has become clear from the scholarly debate of the last few decades, it is that none of the aforementioned causes led to the crisis on its own. It was a combination of factors interacting with one another, with the rapidly worsening military situation on the borders acting, in the view of most scholars, as a catalyst.

Throughout the third century barbaric tribes, lured by the prosperity of the Roman Empire, tried to cross the borders: from southern Germany the Alamanni, from Hungary the Vandals, from southern Russia the Goths, on the eastern border the Persians and on the southern borders of the African provinces various nomadic tribes. The Goths and the Persians in particular penetrated deep into the Empire with great regularity.

Even though the army was not very successful in fighting off the invaders, the status of soldiers remained unaffected. The emperors were aware that the continued existence of the Roman Empire was dependent on a well-functioning army. But at the same time they realised that their own position was dependent on the strength and loyalty of the troops. Pay rises, better living conditions in the army camps and the promise of career opportunities upon returning to civilian life were the pledges they had to make in order to assure themselves of the soldiers’ support.

Even so, the customary recruitment drives in the heartland of the Roman Empire yielded an insufficient number

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