106 - Barbarian at the Gate

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Hello and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 106, Barbarian at the Gate. The first eight years of Alexander Severus' reign proved to be a relatively quiet and prosperous time for the Empire. The period was not totally without problems, as evidenced by the periodic mutinies in the army, but compared to what had come before and what was going to come after, the mid-to-late 220s AD was pretty much heaven on earth. Taxes were low, the frontiers were quiet, and the imperial regime was stable. That period of relative calm, however, is about to come to an abrupt end.

In 230 AD, the new Sassanid king Ardashir, who we introduced last week, made the bold decision to begin attacking the Roman Empire. He was an aggressive and ambitious leader, and it is reported that his ultimate objective may have been to completely dislodge the Romans from the East, which was an aggressive and ambitious goal to say the least. He amassed an army on the banks of the Tigris River, which at the time had been serving as the de facto Roman-Parthian border, and began raiding the Roman positions in Mesopotamia. At the very least, Ardashir planned to reclaim this critical region, which had again fallen under Roman control during the reign of Caracalla. Ardashir's raids sent alarm bells ringing across the Empire, as observers of Eastern politics knew that Ardashir and the Sassanids were a dangerous new power looking to make their mark on the world.

Despite calls for him to immediately order a counter-attack, Alexander responded, not unreasonably, by sending envoys to Ardashir to figure out what was going on. He was castigated for this timid response by many in the legions, who accused Alexander of being a decadent coward, afraid of fighting. But Alexander wanted to be sure this wasn't all some misunderstanding before he started a war. Trying to end conflicts with words rather than swords is not a terrible policy. As the oft-cited Winston Churchill quote goes, to jaw jaw is always better than to war war. But in the coming years, Alexander would continue to do things that confirmed the perception that he was unwilling to fight even a justifiable war, and this would be his undoing.

The envoys met with Ardashir, and reminded the king of all applicable treaties and territorial claims, and then informed the Sassanids in no uncertain terms that they were encroaching on Roman land and thus risking war. They went on to say that the emperor was more than happy to forget the whole thing, as Ardashir was new to the job and maybe didn't realize what he was doing, but he had to stop his activities right now and stay on the east bank of the Tigris. Ardashir thanked them for their message, and told them that he knew exactly what he was doing, that he was going to keep doing what he was doing, and what are the Romans going to do about it if they are so tough. The envoys hastily sent word to Alexander that the Sassanid king had refused to yield, and so Alexander, out of political and moral necessity, mustered an army and prepared to march east.

Unlike Lucius Verus, who had taken his sweet time traveling to Antioch the last time the eastern provinces had been under attack, Alexander marched quickly. On his way through Illyria, he drafted a chunk of the Danube legions into his expeditionary force, and, with an impressive army at his back, he arrived in Antioch in 231, ready to begin drilling for the expected campaign. As his army prepared for war, Alexander once again tried for peace. With the eastern legions strongly reinforced, and the emperor himself present on the scene, Alexander hoped Ardashir would see the error of his ways, and back down from the confrontation. But again, though it was probably a prudent overture, the legions were disgusted with Alexander for continuing to jaw jaw when he should be making war war. They accused the emperor of being too addicted to the comforts of Rome to defend the empire honorably. I'm willing to give Alexander the benefit of the doubt as to his motivations, but given his later conduct, it's not exactly implausible that the young emperor really was just trying to get out of having to endure the hardships of a military campaign.

While he waited for Ardashir's reply, the emperor and his lieutenants struggled to hold the assembled legions together. Discontentment with Alexander's leadership had become second nature to the soldiers, who were annoyed not just with the constant peace offerings, but also with the fact that Julia Mamia was right there with her son, in his tent, controlling him, and by extension, them. Not only was it bothersome that they were being led by a woman, or a boy being controlled by a woman, which is somehow just a little bit worse, but Julia in particular was not a beloved figure in the army. As I hinted at last week, Julia's conduct eventually became a liability for Alexander, and it was during the Eastern Campaign that this became apparent.

The big problem was that Julia Mamia loved money. Not the things money could buy, but the money itself. She loved money in the way that Ebenezer Scrooge loved money. She loved to acquire it, and she hated to spend it. So while Alexander's regime is often praised for its modesty, in that they didn't spend exorbitant amounts on food and clothes and parties, they often slipped too far the other way and were accused of excessive miserliness, especially by the legions. They had watched their pay cut, and their donatives cancelled, and every little comfort they had accumulated over the years stripped away, and all the while, they had watched Julia Mamia carefully collect and then sit on tax revenue. The emperor wasn't too broke to pay the legions what they thought they deserved, he was just too stingy. But everyone knew that it wasn't the emperor who was stingy, it was his mother. That lady in the tent over there, she's the one who keeps our rations standard and our camps rough. And she's the same lady who's telling her son to make peace with the Sassanids rather than punish them for their transgressions. No, it is fair to say that the legions didn't like Julia one bit.

So Alexander's eastern army was plagued by mutiny. The soldiers coming out of Egypt seemed particularly insubordinate, but the men of the Danube legions were right behind them. They were unused to the Syrian climate, and disease broke out almost as soon as they arrived. Far from home, they began dropping like flies. Supposedly, they were there to fight a war, but instead the emperor was futzing around trying to call the whole thing off, which meant that maybe they had been dragged out to this godforsaken desert for no reason, and now they were maybe dying for no reason. This, as you can imagine, was not a recipe for happy soldiers.

So it was perhaps lucky for Alexander that Ardashir again rebuffed his advances. In reply to Alexander's latest peace offering, the Sassanid king demanded that the Romans completely withdraw from their eastern provinces and cede all territory east of the Hellespont to the Sassanids. So yeah, I guess the time had come for war-war.

In 232, Alexander and his generals divided up the legions and set into motion their plan for a three-pronged invasion of Parthian territory. Wait, are we still calling it Parthia? Who is this that we're even fighting these days? One arm was to head north, and take the route through Armenia to Medea. The second arm would circle around the south, and then plunge north, well east of where Ardashir would be expecting an invasion force to appear. The main army, led by the emperor himself, would march through the middle, directly at the heart of the enemy. The point of all this was to divide Ardashir's attention with attacks on multiple fronts, so that he would split his forces, and all three of the Roman arms would enjoy a numerical advantage. It was a great strategy in theory, in practice it didn't work out quite as planned, especially since Alexander never led the key attack on the middle of Sassanid territory, leaving his two wings exposed to Ardashir's forces.

The whole operation got off to a shaky start anyway though, as the northern trek through the Armenian mountains turned out to be far more difficult than the Romans were anticipating. But after an arduous journey, they emerged from the mountains more or less intact, and immediately besieged the key cities of Medea. This assault had the intended effect on Ardashir, who was compelled to peel off a significant portion of his troops to deal with this crisis in the north. In the south, things went much better for the invading legions, at least at first. And just as planned, they marched north from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and, much to Ardashir's surprise, the Sassanid king suddenly had to deal with a Roman army deep in his own territory. Leaving behind what he hoped would be enough men in Medea, Ardashir rushed east with the rest of his troops to deal with the new front the Romans had opened up. So far, everything was working out exactly as the Romans had hoped. The Sassanid forces were divided and strategically scrambled. All that was left was for Alexander to lead the main Roman army across the Tigris, and the Sassanids would be overwhelmed. But this last crucial step was not taken.

It seems that Alexander had come to believe that things were going so well that his part of the plan was now unnecessary. The soldiers under his command, eager to get in the fight, were appalled, and now convinced beyond any doubt that their leader was either a coward or a weakling dominated by a cowardly mother. This decision not to invade would have disastrous consequences. The force marching up from the south believed that the emperor had already invaded, and thus that their west flank was totally protected. But without Alexander's army getting in the way, Ardashir was able to take a straight line to the unsuspecting legions, and then hit them with a force far in excess of anything they had prepared for. Believing themselves safe on the left, the legions had been sloppy in their defenses, and so when Ardashir appeared on the horizon with a huge Sassanid army behind him, they were taken totally by surprise. Surprise is such a coveted element of war because it so often leads directly to total victory, and in this case, the point was proved decisively. After an improvised attempt to defend themselves failed, the surprised legions were overrun and cut down to the last man.

Back in Roman territory, news of the disaster was met with grief and fury by Alexander's army. There was absolutely no reason why their comrades should have been hung out to dry like that. Here they were, the largest of the three divisions, sitting on the sidelines twiddling their thumbs, while out there men were dying for a lack of support. The damage done to Alexander's reputation was incalculable. But what was done was done, and the emperor, realizing that the initial invasion plan was now busted, ordered the northern arm back to Antioch, where the Romans would regroup and reassess their position. But this order only exacerbated the Roman problems, as the march back through Armenia during the winter of 232-233 was even harder than the march in had been. Men died of disease and exposure and hunger, and the army that finally arrived back in Antioch was a broken shell of what it had once been.

Alexander was spared the painful process of trying to figure out how to salvage victory from the humiliation of defeat, when scouts arrived with the unexpected news that Ardashir had decided to disband his exhausted army. Like the old armies of the Roman Republic, the Sassanid army was an unprofessional force of temporary draftees. Ardashir's running them this way and that over the course of the last few years had led to his own internal problems, as men complained that their farms and businesses were falling into disrepair back home. Rather than risk a full mutiny that would destroy his so recently won legitimacy, Ardashir released them all from service. Besides, it wouldn't hurt to take a few years off to recuperate from this initial encounter with Rome. Ardashir was playing for the long game, and was simultaneously emboldened and chastened by this first war. The next time he took on the Romans, he would be stronger and smarter.

The sudden disbanding of the Sassanids was a godsend for Alexander, and it allowed him to extract himself from the East with his dignity somewhat intact. Because at the very least, he would be able to argue that the Romans, despite their setbacks, had actually won the war. But though this line worked on the Senate and the general population, the army wasn't having it for a second. They knew what had really happened, and they were really ticked off about it. Compounding their anger was a message from the West that Germanic tribes had taken the opportunity provided by Alexander's redeployment of the Danube legions to cross the frontier and raid Roman settlements. When the men of the Danube legions found out what had happened, they absolutely redlined. They had been dragged from their homes out to this stupid desert, ravaged by disease and hunger and thirst, all in the name of fighting some war that they never even got into because Alexander had kept them sitting on the sidelines. Those who had gotten to fight had been pointlessly marched through Armenia and back until they were almost all dead. And now on top of everything else, the very fact of their absence had led their families back home to be slaughtered by marauding Germans. Pissed off does not even begin to describe the mood of the Danube legions.

Both to head off a full-blown insurrection and because it was the right thing to do, Alexander quickly picked up the army he had stationed in Antioch and, leaving behind a few garrisons to keep an eye on the Sassanids, marched the rest west to drive back the Germans and exact a little revenge. As he marched through Moesia and Pannonia, he redeposited some of the various Danube troops back in their home camps and allowed them to clean up the mess that had been made in their absence. The rest of the army kept marching with Alexander all the way to the upper Rhine, where the German incursions had been heaviest. But once situated in Germany, Alexander quickly reminded everyone that at the end of the day he really, really did not want to lead an army in battle. After crossing the great river on a pontoon bridge in a showy display of force, the Emperor sent word to the various German chiefs offering terms of peace, which included payments of cash and other considerations, in exchange for a session of hostilities. This was the last straw.

The legions Alexander had brought with him from the east described to their western comrades what had happened in Syria, and they all agreed that history was repeating itself. The Germans had plundered Roman territory, and Alexander's response was to offer them more treasure. This growing anger didn't even yet take into account the fact that with their reduced pay, the men were clamoring for an invasion of Germania, so they could do some plundering of their own. Over the winter of 234-235, the rank and file mumbled and grumbled to each other, and the possibility of rebellion went from secret desire to open conspiracy. The only thing standing between Alexander and assassination was that the men had no leader willing to head their revolt. In February 235, though, that all changed, and a general named Maximilius Thrax was about to become the first barbarian emperor of Rome.

The career of Maximilius is fascinating for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which because he is the one character who really stood out to me the first time I read any part of The Decline and Fall back when I was a kid. The rest of Gibbon was just indecipherable gobbledygook that I couldn't make heads or tails out of, but when he started talking about this gigantic barbarian who as a teenager easily bested the strongest men in the legions and then rose up the ranks to become emperor, well that I understood. What I didn't understand at the time was what a momentous event his claim to the throne represented in the broader sweep of Roman history.

Maximilius Thrax had been born in the early 170s AD, and tradition holds that he was the son of a peasant family in Thrace, hence the Thrax, which roughly makes his name Maximilius the Thracian, but it is also possible that he was born and raised in Moesia. As with the exact location of his birth, his heritage is similarly a matter of some debate. The Historia Augusta, now beginning to slip into unreliability, claimed that he was born of a Gothic father and a Sarmatian mother, but most other Roman writers describe him as being Thraco-Roman, that is, a fully settled and Romanized Thracian, rather than a barbarian in the sense that his parents came from communities beyond the frontier. He was first noticed during the reign of Septimius Severus, when the emperor was returning from one of his eastern campaigns, probably the first one following his victory over Niger in 194. Legend has it that after halting the day's march, the legions decided to engage in some friendly sport with the locals. Young Maximilius showed up and proceeded to toss every soldier the legions threw at him. Severus was impressed, but he was even more impressed the next day, when the young man jogged alongside his horse until the emperor agreed to let him join the legions. And the emperor was even more more impressed when after jogging for God knows how many miles, Maximilius still bested the dozen or so soldiers Severus ordered him to wrestle as a final test.

Maximilius made an excellent soldier. He was, after all, a head taller than just about every other man in the army. He is described as being eight Roman feet tall, which is basically eight modern feet tall, and while I find that very hard to believe, I am willing to believe that he was significantly larger than his contemporaries, not unlike Charlemagne, who is also described as being a gigantic eight feet tall. But despite his excellences in infantrymen, he was never slated for higher command, and for a long time, looked destined for the standard twenty-five year service and a gold watch. But over time, he did rise up the ranks, and when Alexander Severus took over, his governing council recommended the Thracian for a slot running the training of new recruits in Pannonia. In this post, Maximilius thrived. He was stern and demanding, but he also reveled in leading by example. Whatever he expected his men to do, he did himself first. He never sat back and ordered his men around. He always got down in the mud with them, and shared in the hard, dirty, and exhausting work of learning how to be a Roman soldier. This teaching style endeared him to each successive wave of recruits, and pretty soon, a majority of the men serving along the Danube had been personally trained by Maximilius Thrax, and so a majority of the men serving along the Danube loved him to death, and would have followed him to hell and back.

When the Germans began overrunning the border in 234, Maximilius was put in charge of a legion, and he was already working hard to counter the German menace when Alexander arrived on the scene a few months later. We don't really know what his level of involvement was with the growing mutiny prior to February 235, but we can say for pretty certain that Maximilius had no love for Alexander. Though the young emperor was the man who had finally given Maximilius a real shot at power, the Thracian had long ago developed a hatred for the Roman aristocracy, and soft, refined Alexander was the undisputed leader of the Roman aristocracy. The rich old men of Rome had never let Maximilius forget his humble origins, nor had their slaves failed to treat him as something beneath even their own lowly station. He found the capital to be nothing but a snake pit of backstabbing weaklings who pretended that they were better than everyone else. By 235, Maximilius was dedicated to his soldiers, and they were dedicated to him. The rest of the empire, politicians, civilians, whatever, were simply in the way. So when Alexander once again tried to make peace before Rome had made its point, this time offering money to boot, it is easy to believe that Maximilius did not exactly clamp down on seditious activity in his camp. But still, however he felt, we still don't know whether his troops' decision to declare him emperor in February 235 was orchestrated in advance or actually came as a surprise.

Whatever the prearrangements had been, when Maximilius rose to address his troops one wintry morning, the men spontaneously hailed him emperor and demanded that he agree to the job. After the requisite amount of protest, Maximilius reluctantly agreed, and the rebellion against Alexander Severus was on. After doubling everyone's rations and promising a large donative if the rebellion was successful, Maximilius ordered his troops to begin marching on Alexander's camp just a few miles down the road. Messengers from Maximilius' army arrived in advance of the main force, and after announcing the rebellion, attempted to convince Alexander's soldiers to join up. There are a few versions of what happened next, with one stating that Alexander spoke to his men, promised them all kinds of bonuses if they stuck with him, and actually had gotten them mustard in the field before any defections took place, while another version has the emperor left totally in the dark about everything, and not learning of the plot until Maximilius' executioners pushed their way into his tent. Whichever way it went, as soon as Maximilius arrived, Alexander's soldiers defected en mass and swore their loyalty to the Thracian. Not one to beat around the bush, Maximilius ordered a tribune to lead a few centurions into Alexander's camp to find and kill the emperor. The assassins found the young emperor in his tent, with his mother and a few loyal advisors by his side, and after very little struggle, the Severans all lay bloody on the floor. Alexander was twenty-six years old, and had done his very best over the thirteen years he ruled the empire.

The death of Alexander and the rise of Maximilius represented a major turning point for the empire. Over the last hundred and thirty-seven years, beginning with Trajan and ending with Alexander, the average reign of an emperor was just over twelve years, and that includes the short reigns of Pertinax and Didius Julianus. For the next fifty years, beginning with the elevation of Maximilius and ending with the elevation of Diocletian, that average will plunge to something like one emperor for every two years, depending on how you do the math. And that doesn't include the fact that for a while there, the empire was split in three, as major breakaway kingdoms in the east and west threatened to destroy the unity of the Roman empire forever. No one could have guessed it at the time, but the assassination of Alexander Severus marked the beginning of a period where the very survival of Rome was very much in doubt. Foreign invasion, domestic strife, plague, and famine would all conspire to bring the Roman empire to the brink of extinction, a possibility they had not faced since Hannibal had come marching out of the Alps four centuries earlier.

Finally, remember when I said last week that I would be making an official announcement about the History of Rome tour pretty soon? Well, here it is. The History of Rome tour is set for May 2011, and I couldn't be more excited. We have designed a ten day trip that takes us from Rome to Istanbul, and hits as many highlights as we could possibly cram in along the way. We'll spend a few days in and around Rome, before snaking down through Capua, to Pompeii, to Tarentum and Brindisi, and then over to the city the Romans called Constantinople. The itinerary is too packed for me to just rattle off everything right now, so for the full details, I'll direct you to the website we've set up, historyofrometour.com. That again, historyofrometour.com.

We have guides and lecturers and experts lined up to walk us through every one of our stops, answer our questions, and generally make sure that we don't miss a single thing while we're there. The package also includes hotels, transportation, breakfast, some group dinners, admission to all the museums and historical sites, and even the transatlantic airfare, if you live in the US and need that sort of thing. And of course, Mr. and Mrs. The History of Rome will both be along for the ride. Space is limited and we're going to have to run this on a first-come, first-served basis, but I will tell you that we've discussed what happens if more people want to go on the trip than we have space for, and, after agreeing that that would be a great problem to have, the answer came back a resounding, we'll do multiple trips. So all the info is at historyofrometour.com, the itinerary, the costs, and an FAQ page that we'll start populating as soon as we figure out what questions people are frequently asking. I'll also post a permanent link at thehistoryofrome.typepad.com.

One other thing I'll mention is that I'm going to be plugging an announcement of the trip onto the back episodes so that people who aren't all the way caught up will know what's going on. This shouldn't alter any episodes that you've already downloaded, but I just wanted you all to know what I'm up to. The History of Rome Tour, May 2011. Sign up right now. http://historyofrome.com (opens in a new tab)