Fall of Roman Empire or Later Roman
Empire
Principate to Dominate (the Crisis of the Third Century)
L. Septimius Severus 11 April 145 – 4 February 211) was a Roman politician who served as emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present-day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through the customary succession of offices under the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Severus was the final contender to seize power after the death of the emperor Pertinax in 193 during the Year of the Five Emperors.
After deposing and killing the incumbent emperor Didius Julianus, Severus fought his rival claimants, the Roman generals Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus. Niger was defeated in 194 at the Battle of Issus in Cilicia. Later that year Severus waged a short punitive campaign beyond the eastern frontier, annexing the Kingdom of Osroene as a new province. Severus defeated Albinus three years later at the Battle of Lugdunum in Gaul. Following the consolidation of his rule over the western provinces, Severus waged another brief, more successful war in the east against the Parthian Empire, sacking their capital Ctesiphon in 197 and expanding the eastern frontier to the Tigris. He then enlarged and fortified the Limes Arabicus in Arabia Petraea. In 202, he campaigned in Africa and Mauretania against the Garamantes, capturing their capital Garama and expanding the Limes Tripolitanus along the southern desert frontier of the empire.
He proclaimed as augusti (co-emperors) his elder son Caracalla in 198 and his younger son Geta in 209, both born of his second wife Julia Domna. Severus travelled to Britain in 208, strengthening Hadrian's Wall and reoccupying the Antonine Wall. In 209 he invaded Caledonia (modern Scotland) with an army of 50,000 men but his ambitions were cut short when he fell fatally ill of an infectious disease in late 210. He died in early 211 at Eboracum (today York, England), and was succeeded by his sons, who were advised by their mother and his powerful widow, Julia Domna, thus founding the Severan dynasty. It was the last dynasty of the Roman Empire before the Crisis of the Third Century.
End of the Severan dynasty, between 235-284 AD there were 24 Roman Emperors. Two longest reigns of 7 years and 8 years respectively. All but 2 emperors died violent deaths.
Break away state of Palmyra ruled by Queen Zenobia, Suppressed by Roman Emperor Aurelius in 273 AD – a reflection of loose ends on the periphery
Ř Civil Wars
Ř Lack of succession
Ř Mounting barbarian pressure
Ř Rising burden of military establishment
Limes – boundary
of manmade and natural frontiers (the Rhine Danube frontier; the
Augustan military establishment, 20-30 legions of 125,000
men, settled into permanent stone built camps. Military colonies in vicinity;
tendency of veterans to marry local women and settle down; retirement of
auxilia with Roman citizenship on the frontiers – increasing provincial, rural,
less well educated character of military population. By third century AD the
army of the
Sources for Severan dynasty: Cassius Dio; Herodian
212 AD Caracalla, declared all inhabitants of the Empire Roman citizens and therefore subject to the 5% inheritance tax and 10% manumission tax
1. lack of succession
2) incessant civil wars
2a) equites
Replacement of senatorial governors with equestrian procuratores agens vices vicarii
(Procurator acting in place of the previous
substitute); praeses (Praeses (Latin pl. praesides) is a Latin word meaning "placed
before" or "at the head". In antiquity, notably under the Roman Dominate,
it was used to refer to Roman governors; it continues to see some use for
various modern positions.)
4 prefects 1) Oriens, 2)
Replacement of senatorial legati legionis with praefectus legati agens vices legati (prefect with the rank of legate acting in place of
a legate)
To reduce threat of
rebellion, Septimius Severus made all provinces smaller and expanding their
number to 120, diocese = conventus (tax
collecting district within the former province).
Late Greek dioíkēsis "administration, control, ordering,
civil or ecclesiastical group of provinces, jurisdiction of a bishop,"
going back to Greek, "management, administration," from dioikē-, variant stem of dioikéō, dioikeîn "to control, manage, look after"
(from di- DI- + oikeîn "to live, have one's
home, order, govern," derivative of oîkos "house, home")
Vicarius was responsible for the munera = liturgy,
b) making legions smaller but
expanding their number from 40 to 60, 1000 = 300,000 (by 235 AD, end of Severan dynasty).
Vices (replacement) – the new officer staff.
increasing barbarism of the
military
3) rising costs of maintaining the military => devaluation of currency; Diocletian’s Price Edict
costs == pay raises for the military; insiders obtain exemptions as honestiores as opposed to humiliores
locking people into their stations in life; colonus
Latin colōnus “inhabitant of a colony, tenant farmer, farmer,” derivative of colere “to inhabit, till, cultivate”; cf. cult, cultivate
4) Barbarian invasions, Germanic Threats to the West; and Persian Sassanids to the East
Sasanian Empire or Sassanid Empire, also known as the Second Persian Empire or Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th to 8th centuries. Named after the House of Sasan, it endured for over four centuries, from 224 to 651, making it the second longest-lived Persian imperial dynasty after the Arsacids of the Parthian Empire.
The Sasanian Empire succeeded the Parthian Empire and re-established the Persians as a major power in late antiquity alongside its arch-rival, the Roman Empire (after 395 the Byzantine Empire). The empire ended with the Muslim conquest of Persia. It was founded by Ardashir I, a ruler who rose to power as Parthia weakened as a result of internal strife and wars with the Romans. After defeating the last Parthian King of Kings, Artabanus IV, at the Battle of Hormozdgan in 224, he established the Sasanian Empire and set out to restore the legacy of the Achaemenid Empire by expanding Persia's dominions.
At its greatest territorial extent, the Sasanian Empire encompassed all of present-day Iran and Iraq, and stretched from the Levant to the Indian subcontinent and from South Arabia to the Caucasus and Central Asia.