120 - Interregnum

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Hello, and welcome to the award-winning podcast, The History of Rome, episode 120, Interregnum. So yeah, we won the podcast award for best educational podcast of 2010. Totally cool. There is no way that I can claim any sort of sole ownership of the honor, because it was you guys out there who nominated the show, and then you guys who went and voted for it. So I consider this a win for everyone in the History of Rome community. I didn't win anything, but we just won best educational podcast of 2010. Congratulations.

Aurelian's assassination in late 275 A.D. came as a shock to everyone, and, apart from a few irreconcilables in the Senate, the unconquered restorer of the world was mourned throughout the empire. The rank and file of the imperial army, still camped in Thrace, was especially grief-stricken, and their grief soon turned to anger. They wanted to know who was behind the assassination, and then they wanted them dead. It was this bloodthirsty anger that led the senior officers of the legions, most of whom had been in on the murder, to take the unprecedented step of punting on the question of succession. Normally under these circumstances, one of them would have been put forward and acclaimed, but in this climate, imperial ambition would have been taken as evidence of guilt. What I mean by that is that the 3rd century assassinations preceding Aurelian's, those of Alexander Severus and Maximinus Thrax and Philip the Arab and Gallus and Aemilianus and Gallienus, were carried out with at least the tacit approval of the common soldiers, who understood that their erstwhile leaders needed to be pitched overboard, usually to save their own skins. But this business with Aurelian was a different animal altogether. He was popular, he was successful, and he faced no charismatic rival for power. He had, after all, already dispatched all of those. His death was not viewed with relief or indifference or hope, but with anger. To come forward and claim the purple, then, looked like a quick way to get fingered for Aurelian's murder, and then get lynched by an angry mob. So the senior staff decided the safest course of action would be to ask the senate to vote on a new emperor. That way, none of them would look like they had killed Aurelian out of crass ambition.

So a few weeks after the emperor died, official envoys from the army arrived in Rome and announced to the senate that the men of the legions humbly put the choice of Aurelian's successor into the hands of that great and ancient body. The senate, of course, thought that this was insane. As much as they liked to whine about it, they had learned not to mess with the army on the issue of succession. The senate's guys always got killed, and the men who put them forward usually got killed, too. So, the senate told the envoys, thanks, but no thanks. Then the envoys went back to the army, but the officers again refused to nominate one of their own, and kicked it back to the senate. Things went on like this for a while, though exactly how long is a matter of longstanding debate.

Famously, among others, the Historia Augusta reports that the interregnum lasted for a good six months, during which time neither side was willing to blink. In this telling, the senate took over the day-to-day functions of the empire, while everyone waited for someone else to make the decision about who ought to be emperor. It has also been postulated that the emperor's widow, a practically unknown woman named Servina, actually wielded some kind of executive authority in her role as the Augusta during this period, but mostly, it seems like the whole notion of an extended interregnum only arises because of confusion in the ancient sources. There is no doubt that the soldiers and the senate each tried to get the other to make the call, and that eventually, the senate blinked and elevated a man named Marcus Claudius Tacitus. But the six-month time frame appears to come from the fact that some 4th century historians completely dismissed the short reigns of Tacitus and his successor half-brother Florian, merely noting that six months passed between the death of Aurelian and the ascension of his successor, the general Probus. Later authors then picked this up and accidentally combined it with the story of the senate and army arguing about who ought to follow Aurelian, and turned it into an interregnum of six months where there was no emperor at all, which doesn't really seem plausible. So I'm inclined to believe that Tacitus was elevated in December of 275, after one solid go-around between the army and the senate. This shortened the interregnum to the period it took the envoys to go from Thrace to Rome, from Rome back to Thrace, and then back to Rome again. By that point, the senate was ready to make the call and they chose, as I just said, Marcus Claudius Tacitus, a man about whom we know almost nothing.

Despite his tantalizing name, it does not appear that Emperor Tacitus was in any way related to the historian Tacitus, though that was a myth that was bandied about for quite a while. He is also described as being in his mid-seventies at the time of his ascension, but again that seems more myth than reality, something to gin up his credentials as the wise old sage of the senate, a characterization which fit nicely into later historians' attempt to make his brief reign out to be the last great flash of senatorial relevance, before it was snuffed out completely by Diocletian and his tetrarchy. Tacitus, whoever he was, however old he was, and whatever his agenda was, was in Campania when he heard that the senate had chosen him for this great and terrible honor, and he quickly rode up to Rome to take his place on the throne. He allegedly gave a fine speech promising to renew the old partnership between emperor and senate, that the great conscript fathers of Rome would once again share in the burdens and responsibilities of empire, turning back the clock to a simpler and better time at et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. Then he rode off to Thrace to take command of the army.

The stay of execution the officers behind Aurelian's murder had earned by punting the succession question to the senate was cancelled the minute Tacitus arrived in camp. Immediately taking note of the rank-and-file still vengeful mood, Tacitus rounded up all the conspirators he could identify and ordered them killed. The bloodlust of the troops thus mollified, Tacitus announced that the march to Persia was now on indefinite hold. A swarm of German tribes north of the Danube had taken the news of Aurelian's death as an open invitation to recommence their raids on Roman territory, and the countryside was once again littered with barbarians. The imperial army spent the next six months engaged in a happy little game of whack-a-mole, as Tacitus attempted to impress upon the German tribes that Aurelian's death did not mean that Rome was suddenly some weakling who could be pushed around. And it was true. Of all Aurelian's legacies, perhaps the most important was the highly trained, highly disciplined veteran army he bequeathed to his successors. The legions of the imperial army were now as formidable a force as the empire had ever put together, and for the moment there was no one on earth who could beat them in battle, a lesson the opportunistic Germans would soon learn.

But Tacitus would not remain in command of this great army for long. Forced down into Cilicia to deal with some runaway intruders in the summer of 276, the emperor either succumbed to an illness or was assassinated by his own soldiers, who perhaps regretted allowing the senate to decide their fate for them. He was supposedly seventy-six years old, and had ruled the empire for just six months. So, like I say, the six months that Tacitus reigned correspond so nicely with the six-month interregnum between Aurelian and his successor, that tales of an extended power vacuum really do seem misplaced. There was a six-month gap between Aurelian and the ascension of the man who could be considered his true successor, but that did not mean that there was a six-month gap between Aurelian and any successor at all.

The man who can be considered Aurelian's true successor was, if you can believe this, an Illyrian general, by the name of Marcus Aurelius Probus, who at the time was serving as commander-in-chief of the eastern provinces, a post so critical that it is easy to imagine that the childless Aurelian was grooming Probus to succeed him all along, though there is no hard evidence to support that one way or the other. Probus was of a slightly younger generation of officers than Claudius Gothicus and Aurelian had been, born around 232, rather than his elder colleagues 213 and 215 AD respectively. He came up in the army then just as Valerian was taking power, and was eventually catapulted into the upper ranks of the officer corps when his Illyrian brethren seized control of the empire in 268. He served as one of Aurelian's key lieutenants, and as I said a few episodes back, he has traditionally been credited with the recapture of Egypt during the Palmyrene War, though other evidence points to his remaining in the west during that period, laying the groundwork for the Gallic War. Once the empire was reunited though, Probus was definitely put in charge of all the armed forces in the east, a promotion that found him overseeing the all-important reintegration of the eastern provinces into the imperial fold. This posting alone speaks to the confidence that Aurelian must have had in his younger colleague. Only in his early forties when Aurelian died, it is likely that Probus did not yet feel secure enough or strong enough to make his own bid for the throne, so whatever his long-term ambitions might have been, this time around, he simply allowed the senate and the army in Thrace to hash things out.

But when Tacitus died in mid-276, most of the men senior to him in the chain of command were already dead, as a result of the part that they had played in Aurelian's murder. By virtue of his eastern command and the esteem that the still-beloved Aurelian had obviously held him in, Probus was now a natural choice for the job of emperor, and the men under his command did not hesitate to hail him as such. Probus immediately began to march west to cement his claim to power. In a poetic repeat of the circumstances surrounding Aurelian's elevation six years earlier, before Probus could secure the throne outright, he had to deal with a counterclaim by the dead emperor's brother. Marcus Aeneas Florianus, the maternal half-brother of Tacitus, had been named praetorian prefect when Tacitus donned the purple, and was on hand when his brother died in Cilicia. With the imperial army leaderless, and imperial blood now coursing through his veins, Florian did not hesitate to assume the mantle of emperor at the first opportunity. The senate was never consulted in any of this. Their brief return to the forefront of politics was already becoming a distant memory. From here on out, individual senators, by virtue of their private control of so much of the empire's land, might hold sway in government, but as an institution, the senate was dead, dead, dead.

Florian decided to immediately march his larger and better-trained army east to knock Probus out quickly, but he did not take into account the bonds that had formed between the soldiers of the now quote-unquote opposing armies over the course of their years fighting together under Aurelian. Most especially, he did not take into account that Probus was seen by everyone as the logical successor to Aurelian. The soldiers under his command likely didn't know Florian from Adam, but they knew Probus very well. A battle was not even necessary to decide the issue. No one was going to fight Probus. 88 days after being proclaimed emperor, Florian was either assassinated by his men or he committed suicide, and Marcus Aurelius Probus became the undisputed master of the empire, one of the last men, incidentally, to hold that particular distinction. Rome, as you may already know, is about to go through a fairly momentous transformation. Probus took over the reins of power in 276, and would rule until 282, a six-year stretch that, added to the five years of Aurelian's reign, combined to provide some much-needed stability to the empire.

Unfortunately for us, though, the reign of Probus is like a poster child for the jumbled and confused chronology of the third century. One of our main literary sources, A Fourth Century History by Aurelius Victor, cuts out right as he is about to go into detail about the reign of the good and decent Emperor Probus. So what we have to go on are some summaries, some snippets, and some coins. Not really the stuff that great history is made of, but we're going to do our best. It appears, first of all, that the Danube tribes were not the only ones to take Aurelian's death as an invitation to resume their attack on the provinces. Sending the army that had first declared him Emperor back to Syria to garrison the east, Probus took command of the main imperial army, and likely marched over to the Rhine frontier, where the Alamanni and the Franks had broken across the border. Well, I guess they didn't really break across so much as they just walked on over, seeing as how the old fortification lines developed by Domitian and Hadrian had been pretty well abandoned by this point.

Archaeological excavations have shown that going into the crisis years, the Romans still manned and patrolled the same Lymes Germanicus that they had for more than a century. But by the time the Gallic Empire was reintegrated, all but a handful of the old forts had been abandoned. As I mentioned during the first Aurelian episode, the Romans had by this point fallen back to their newly fortified cities as the main defensive line. There were simply too many Germans moving in too coordinated a way to make manning a long wall made of turf and wood a viable defensive option. In the coming years, first Diocletian and then Constantine will completely reshape the Roman military posture to account for the new threats that the empire faced. But for now, the transition was just getting started, and Probus had to rely on walled cities, a mobile imperial army, and a lot of luck to help him push back the German invaders.

Although following Aurelian's lead, Probus was not 100% intent on pushing the Germans out of the empire. What he really wanted was peace and stability on the frontiers, and in their own way, this is what the Franks and Alamanni wanted too. So as he campaigned against them in the late 270s, it became standard policy to settle defeated tribesmen in the lands that had been vacated by the long-Romanized Gauls, who had fled to the cities in the face of near-constant invasion. Tens of thousands of Germans were thus settled on provincial land, giving the economy a boost, the legions new recruits, and the provinces a nice buffer zone between un-pacified tribes and the Roman interior. Sometimes it took defeating the Germans to get them into Roman settlements, but other times they requested permission to migrate, permission that was granted on the condition that they disarm, disperse into smaller groups, and recognize the overarching authority of Roman officials, which seemed like a fine bargain for most of them, who welcomed the opportunity to share in the splendid riches of an empire they had for so long eyed jealousy. For now, the process of Germanic integration was a gangbuster strategy for the recovering empire, and for the next hundred years it worked out almost universally to the Roman advantage. Once the Huns got going though, the whole ballgame would change, as the empire would have to deal with the settlement not of tens of thousands, but rather hundreds of thousands, and after Adrianople, it had to deal with hundreds of thousands who wanted settlement lands but were no longer prepared to disperse or disarm. The West's inability to adjust to that new reality was one of the key reasons why, a hundred years after that, the whole thing fell apart. But that is for another day.

After pacifying the Rhine frontier, Probus then seems to have turned his attention back to the Danube, where he squared off and soundly defeated the Vandals. By this point, around about the early 280s, we begin to see a curious new sight, soldiers engaged in public works and land restoration projects, which could only mean one thing. After nearly fifty years of constant warfare, the legions were running out of enemies to fight. Just a decade before, Aurelian had been unable to spare a single soldier to help build his walls around Rome. Walls that were finished right at the outset of Probus's reign, I should mention. But now, we have reports of soldiers digging irrigation ditches and planting vines, and yes, working on better fortifications for the provincial cities. The Sassanids were a significantly less potent threat now that Sharpor was dead. The Goths had been beaten down to the point where they would not be a significant adversary for another century, and the power of the Franks and the Alamanni was being siphoned into the Roman tank. On the home front, sporadic uprisings were being choked off with ease, and for the briefest of moments, it seemed like the empire was at something resembling peace.

It is even reported that Probus boasted that in a few years, Rome would not even need her armies anymore. Proud words not to be taken literally, but unfortunately, it seems that some men in the army did take the emperor at his word, and they weren't too happy about Probus's vision of a less martial future. Don't get them wrong, they were no more interested in perpetual warfare than anyone else, but it's just that, well, if Rome no longer needs her armies, then they're all out of a job. And they liked their jobs. They were well-paid and well-fed, and had a degree of prestige that the poor provincial lives they had all left behind simply could not offer. That they were already doing back-breaking manual labor at Probus's order certainly did not bode well for their particular futures. That is, there wasn't much separating them from the civilians anymore. And according to the limited information we have, it was just this combination of unease about the future and annoyance with Probus's public works projects that led to the emperor's downfall in late 282. One of the main legionary garrisons in Probus's hometown of Sirmium had finally had enough of ditch-digging in late 282, and throwing down their shovels, they rose up in revolt. It is difficult to follow the chain of events, but it seems that Probus had been in Rome celebrating a triumph, and that he was on his way back to the frontier zone, possibly to get Aurelian's planned eastern campaign restarted, when news of the revolt reached him. Eventually, the troops in Sirmium would elevate a praetorian prefect by the name of Marcus Aurelius Carus to the throne, but it is unclear whether this occurred in conjunction with the original revolt, or whether it only occurred after Probus had been dispatched with. The bottom line, though, is that Probus arrived in Sirmium to restore order, found himself overwhelmed by the unruly troops, and was assassinated in September or October of 282 AD. He was fifty years old, and had ruled the empire for just about six years.

The murder of Probus, like the murder of Aurelian, was committed in the heat of the moment, and as soon as things calmed down, the soldiers came to regret their hasty violence. Carus, now donning the purple, had no trouble rooting out the men behind the assassination, nor any pushback from the rest of the men when he executed the murderers. The deaths of these two great Illyrian generals really served no useful purpose for the empire. They were neither tyrants nor incompetents. Quite the opposite, they were capable administrators and brilliant soldiers, who had done the yeoman's work pulling Rome from the depths of its misfortune. History cannot be rewritten, but with both men being as young as they were when they became emperor, it is not hard to imagine that had either one of them been allowed to rule into old age, that we might be dating the end of the crisis years to their ascension. As it stands, though, we still have a little ways to go.

Though with the elevation of Carus, we have basically come to the end of the line. The new emperor is going to elevate both his sons, Carinus and Numerian, to serve alongside him, and then he will march east to initiate the long put-off campaign against the Sassanids. While on campaign, he is going to die, and shortly thereafter his son Numerian is going to die, and then a general named Diocles will be elevated to the throne, and we can once and for all put the whole sordid third century crisis behind us.

Next time, we will close out the crisis of the third century, and bring to power Diocletian, the man whose passion for stability and order will lead him to overhaul the entire administrative structure of the empire, transforming it in ways that no man since Augustus had even dreamed of attempting. To say nothing of the fact that in a very short time there will not be one emperor, but four, and not rivals for power, but colleagues, working in concert to ensure the safety, survival, and prosperity of the renewed Roman Empire. I say next time, rather than next week, because the Feast of the Unconquered Sun fast approaches, and the new year follows fast after that. I'll be traveling for the holidays, and won't be able to get much writing done, so I'm going to have to take the next two weeks off. We'll be back, though, on January 9th, to finally bury the crisis of the third century, and then launch into the new age of the Tetrarchy, and then into Constantine and his newly minted Christian Empire.