The Empire Devours Itself

In 235 the murder of the young emperor Severus Alexander by his own soldiers ended the last dynasty and opened fifty years of chaos. The killers raised in his place a giant Thracian officer risen from the ranks, Maximinus Thrax — the first of the 'soldier-emperors,' men who owed their throne not to birth or the Senate but to the swords of the legions. And what the swords gave, the swords could take away.

The result was a half-century of almost unbroken civil war. Some twenty-six men would claim the imperial title in fifty years, and the great majority were murdered — by rivals, by usurpers, or by their own troops, who learned that they could sell the empire to the highest bidder and kill any emperor who displeased them. In 238 alone, the 'Year of the Six Emperors,' six men claimed the purple and most died violently within months.

Legitimacy dissolved. No emperor could trust his own army; none could stay in one place long enough to govern, for a rebellion always flared somewhere. And every legion pulled from the frontier to fight a civil war left the borders open. The Rhine, the Danube, and the eastern frontier all began to give way — and beyond them, Rome's enemies were gathering, sensing that the great empire was tearing itself apart from within. The full storm was about to break.