114 - The Nadir of Our Fortunes

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, Episode 114, The Nadir of Our Fortunes. Last time, we left Rome in a state of disrepair. The East had been invaded by the Sassanids, the Danube had been invaded by the Goths, Italy had been invaded by the Alamanni, and the West had been invaded by the Franks. Unable to handle all of these foreign threats at once, and still reeling from the capture of his father, Gallienus watched helplessly as the legions across the empire elevated their own local commanders to the purple, breaking the empire into pieces. The son of Valerian would never again rule a united empire, though he would spend the rest of his life vainly pursuing the dream of reunification.

Though we know that the East eventually fell into the hands of Odinothus and his wife Zenobia, when all the trouble began in 260, it actually looked like ex-treasury official Macrianus would be the man calling the shots in Antioch. You'll recall from last time that Macrianus and the general Ballista had organized a resistance to the Sassanid invasion following Valerian's capture, and when the Persians were finally pushed out, the eastern legions naturally looked to the man with the money to continue leading them. Ballista seems to have been content to support Macrianus rather than compete with him, and so Macrianus became the dominant Roman official east of the Hellespont. But for some reason, possibly because he was a cripple, though I'm not entirely sure that that's accurate, Macrianus did not himself assume the imperial dignities. Instead, he induced the legions to elevate to the purple his two grown sons, Quiatus and Macrianus the younger. The two men were dutifully hailed as Augustus, following in the footsteps of the Rhine legions and the Danube legions who had elevated Posthumus and Regalianus respectively.

But unlike these other two competing Augusti, the Macriani family had no intention of staying put in the east and simply keeping an eye on the Sassanids. Macrianus did not want to just defend Syria, he wanted to formally oust Gallienus and capture the whole empire for himself. In pursuit of this goal, he and his son Macrianus the younger packed up 30,000 troops and marched them west to confront Gallienus. Those numbers are likely exaggerated, but still, after the catastrophic losses suffered at Edessa, the removal of any soldiers at all had to have dangerously weakened the frontier defenses. I would like to say that the fact that the Macriani are about to get stomped into the ground by Gallienus is somehow divine retribution for leaving the east so undermanned. But Regalianus did right by the Danube, defending the empire rather than trying to capture it, and he died too. So, unfortunately, it seems that blind fate rather than karmic justice was doing the yeomans work throughout the 260s AD.

Macrianus had left his son Quietus in charge at Antioch while he and Macrianus the younger marched on Italy in 261. They only made it as far as the Balkans though, where they were met and defeated in battle by an army led by Gallienus' top general, Aureolus. Both Macriani were killed in the battle, but, perhaps more importantly, the battle cost the lives of way more troops than the empire could afford to lose.

Things in the east probably would have spiraled out of control had not Odonathus and Palmyra picked up the slack Macrianus had left behind. Leading a motley army composed of various eastern auxiliaries, his own Palmyrene heavy cavalry, and probably what was left of Valerian's legionary forces, Odonathus patrolled the border with vigor and kept Sharpor's imagination from drifting back to visions of conquest. Of critical importance to his own future career, Odonathus did not throw his lot in with the Macriani and chose instead to remain loyal to the government of Rome. That did not mean that he went out of his way to defend the honor of Gallienus when the Assyrian legions declared Macrianus the younger and Quietus their new Augusti, but it did mean that when word came back that Gallienus had successfully fended off their challenge that Odonathus took the opportunity to display his fidelity to the true emperor.

The army he led far outshone anything left in the hands of Quietus and Ballista, and after camping his imposing forces outside Antioch, Odonathus ordered that Quietus be captured and executed. No one knows what happened to Ballista, as he simply disappears from the historical record without a trace around this same time, but the presumption is that he too was killed by either Odonathus or some other officer loyal to Rome.

The rise and fall of the Macriani left the East, by default, in the hands of Odonathus. He held Roman citizenship and had obviously been a loyal ally, but he was seen by practically everyone as an outsider. After all, he did hail from a city beyond the frontier. But for the moment at least, the citizens of the East had very little time to indulge in prejudices. Odonathus was there, leading an army in defense of the empire. Who cared where he came from?

Gallienus himself certainly did not seem to care much about Odonathus' origins or, at this point, what his ultimate intentions may be. Unable to spare any resources to reinforce the East, let alone reassert his full control over it, Gallienus was, for the time being, willing to cede Odonathus' dominion over the East, as long as the Palmyrene prince remained loyal to Gallienus and focused his attention on the Sassanids, rather than on accruing more territory for himself within the empire. These terms were amenable to Odonathus, and from 262 until his death in 267 or 268, the Palmyrene prince was the de facto ruler of the Eastern Empire. He was given the title Imperator in the old military sense of the term rather than the more recent political meaning, but, as was the long-standing custom, the victories of the Palmyrene were technically credited to Gallienus, a subtle piece of propaganda which helped maintain the appearance of subordination on the part of Odonathus.

Perhaps betraying his long-term goals, though, shortly after rising to power, Odonathus began styling himself as the King of Kings, just as would a traditional Eastern monarch.

In most ways, the rise of Odonathus had very little effect on how the East functioned. It appears that the legionary garrisons were kept mostly intact and that their commanders were for the most part left in place. The various municipal governments kept running just as they always had, and the lives of the citizens changed not at all. This is all to say that Odonathus ruled with a very light hand. There were no dramatic purges and no mass firings. The only time he really exercised his power was when he acted as the arbitrator of last settling legal disputes or making the final decision on some infrastructure project. Other than that, he did indeed keep his attention focused squarely on the task of defending the provinces from attack.

Indeed, the one major difference between life before Odonathus and life after Odonathus was the existence of this huge independent army roving around the deserts weaving in and out of Sassanid territory, attacking when necessary and defending when necessary. This army was both the reason why Syria was not captured by Sharapur and the reason why Gallienus stayed on the west side of the Hellespont. It was an efficient, disciplined, and highly mobile force. Over the course of the 260s, Odonathus did not just keep the Sassanids at bay, but he also pushed east and reasserted Roman dominion over territory that Sharapur had annexed during the course of the past decade. There is a reason Odonathus receives near universal praise in the ancient histories, and it's because he seemed to be some quasi-divine savior sent by the gods to rescue the eastern empire at its darkest hour.

With the eastern question more or less settled and the middle provinces back under his control following the death of Regalianus, the west now loomed as the last big finger pointing Gallienus and Rome in the eye. Where Odonathus had diplomatically parlayed his position into one that bore the imperial seal of approval, posthumous ruled in direct competition to Gallienus. Where the eastern provinces still recognized the overall legitimacy of the Roman emperor, and critically, the Mints and Antioch still coined in Gallienus' name, the west had gone over to posthumous completely. The Gallic mints coined for posthumous, and celebrated his role as the protector of the west. This was an affront that Gallienus could not tolerate.

There is, as with so much else to do with this period, some controversy over the date or dates of Gallienus' attempt to reconquer the western provinces. Some claim that there were two attempts, one in 261, in the immediate aftermath of posthumous' revolt, and another, more concerted effort in 266. Others claim that there was just one attempt, and that it occurred sometime between 263 and 265. Despite the confusion of the dating though, the outcome remains the same. Gallienus was able to establish a permanent beachhead on the far side of the Alps, but he was unable to decisively defeat posthumous and reunite the empire.

As usual, the man leading the attack for Gallienus was Aureolus, the captain of the cavalry. Starting from their headquarters in Milan, the imperial army marched up through the Alps and crossed over into Gaul on their way to the capital of Gallia Belgica, which also served as the capital of posthumous' Gallic empire. Posthumous had been made aware of the invasion by spies in Gallienus' camp, and was ready when the army led by Aureolus finally appeared. In the battles that followed though, there is one clear fact that the ancient sources point out again and again. Posthumous was beaten by Aureolus, but that, for whatever reason, Aureolus did not press his advantage, capture his enemy, or crush his enemy's army.

Though there could have been any number of good reasons for his failure to deal a killing stroke, like that maybe his victories were not as complete as we have been led to believe, the consensus among the Romans was that Aureolus had made a secret pact with Posthumous. In this telling, Aureolus was already planning to eventually revolt against his master, and was looking for Posthumous' support when it came time to make his bid. If there was a deal, it wasn't a very good one for Aureolus. When in 267 he finally did make his bid for the throne, his calls to Posthumous went unanswered. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Gallienus probably would have kept right on going despite these missed opportunities, had he not been shot with an arrow and forced to withdraw to seek medical attention. This brought on what Gallienus thought would be only a temporary halt to his campaign, but in fact it would bring an end to his attempts to reconquer the west. As I just mentioned, some scholars think there were two invasions, the first ending with Aureolus' failure to capture Posthumous, and the second ending with Gallienus' injury, but most seem to think that it was all wrapped up in a single short war.

The campaign was not a total failure though. When Gallienus temporarily ceased hostilities, he had won back firm control of the Gallic territory abutting the Alps, meaning that the emperor controlled both ends of the key mountain passes in and out of Italy. Just as Gallienus would never recapture the west, Posthumous would never again have access to the Alps. This is the map that both men would bequeath to their successors, and eventually be the map from which Aurelian launched his own successful campaign to reunify the empire in 274.

While Gallienus had lost control of the east and the west, he was still in control of the middle of the empire, and was not so consumed with foreign wars and internal squabbles that he failed to make his mark on the development of Rome. Well, actually, maybe it was because of all the foreign wars and internal squabbles that Gallienus wound up leaving his mark on Rome.

The ancient sources uniformly dismiss Gallienus' reign as the absolute low point of the empire's history. He is often portrayed as indifferent to the fact that two-thirds of the empire had slipped away from him, and that he was far more interested in pursuing the perks and pleasures that came with being emperor than he was with fighting for what was Rome's. Highlighting the general content with Gallienus' rule is the myth of the so-called Thirty Tyrants. That is, the long list of men who rose up in revolt against Gallienus during his reign. Odonathus and Posthumous and Macrianus and Regalianus are all on the list, as is the prefect of Egypt, Aemilianus, who revolted in 262, and the commander of the garrison at Byzantium, who revolted around the same time.

Even Gibbon is quick to point out that the Thirty Tyrants is a transparent piece of rhetoric referencing the old Thirty Tyrants of Athens, the post-war government installed by Sparta at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and the list of usurpers offered by the Historia Augusta has been thoroughly debunked, with most of the men listed having never assumed imperial dignity or having never existed at all. Despite the exaggerations, though, there is no doubt that the sheer number of men challenging Gallienus' rule during the 260s, however many there actually were, points to near uniform disenchantment with his administration.

Or does it? As we've mentioned elsewhere, the histories relied upon to establish narrative continuity for all our archaeological evidence were written by men of senatorial rank for men of senatorial rank, and the biases of that class dominate the portrayals of the various emperors. The Senate had no love whatsoever for Gallienus, as he famously delivered a major blow to their power and prestige. During the reign of Gallienus, the Senate was once and for all excluded from having anything to do with military affairs.

Now it is interesting to note two things about this development. One, despite claims to the contrary, it does not seem that Gallienus issued some dramatic decree banning senators from serving in the army, and two, that nothing he did was in any way a radical departure from the policies followed by Marcus Aurelius during the Marcomannic Wars. Gallienus' problem, as had been Marcus' problem, was that the situation was so critical that there was very little margin for error. Bringing in some rich, inexperienced aristocrat to run a legion in the middle of a war zone, simply because that was the way things had always been done, was a really good way to get that legion wiped out. Marcus had responded by elevating capable, experienced soldiers like Pertinax, Pompeianus, Pescinius Niger, and Maximianus, none of whom were of senatorial rank, rather than turning to self-entitled senators. Gallienus too followed this policy, and the men he turned to to lead his armies were all career military men who would in time go on to return the empire to something resembling its former glory, including Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, and a young Probus. None of these men were of senatorial rank or aristocrats in any sense of the word, but they knew soldiering and Gallienus trusted them, and that was all that mattered, and in the long run, it was probably better for Rome.

As Gallienus shut out inexperienced senators from military postings, young, ambitious aristocrats were unable to gain even basic military experience, creating a feedback loop which led Gallienus and his successors to completely ignore the senatorial class from now on when looking to fill out the officer corps. Gallienus also introduced a subtle shift in the way that provinces were governed that further calcified the division between civilian and military leadership. The rank of legate, that is, the leader of a single legion, was rebranded as the legatus equitus and now made unavailable as an office to a senator, reserved instead for career military men of equestrian rank. Senators were still duly appointed as governors of the provinces, but the legions of the provinces were put in the hands of men who knew what they were doing. In provinces where there was only a single legion, a situation that traditionally led the governor to double as that legion's legate, well, those were transformed into equestrian prefectures, a model invented by Augustus when he was trying to figure out how to maintain personal control over Egypt without having to worry about senatorial interference.

All of these affronts to their dignity, whether they were justified or not, really rubbed the Senate the wrong way, and when the Empire successfully emerged into the 4th century, the history of the 3rd century began to be reworked by conservative members of the senatorial class into a series of morality plays that had a clear cast of heroes and villains, with emperors like Claudius, Tacitus, and even Aemilianus painted as paradigms of republican virtue, while Gallus, Gallienus, and Aurelian were painted as cruel, lazy, or ineffectual, depending on the man. The Historia Augusta, for example, expends a great deal of ink praising Posthumus, who was, after all, nothing less than a traitor to Rome, in order to contrast him with the terrible no-good Gallienus. Odonathus, as I've already mentioned, received similar glowing treatment. This is not to take away from the accomplishments of Posthumus and Odonathus, but it is interesting to note how much praise is heaped on the two men who did the most to divide the Empire because of the Senate's lingering hatred for Gallienus.

Despite this friction with the upper classes, Gallienus did manage to stay in power for fifteen years, so he had to be doing something right. After the tumultuous years following the capture of his father, one of the main lessons the emperor took away was that if he was going to maintain his tenuous hold on the Middle Empire and perhaps one day win back the East and the West, he was going to have to do a better job making sure that the army still under his command remained loyal to him and did not jump to their local generals every time someone said boo.

Now, it was not exactly a mystery how you kept soldiers in the third century loyal to you, and Gallienus was no dummy. Thus, one of his lasting legacies was the founding of multiple mints across the empire. Up until this point, besides the main mint in Rome, there were only a few major coining centers in the provinces, making transporting soldier pay and promised bonuses both time-consuming and dangerous. So Gallienus founded at least four new mints near all the major military headquarters in northern Italy and along the Danube, which kept the soldiers paid in full and on time, and left them, as you can imagine, extremely well disposed towards their emperor.

The downside of this increase in mints, though, was that it sped up a process that the Romans did not understand at all, but that we today are well acquainted with and very watchful of – inflation. Now, like most of you, I learned about inflation from the classic DuckTales episode, Do-Re-Mi, when Huey, Dewey, and Louie got their hands on a duplicating ray and used it to duplicate some money so they could have enough to go buy a new bike. But of course, the duplicating ray had a glitch – anything that gets duplicated will spontaneously duplicate itself after a brief period of time. Pretty soon, Duckburg was swimming in duplicated cash, lollipops cost a wheelbarrow full of coins, and the price of the new bike that had started all this had increased a hundredfold. Uncle Scrooge was of course wiped out, as the coins he had so carefully hoarded in his money bin were now all worthless. Not a pretty sight.

So, first of all, don't tell me that silly anthropomorphic cartoons have no educational value, and second, that this is exactly what happened to the Roman Empire as revenue failed to meet expenditures during the third century. The imperial reaction was to simply produce more money so that they could pay off all their debts, leading to spiraling prices, savings being wiped out, and a reversion eventually back to primitive barter and payments in kind.

Adding to these economic woes, that in the 260s were still looming on the horizon, was the fact that with the imperial mines running dry, and no new sources of silver and gold anywhere to be found, the emperors were forced to debase the coinage to keep up with the increased rate of production. Debasement was of course nothing new, but the process had thus far been pretty gradual, and the market had been given time to adjust. In the 200 years from Augustus to Septimius Severus, the standard denarius had declined its silver content from 98% to just about 50%. In the 50 years since the death of Severus though, the silver content plummeted to just 1.5%. This was a silver ratio so low that the denarius literally no longer resembled itself. The various emperors had done all this in secret of course, because, while they may not have understood inflation, they certainly understood the dangerous ramifications of making their coins intrinsically less valuable.

But it did not take long for people to catch on. Despite multiple imperial declarations stating that all coins should be accepted at face value, savvy merchants of the third century began adjusting their prices by the weight of their customers' coins, rather than simply counting the number of them. But as I just said, it took a little while for the effects of all these monetary shenanigans to be felt, and Gallienus mostly benefited from his printing of more money, despite the fact that it was bad money.

As I mentioned a few times previously, coins in the Roman Empire were a primary vehicle of imperial propaganda, and with each new batch of coins flooding out into the provinces, the citizens of the empire became awash, not just in cash, but with the persistent drumbeat message that everything was fine, everyone was getting along, the empire was safe, the armies were happy, and the emperor was on the case. There were of course outward signs that all this was perhaps not as true as the emperor would like it to be, but one rule of mass media is that if you repeat something enough times, a lot of people are going to start believing it. Gallienus repeated himself a lot, and with no opposing media outlets contradicting him, many citizens simply shrugged their shoulders and believed him.

The 260s AD are often represented as the nadir of Roman fortunes. The empire was divided from itself, and men were rising up in revolt almost daily against an ineffectual emperor who seemed content to let it all burn. But this is an oversimplification, an exaggeration, and, bluntly, untrue. Gallienus, like Domitian before him, has been absolutely vilified, but when we look back with a more sober eye on the period, we find that he was not at all ineffectual, that he vigorously and actively defended the empire from foreign invasion and attempted to put the broken pieces of Roman society back together. He did indeed preside over a divided empire, but with everything Rome was facing, the temporary division probably wound up profiting the empire in the end.

What did not profit the empire was Gallienus' monetary policies, which came back to haunt Rome in a big way, but even in this, it's not like Gallienus invented debasement or the overcoining of money. The son of Valerian was certainly not the best emperor. Indeed, he was about to be shown by Aurelian what a really good emperor can do when he puts his mind to something, but he certainly wasn't one of the worst either.

Next week, we will get to the fall of this not-great-but-not-terrible emperor. Either by coincidence or fate, the death of Gallienus was matched almost simultaneously by the death of Posthumus in the west and Odonathus in the east. Within the span of a single year, the three men who had dominated the lives of Romans everywhere were dead, leaving power vacuums in all three corners of the empire. While the west would fall into the hands of unworthy successors, the east would be claimed by the wife of Odonathus, the Palmyrene queen Zenobia, who would in time prove to be her husband's equal in every way. And had she not run up against Aurelian, it is very possible that she would have emerged as his better in every way.