Down to 180, the Roman Empire fared reasonably well, but then from 180 to 284, it ran into grave problems. I can only note them very briefly. The major flaw in the imperial constitution was the underlying power of the armies. In theory, the emperor was elected, but in practice, his position ultimately depended on military support. If the armies opposed an emperor, he would inevitably fall. Then the armies would have to agree to accept the new ruler. If they could not agree, then a civil war would be needed to settle the issue. This is what happened in 69.

The century between 180 and 284 revealed the seriousness of this flaw. It can be divided roughly in half. The first half from 180-235 produced several rulers who were not able to keep the loyalty of the armies. There were frequent assassinations and a couple of civil wars over the throne. During these conflicts, the armies became more aware of their power and more inclined to use it indiscriminately. Discipline declined. Then from 235 to 284, civil war raged almost continuously. During this fifty-five year period, there were more than twenty emperors at one time or another in different parts of the Empire. With the Romans fighting one another, foreign invasions increased, and in this period, the Empire came close to being destroyed altogether.

Fortunately, by the time of the civil wars, two hundred years of cultural and political integration had laid the basis for the survival of Rome despite internal unrest and anarchy. By the 200s, everyone in the Empire was Roman and wanted to see the imperial system continue. And in 284, as we will see soon, a new emperor emerged out of this mess that restored the stability of the Empire.

As the fabric of the Roman Empire began to unravel internally, external threats on the frontiers of the Empire contributed to further crises. The most important external threat was posed by a people called the Germans. The Germans are Indo-Europeans who apparently appeared in the area of the Baltic Sea around 1500 B.C. They began to migrate to the south in the late Bronze Age, and they reached the Rhine River, which actually is in today’s Germany, around 200 BC. The Romans had had dealings with the Germans from the time that Julius Caesar annexed Gaul into the Empire in the 50s B.C. Most of these dealings had been less than friendly. As we will see, the Germans were a bellicose people, like the Romans, and most relations between the two in this early period usually involved a fair amount of blood and body parts getting strewn about the landscape.

Several German tribes spread down the Danube River and reached the Black Sea around 200 AD. So, Germanic peoples slowly but surely become the neighbors of the Roman Empire to the north. The basic social unit of the Germans was the clan of some 10 to 20 families, and, for military and some other purposes, a bunch of these clans would join together to form tribes. This society was dominated by men who were the hunters and the fighters. All other physical labor – farming, cooking, etc. – was left to women or slaves, but usually the women. When the men were not hunting or fighting, they usually were drinking, eating and arguing. The main system of government was based on loyalty to a war leader called a konig. These leaders also served as a judge to settle disputes among the men. The konig had a group of very close retainers, called a comitatus who swore absolute loyalty to him. It was a custom among the Germans that the chief could not be outshone in bravery by his retainers and his retainers could not be outshone in bravery by the chief. This made a hell of a group of fighters.

On the eastern frontier of the Empire the Parthian Empire grew stronger, and ultimately developed into a very powerful state. Again, the Parthians weren’t new to the Romans. They had fought them on several occasions, and lost to them several times. In 53 B.C., Marcus Licinius Crassus decided to fight the Parthians to show that he was as good a general as Caesar. He wasn’t! Marc Anthony fought a war with Parthia in 36 B.C. and barely escaped with his life and army intact. So, Parthia had been a threat for quite some time as well. Well, anyway, in 224 A.D. the Parthian Empire was shaken up, and a new ruling family, the Sassans, took over. They began to reform the Empire, and began, once more to expand their territories and as a consequence to threaten Roman cities in the East.

The Parthians never really threatened to bring down the Roman Empire, but they were always a nuisance and, as time went on, they forced the Romans to send ever greater resources to that border that might have been used to fight the Germans.

These external problems might not have caused as much difficulty for the empire were it not for serious internal problems.

The first of these, and probably the most important, was really economic. For reasons that are still not absolutely clear, in the late 2nd century A.D., the Roman Empire began to suffer economic difficulties. The principal reason seems to have been a loss of population brought on by a recurrent series of plagues that hit the Empire. But there were other problems as well. We know that the birthrate declined over much of the Empire in the mid-200s as well, and agricultural production declined. The truth is that we know the symptoms, but we don’t really know all of the causes.

As the population declined, the demands on the population began to grow. What I mean is that after 200 A.D. the German and the Parthian threats demanded ever greater resources in terms of manpower and money to deal with them. But those demands were made in a time of population decline, which meant that there were fewer men to be drafted and fewer taxpayers to supply the resources.

But no one at that time could really appreciate the connections among all of these problems. So, the army simply demanded more and more men, not realizing that taking large numbers of men out of the work force would diminish the resources to pay for the army. And the tax collectors, under ever greater pressure to collect more taxes -- to pay the army and its support system -- could not fully appreciate that raising taxes also cut into productivity -- and, of course, took more men away from their communities, which also tended to further reduce the birthrate.

Well, as you can imagine, these conditions created a downward spiral economically and ultimately socially. In need of men and money, the military recruiters and the tax collectors would come around more often than they used to, and the people would begin to run away when they heard they were coming. That meant that when they came around, there would be fewer people from which to draw men and taxes, so the recruiters and tax collectors would have to increase their quotas on the people that stayed. That meant that more people would flee -- and so it went. Military recruiters and tax collectors would be driven away from villages or landed estates and sometimes would be expelled from cities as well. In fact, along the borders Roman citizens would sometimes welcome German tribes and invite them to settle down with them so that the Germans would protect them from the Roman military recruiters and tax collectors. You get the picture.

In addition to the economic and demographic problems, the roman empire began to suffer serious political problems.

But in 180 AD a rather vicious and incompetent man became emperor, a guy named Commodus. He was the son of one of the truly great emperors, Marcus Aurelius, which is why he became emperor. Commodus gets a lot of bad press from a lot of different interests in the Empire. He persecuted Christians, so they wrote pretty bad things about him. He liked to play gladiator, dressed like Hercules and even announced that he was an incarnation of Hercules – a god. His eccentricities made the Senatorial class despise him, so they talked a lot of trash about him as well. It would be nice to say that various groups in the Empire didn’t like him because of their own biases, but, the truth seems to be that Commodus REALLY was just no damn good.

His addiction to the games left him little time to administrate over the empire at a time when it needed a steady hand at the helm. He spent scads of money on circuses, horse races, parties, and so forth that should have been spent to defend the borders. He was basically content to let the empire fall apart as long as he could pass a good time. Senators accused him of being excessively focused on his own pleasures (how very UNROMAN). Christians accused him of being excessively cruel, especially to Christians. He was probably not much more libidinous than many Romans, and no more cruel than most. But we can fairly accuse him of being really stupid, and really self-centered, which is a pretty bad combination in a leader in what can only be described as bad times.

Anyway, Commodus was assassinated (strangled by his wrestling coach, and, no; it wasn’t an accident!) in 192, which began about a century of political disasters. This period is called the era of the Barracks Emperors, because emperors were chosen and dumped at the whim of the army. In fact, on several occasions the army auctioned the principate off to the highest bidder and split the money up among themselves. Between 235 and 284, a period of 49 years – the Empire had 20 different emperors.

But the Roman Empire was not dead yet. it still had vast resources, and strong traditions. what it needed was someone who could pull it all together again. and it looked in 284 as if it had found just such a person. this person was the emperor Diocletian. he revived the empire, at least for a while.

When Diocletian became emperor in 284, he determined that the Empire was declining primarily because of its internal and not its external problems. So, he set out to shore up the crumbling internal system and the first thing he did was give himself the power to do it. He got rid of the last remnants of the Republic and gave himself a new title of Dominus, which meant lord, or perhaps more appropriately “master” – specifically the master of a slave. Whereas Augustus had stressed the fiction that he was merely the first among equals (princeps), Diocletian based his rule on absolute power and the mystery of his person.

He was almost never seen in public. When he did appear he wore magnificent clothing and jewelry to emphasize his wealth and power. He met with and took advice from a select group of advisors called the companions. The very few who actually gained audience with the Dominus were forbidden to look him in the eye, and had to kiss the hem of his garment when they entered or left the ruler’s presence. His home was called the Sacred Palace, and he was said to be divinely appointed to rule. There was still a Senate in Rome and another was created in Byzantium, but their powers were nil; both essentially served as town councils. Diocletian, with an enormous bureaucracy was the sole ruler of the empire.

Then he set to work reforming the army. He divided the army into two branches, one to guard the frontiers against the Parthians and the Germans (400,000 foot soldiers) and the other to form a mobile force that would go to wherever it was needed the most (200,000 horse soldiers). He also restored discipline and training to make certain that this army performed well.

But he also knew that this army would need resources and that meant the collection of regular and dependable taxes. And here he introduced something we find interesting. In the old days, the Empire conducted a census every 15 years to determine tax levies.  Diocletian increased that to every five years. But to make certain that this income would be forthcoming, he tried to freeze social and economic life as it was at that time.

He declared that farmers could not sell their land and move, and, if they did, their neighbors would be responsible for paying their taxes. He decreed that civil servants could not quit, and, if they died, their children had to take their places. He decreed that businessmen could not shut down or open new businesses and could not leave the cities. He essentially issued laws that would keep everyone doing exactly the same thing forever.

And to make certain that people would stay where they were, he promised horrible punishments to anyone who disobeyed. He ordered the confiscation of property, maiming of limbs, gouging out of eyes, and branding of faces. But what this tells you is not that all of this working but just the opposite.

Diocletian abdicated in 305 A.D., but, before he did so, he tried to solve Rome's political problem at the top as well. He was not tied to the city of Rome. In fact, in the 20 years he was emperor, he visited Rome only once; the rest of the time he stayed on the move trying to make certain everything was going well. To solve Rome's political problems, he established a system of four emperors, one for the west, one for the east, and one to assist each of the others. He thought this way the succession, which had been so terrible, would be resolved. It was not, of course, because right after Diocletian stepped down, the four emperors fought among themselves for power.

The winner of this first fight for power was Constantine, and he is really important for three reasons. He continued the revival of Rome that Diocletian began. (ruled from 311 to 337 AD). He moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to his own city called Constantinople. Constantine also made Christian worship legal. Once scholars believed that Constantine had converted to Christianity, but whether this is the case is in dispute. We do know that he held several councils among Christian groups and helped them out, and he raised his children to be Christians, and that after Constantine, all of the Eastern Roman Emperors, but one, were Christians. So, maybe it really doesn’t matter so much whether he was one or not.