Empire in Chapters: The Rise and Fall of Rome, One Story at a Time

In the year 235 AD, the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus was murdered by his own troops near modern-day Mainz, Germany. In our last episode, we talked about the idea of an empire in chapters, a series of distinct acts in a grand historical play. This assassination wasn't just the end of a chapter; it was the moment someone threw the book into the fire. It kicked off a fifty-year period of such relentless, systemic violence that we now call it, simply, the Crisis of the Third Century. Looking back, with all the benefits of hindsight, the cracks had been showing for a long time.

The Severan dynasty, which ended with Alexander, had made a fatal bargain. They had bought the army’s loyalty with pay raises and promotions, effectively telling the legions, "You are the most important part of this state." And the army learned that lesson very, very well. When Alexander Severus tried to use diplomacy with Germanic tribes instead of fighting them—and paying them—his soldiers decided they’d rather have an emperor who understood their business. So they killed him and his mother, and proclaimed a giant of a man, a career soldier named Maximinus Thrax, as the new emperor.

Maximinus was the first of what we call the "barracks emperors." Men who came from the provinces, who rose through the military ranks, and who seized power with the backing of their legions, not the Senate in Rome. And once that precedent was set… the floodgates opened. For the next fifty years, to be the Emperor of Rome was one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. At least twenty-six men claimed the title, and nearly all of them died violently. Assassinated by their own guards, killed in battle against a rival claimant, or murdered by a mob.

The average reign was about two years. Think about that. The institution that was meant to provide stability for half a million square miles was in a constant state of bloody turnover. The year 238 alone saw six different recognized emperors. Six. It began with a tax revolt in North Africa that proclaimed the elderly governor Gordian the First and his son as co-emperors. They lasted twenty-one days before being defeated and killing themselves. The Senate, now terrified of Maximinus Thrax, appointed two of their own, Pupienus and Balbinus.

The people of Rome rioted, demanding the grandson of Gordian be elevated, so they made a thirteen-year-old boy, Gordian the Third, a co-emperor as well. Then Maximinus marched on Italy, was assassinated by his own troops at the siege of Aquileia. Pupienus and Balbinus, left alone in the palace, were dragged from their thrones and murdered by the Praetorian Guard, who then formally acclaimed the boy, Gordian the Third, as the sole ruler. That was a few months in one year. Now imagine that level of instability, stretched over five decades.

And we’ve seen this pattern before, haven’t we? Where the kingmakers become the kings. The Praetorian Guard had done it before, after the death of Caligula, and again after Nero. The year 69 AD was the Year of the Four Emperors, a brief, sharp civil war before the Flavian dynasty took over. The structural weakness was always there: what happens when the emperor’s bodyguards, or his best generals, realize they hold all the real power? But the Crisis of the Third Century was different. It was the Year of the Four Emperors stretched out into a fifty-year nightmare.

The analogy breaks down in its sheer scale and persistence. This wasn't just a political crisis; it was a crisis of the entire system. While the emperors were busy killing each other, two other things were happening. First, the economy was collapsing. To pay the soldiers who kept them in power, emperors started debasing the currency. They minted more and more coins, but with less and less precious metal. The denarius, the backbone of Roman commerce, which had been about ninety percent pure silver under Nero, was maybe fifty percent silver under the Severans.

By the height of the crisis, the silver content dropped to less than five percent. It was basically a copper coin with a silver wash. The result was runaway hyperinflation. Prices for wheat could increase a hundredfold in a generation. People stopped trusting money. The vast, interconnected Roman economy began to grind to a halt, reverting to local barter. Second, the borders were collapsing. Seeing the chaos within, Rome’s enemies pushed in from all sides. Germanic tribes—the Goths, the Franks, the Alamanni—poured across the Rhine and Danube rivers, raiding deep into Gaul, the Balkans, and even Italy itself.

In the East, a new and aggressive Persian dynasty, the Sassanians, arose. In 260 AD, in one of the most humiliating moments in Roman history, the Emperor Valerian was captured in battle by the Sassanian king, Shapur the First. Valerian died in captivity. Legend says Shapur used the defeated emperor as a human footstool to mount his horse. The capture of an emperor, the worthlessness of the currency, the constant civil war… it’s a miracle the whole thing didn’t just disintegrate. And for a while, it did. In the 260s, the Roman Empire broke into three pieces.

In the West, the provinces of Gaul, Britain, and Spain broke away to form the Gallic Empire. In the East, the oasis city of Palmyra, under its brilliant queen Zenobia, took control of Egypt and much of Asia Minor, forming the Palmyrene Empire. The central Roman state was left with just Italy, North Africa, and the battered Balkans. From the outside, it looked like the end. This wasn't a chapter in the story of an empire; it was the epilogue. And this is where the retrospective gets strange. Because the outcome was not collapse.

The very system that produced the chaos… the brutal, meritocratic military machine that chewed through emperors… was also the system that finally promoted the one man capable of ending it. His name was Aurelian. Aurelian was a career soldier from the Balkans, one of the provinces that had borne the brunt of the barbarian invasions. He was exactly the kind of man the crisis had been producing for fifty years: tough, ruthless, and entirely a product of the military. He became emperor in 270 AD. The empire he inherited was a wreck.

It was shattered. And in five years, he put it back together. First, he abandoned the province of Dacia, north of the Danube, pulling the border back to the river. It was a pragmatic retreat, the first time Rome had ever permanently given up a major province. He used those troops to defeat waves of Vandals, Jutes, and Goths. Then he turned his attention to the breakaway empires. In 272, he marched east, defeated Zenobia’s armies, and captured Palmyra. He brought the Queen of Palmyra back to Rome and had her walk in his triumphal parade, bound in golden chains.

Then he turned west. In 274, he defeated the Gallic Empire’s army in a massive battle in northern Gaul. In less than five years, the empire was one again. The Senate gave him a title: Restitutor Orbis. The Restorer of the World. Aurelian was the climax of the crisis. He was the cure produced by the disease itself. The system of military usurpation was designed to find the strongest, most ruthless commander. For fifty years, that just meant more civil war. But eventually, the system found a man so strong, so ruthless, that he could beat everyone else and end the game.

He began reforming the currency, he built new walls around the city of Rome—walls that are still standing today—and he re-established the authority of the central state. He was, of course, assassinated by his own officers in 275, based on a forged document. The habit was hard to break. But his work held. The restoration he began was completed by a successor, Diocletian, who would utterly transform the Roman state. The crisis was over. But the empire that emerged from it was a different entity. The old Rome of the Principate, where the emperor was the "first citizen" and ruled with the theoretical consent of the Senate, was dead.

In its place rose the Dominate. The emperor was now Dominus, Lord and Master. An absolute, divine monarch in the style of the Persian court. The government became more bureaucratic, the military larger, the society more rigid, and the taxes more crushing. This is what the retrospective shows us. The crisis wasn't just a string of unfortunate events. It was a crucible. It burned away the fictions of the old Republic that Augustus had so carefully preserved. It burned away the idea of a civilian-led state. To survive the existential threat of collapse, Rome had to become something else.

It had to become more autocratic, more militarized, more brutal. It had to adopt the very top-down, absolute power structures of the enemies it was fighting, like the Sassanians. They saved the empire. There’s no question about that. Aurelian and Diocletian prevented a total collapse. But the cost was the end of the world as they knew it. The crisis taught Rome a terrible lesson: that survival can cost you everything you thought you were fighting to save.