116 - Here Come the Illyrians

This week's episode is brought to you by Audible. As you know, Audible is the Internet's leading provider of audio entertainment with over 60,000 titles to choose from. When you're done with this episode, go to audiblepodcast.com forward slash roam. That again, audiblepodcast.com forward slash roam. By going to that address, you will qualify for a free book download when you sign up for a 14-day trial membership. There is no obligation to continue the service and you can cancel any time and keep the free book. You can also keep going with one of the monthly subscription options and get great deals on all your future audiobook purchases. This week, in honor of the coming rise of Zenobia, everyone's favorite neo-Cleopatra, I'm going to recommend the new biography of the original, Cleopatra A Life by Stacey Schiff. Just remember to go to audiblepodcast.com forward slash roam so that they know who sent you.

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. Episode 116, Here Come the Illyrians. As I said at the end of the last episode, the assassination of Gallienus in 268 marked the beginning of the end for the crisis of the 3rd century. In the 33 years since the death of Alexander Severus, the Roman Empire had been on a pretty impressive downhill slide. Emperors were dropping like flies, barbarians were running amok, the empire had broken in three, disease and famine were rampant. But inch by inch and mile by mile, the successors of Gallienus are about to pull Rome out of its skid and put it back on top of the geopolitical food chain. These successors were notable not just for their achievements, but also for the fact that they all hailed from the same part of the empire. Though I usually refer to the third phase of the crisis period as the recovery phase, it could just as easily be known as the era of the Illyrian Emperors. If anyone out there is still clinging to the notion that the Roman Empire fell because it stopped being a Roman Empire, well, I can promise you that it would have fallen a whole lot earlier had it not been for the succession of native Illyrians who pulled Rome out of the ditch that it had driven itself into. Claudius, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, Constantine, these are the men who salvaged an empire that looked like it was headed straight for the dustbin of history. The Roman Empire wasn't a Roman Empire anymore, and it was a good thing for the Romans that it wasn't.

Despite his impressive sounding name, Marcus Aurelius Valerius Claudius most likely had no aristocratic connections anywhere in his family tree. His origins are too obscure to say definitively, but like other young men from the Danube frontier who joined the legions, he probably came from peasant stock and was looking for a ticket to a better life that service in the army sometimes provided. Usually it provided hardship, suffering, and an early death, but to the youths of Pannonia and Moesia, that can't have sounded too different from the lives they could expect to lead staying at home. At least in the legions, there was an outside chance he might get promoted to centurion and pick up a few cash bonuses along the way. Born around 213, Claudius and his fellows would have entered the legions in the early 230s, and though we know these years as the moment when the empire slipped into crisis mode, for the common soldier, these were the years when, really, anything became possible. A legionary who showed courage, discipline, and who kept his wits about him in the heat of battle, was likely to find himself not just in charge of a cohort, but a whole legion, and after the ascension of Maximinus Thrax, maybe even the whole empire. Claudius was courageous and disciplined and kept his wits about him in the heat of battle, and so he slowly climbed up the ranks. He had the further good fortune of coming into his own during the reign of Gallienus, when legions run by career military men, rather than the usual gang of aristocratic social climbers, was becoming the rule, rather than the exception. Claudius seems to have excelled everywhere he went, and as Aureolus faded as Gallienus's favorite general, Claudius stepped in and became one of the emperor's most trusted military advisors. When Aureolus was stripped of the all-important cavalry command, Claudius was quite literally handed the reins.

Claudius's role in the assassination of Gallienus the next year has never been fully ascertained, but no one doubts that he was at least aware of the plot. Constantine's revisionist historians attempted to absolve Claudius of all guilt, but their claims are far-fetched to say the least. As the senior ranking general of the officer corps, he was not only the natural choice to succeed Gallienus, but also a man whose, at least tacit consent, would have been required for a plot to move forward. On a more personal level, he was also the senior ranking Illyrian, and it was native Illyrian officers who were the prime movers in the plot to remove Gallienus. To think that Claudius did not know what his friends and countrymen were up to, strains grudgility. When the deed was done, the conspirators arranged for the men to proclaim Claudius emperor, and he accepted, no doubt feigning surprise. Having assumed power by way of a coup, though, Claudius was quick to distance himself from the assassins and promote the legacy of Gallienus. In stark contrast to the rewards they were probably expecting, Claudius singled out a number of the officers behind the plot to kill Gallienus and have them executed or exiled. The new emperor wanted the world to know that he did not approve of regicide, especially since he was now the rege who could possibly be cited. To further distance himself from the conspiracy, when Claudius traveled to Rome to cement his new powers, he took the surprising step of demanding that the Senate deify Gallienus. The Senate, of course, balked at this. Far from wanting to deify Gallienus, when Claudius' order came down, they were preparing to vote to damn his memory a la Domitian. Forced to swallow their pride, which is, of course, what had made them so mad at Gallienus in the first place, the Senate instead voted to deify him, as Claudius instructed.

His hands now relatively clean, Claudius took stock of the empire he had inherited. In the West, the Gallic empire was still in the hands of posthumous, and looking as strong as ever. Despite being solidly separatist, though, the Gallic provinces maintained a non-aggressive attitude towards Rome, so, for the time being, they could wait. In the East, Odinothus' death had led to the rise of his widow Zenobia. There was definitely something that needed to be done about that. It was one thing for the East to be run by Odinothus, but his wife, this latter-day Cleopatra? No, that wouldn't do at all. What if she decided to do something crazy, like take over Egypt? No, the East needed to be brought back under imperial control, and fast. But Zenobia too would have to wait. After all, had they not all just been involved in staving off a massive Gothic invasion when Aureolus had decided to revolt? Was that invasion even over yet? No? Well, that is going then to have to be priority A1.

So after spending a few months in Rome, Claudius ordered the troops in Milan back to the Danube, where either loose Goths from the previous invasion were still running around, or a whole new invasion force had come in, depending on which theory you buy into about the Gothic invasion patterns of the late 260s AD. Well, that is, he headed over to the Danube directly from Rome, as long as you believe that one particular theory about Claudius' movements during his 18-month reign. I happen to believe that theory, so that's the version of the story we're going with. But just so you know, there is another theory that has Claudius dealing with the penetration of an Alamanni horde into northern Italy before he went to the Danube to face the Goths at Nysus. But this just doesn't seem logical to me from the Alamanni's point of view. The theory I happen to believe is that Claudius went to the Danube, fought the Goths at Nysus, and while he was busy, the Germans made their move, and Claudius was forced to return to Italy to deal with them. To argue that the Alamanni invaded right away means arguing that they decided to charge headlong into an imperial army still encamped outside Milan, which maybe they did, but it just doesn't seem practical. Better to wait until the Romans withdraw the bulk of their forces back to the Danube, right? That seems like the savvy play.

So Claudius marched the imperial army back to the Balkans, where the withdrawal of Gallienus the previous year had left the Danube provinces open to further Gothic attack. Scholars have gone back and forth about whether the threat Claudius rode off to face represented a continuation of the previous invasion, or whether the Goths had abandoned Roman territory, regrouped, and were now launching a second invasion. If there was a second invasion, it followed very closely the route taken in 267, with a massive Gothic fleet heading down the Black Sea coast, passing into the Sea of Marmara, and from there into the Aegean, sacking and pillaging all along the way. When Claudius entered the Balkans, a Gothic horde, that is, women and children, along with the men, possibly 100,000 strong, was loose in the mainland. The Romans and Goths met outside the city of Nysus, and though we don't know the size of the army Claudius led, the Goths are said to have fielded an army somewhere north of 50,000 men.

The battle that followed was an extremely hard-fought affair, but showing off that old Roman discipline, the Goths were finally broken when Claudius pulled the old fake-a-retreat-then-whirl-around-and-smash-your-surprised-opponent trick, a trick likely led by his new cavalry commander, Lucius Domitius Aurelianus. The Goths were mostly killed or captured, but even a victory as great as the one at Nysus was not decisive. A sizable contingent of the Goths managed to break free and push west into Macedonia. Claudius wheeled his army around and caught the survivors trying to fortify themselves behind their own carts. When Claudius broke through these defenses, the Goths once again took flight, but as they had no provisions to speak of, the chase itself was taking more of a toll on their remaining numbers than the Romans were. They finally holed up on the side of a mountain, and found themselves immediately besieged and trapped. Disease and famine ripped through the Gothic ranks, and the chiefs quickly determined that they would not survive like this for very long. So they broke out again, and amazingly enough, the starving and exhausted Goths managed to penetrate the Roman line and point themselves towards home. But the final battle took too much out of them, and the last of the last survivors were quickly tracked down by the Roman cavalry, and with no strength left to fight, they gave up.

The fate of these surviving Goths might surprise you, but the circumstances of the times demanded that the Romans break out of the old enslave and annex routine that had served them so well for so long. The combination of disease and famine, near-constant warfare and economic upheaval, had left the Empire, and particularly the Danube provinces, overworked and undermanned. So Claudius decided to initiate a policy that had been used occasionally in the past, but never in any sort of systemic way. He settled these conquered Goths inside the Roman Empire. This had the effect of eliminating them as a foreign threat, putting them to work to boost the Roman economy rather than suck it dry, and provide a new recruiting ground for the legions. For their part, the Goths were more than happy to be allowed entrance into this rich land that they had for so long coveted. Their brothers and sisters back north of the Danube were sure to take note of this shift in policy, though they would be well advised to also note that only defeated barbarians are allowed the privilege of Roman settlement. As we go forward, this policy of resettlement and enrollment of the able-bodied men into the legions will become standard imperial policy, and serve as one of the key strategies employed to maintain peace in the borderlands. It should always be remembered that the massive defeat, for example, at Adrianople, was caused not because the Goths were let into the Empire by Valens, but instead because the migration was so badly mismanaged.

As with most of Rome's victories these days, there was not long to savor the win at Nicis. After a ten-year hiatus, the Alamanni got the band back together again, and decided to launch a comeback tour through northern Italy. The presumption is that after their defeat near Milan around 260, the Germans felt that they had made a peace deal between themselves and Gallienus, without necessarily recognizing the Roman state itself as a party to the negotiations. So when Gallienus died, well, that meant that it was now open season on Rome again. My assumption is that they waited for Claudius to withdraw back to the Danube before they made their move, but it could very well be that they invaded the minute that they heard the Emperor was dead. Whatever the order of events, the outcome was the same. Claudius and his Imperial army swept in and crushed the Alamanni at Lake Benicus. The reported numbers have it that Claudius needed just 35,000 troops to kill or capture half of the 100,000 men of the Alamanni army, which would be a stunning victory to say the least. But the enemy numbers probably refer to the whole Alamanni contingent, not just the fighting so it is likely that the battle itself was evenly matched. Regardless, Claudius sent the Germans running home and established himself as basically the greatest thing to happen to Rome in a long, long time. In the span of just a few months, he had wiped the floor with the Goths and then the Germans and proved to the world that when it needed it, Rome still had it. Best of all, was the fact that Claudius was leading the legions to all these victories personally, so there was no repeat of the whole victorious-general-gets-proclaimed-emperor dynamic that had kept dividing the empire immediately after its victories in the field.

Rome's foreign enemies were knocked back on their heels enough that the Emperor could begin thinking about the real prize, the reunification of the empire. Though the situation in the east was essentially the same as when he took office the year before, the situation in the west had changed dramatically. Posthumus was dead, killed by his own troops, and the political stability of the Gallic empire was in serious doubt. Posthumus had been followed briefly on the throne by a man with the auspicious name Marcus Aurelius Marius, but his reign had been measured in days, and the western provinces were now being controlled by a noble named Victorinus, backed by the deep pockets of his mother Victoria. Only the western provinces Victorinus controlled were not the same as the western provinces that Posthumus had controlled. The Iberian peninsula took the death of Posthumus as an opportunity to reconcile with Rome, and they switched their allegiance to Claudius, leaving Victorinus with only Gaul and Britain as his domains. So after defeating the Alamanni, Claudius peeled off a good chunk of his army, handed it over to a lieutenant, with instructions to see how much more of the Gallic empire could be brought back into the Roman fold. The answer was not all of it, as Claudius probably hoped, but was instead the not insignificant most of the Rhone valley. It was progress, and Claudius no doubt looked forward to being remembered as the man who restored the empire. He left this important mission to a lieutenant, because in mid-269, a new player in our game began to mass on the Danube border, looking like they were looking for trouble, the Vandals.

As with the Goths, the true origins of the tribe that became known as the Vandals is obscure, but most scholars agree that they came from somewhere in Scandinavia, and were settled northeast of the region between the Danube and Rhine rivers by the first centuries B.C., far enough off from the empire that they were not major players in the early imperial battles against their German neighbors, though it is recorded that Marcus Aurelius made a separate peace with them during the Marcomannic wars, as he was looking to isolate the tribes from each other. During the population shifts of the third century, though, they found themselves pressing up against the borders of the empire, and, likely hearing of the success the Goths were having, they decided to take a crack at Rome themselves. Claudius and the rest of his army made for Sirmium, the capital of lower Pannonia, which the emperor planned to make his headquarters during the coming offensive against the Vandals. But if you listen closely to the section when I introduce the Cyprian Plague, you know how this story ends.

In January 270, Claudius, who would shortly become known to history as Claudius Gothicus for his great victory at Nysus, came down with the plague, and he died. He was 56 years old, and had ruled the empire for just about 18 months. Though his short reign was defined by military success against Rome's foreign enemies, Claudius' most enduring legacy was the cabal of Illyrian officers he brought with him to the forefront of imperial politics. Most of the major military commands were now in the hands of his countrymen, and for the next generation, these Illyrian generals would dominate the Roman Empire. Culminating in the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, the Illyrian emperors breathed new life into a Roman empire that had been at death's door. True, it would be a different empire that emerged on the other side, but it would still be an intact empire, and that was what counted. Antiquity was not dead yet.

Claudius had been so consumed by his labors, though, that he never stopped to worry about the little matter of who would succeed him when he died. So when he did die, the question was still hanging out there. As had happened when Decius died in the swamps of Abritus, the Senate had one idea about who ought to rule, and the army had another. But there would be no generous concord between these rival choices, as there had been between Gallus and Hostilian. Twenty years of additional non-stop warfare had made the Senate beyond irrelevant, and ignoring them would not really introduce any sort of significant discord into the mix. As long as the armies were of one mind, the possibility of civil war was low, and the armies were of one mind. They wanted Aurelian. Back in Rome, the Senate elevated Claudius' brother Quintillus, but he never stood a chance, and neither Aurelian nor his legions were too much worried about what the Senate thought about anything.

Lucius Domitius Aurelianus had been born around 215 in the province of Pannonia to a tenant farmer of absolutely no consequence. He was just a few years younger than Claudius, and so, like the now dead emperor, Aurelian came of age just as the crisis of the third century was heating up, and he thus spent his entire career embroiled in one war after another, and rising up through the ranks every time a vacancy opened up, which, during the tumultuous mid-200s AD, was often. By the time of Gallienus' assassination, Aurelian was one of the top two or three generals in the empire, closely associated with Claudius and the other Illyrian officers who had taken over the high command of the legions. Known by the nickname Hand-on-Hilt, or Sword-in-Hand, Aurelian was known for being tough, humorless, disciplined, and focused. He tolerated no fools, and likely would have been as hated an officer as the legions could spit out, were he not also fantastically talented and virtually unbeatable in the field. He took over command of the mobile cavalry when Claudius became emperor, and ran them against the Goths at Nicis, leading the offensive that initially broke the invaders, and then leading the pursuit that finished them off. He was unquestionably the number two man in the empire during the reign of Claudius, and when the emperor succumbed to the plague in early 270, there was no doubt in the army's mind who should replace him—Old Sword-in-Hand. They could not have chosen a better man for the job that lay ahead.

When Aurelian assumed the purple in 270, the empire was not only still divided from itself, but in the east Zenobia was making moves that signaled she had no intention of ever being brought back into the Roman fold. Perhaps as early as the last few months of Claudius' reign, Zenobia had ordered the Palmyrene army to enter Egypt and occupy Alexandria. At no point had Gallienus ever granted Odinothus access to Egypt, let alone hegemony over it, and Zenobia's move was nothing less than an act of war. The maker-breakpoint had come in the relationship between east and west, and the new emperor Aurelian was absolutely dedicated with every fiber of his being to making sure that it did not break.

Next week, Old Sword-in-Hand will begin his remarkable five-year run on the throne, during which, step by step and day by day, he will re-fuse the bonds that held the empire together. The golden age of Rome was long dead. This was an age of iron, and Aurelian was a man of iron.