Posted on 07/26/2024 8:18:36 AM PDT by Starman417
Sometimes history is history, sometimes history is a harbinger and sometimes history is current events. The story of Roman Emperor Aurelian is all three…
Aurelian took power in 270 AD. The previous 35 years had been nothing short of a disaster for the Empire on a variety of fronts.
The trouble began with the (well deserved) assassination of Commodus in 192 AD. Always a force to be reckoned with, from that point forward the army required ever increasing bribes to remain loyal. Not surprisingly, the power of the army increased accordingly.
At the same time, the treasury had been reducing the amounts of silver and gold in Roman coins for centuries, creating a ticking timebomb of inflation.
What is known as the Crisis of the Third Century began in earnest in 235 AD with the assassination of Severus Alexander. At that point the Roman map was about what it had been when Augustus, died in 14 AD, basically everything surrounding the Mediterranean. When Aurelian took over in 270 the Crisis had hit its nadir and the Empire was a fractured disaster.
By the time Aurelian became Emperor at the age of 55, he had spent 35 years in the Legion. Born in modern day Serbia, Roman citizen Aurelian would join the Army at the age of 20. In short order he would prove his mettle as a brilliant calvary commander and would over his career come to command increasing numbers of men, eventually commanding the entire army under Emperor Claudius II.
Upon Claudius’s death Aurelian’s troops would proclaim him Emperor. After a short battle with Quintillus, the Senate’s choice, he would prevail and take control of the Empire. The empire he inherited was a far cry from the one Augustus had left. By 270 a huge swath of the western empire, encompassing today’s France, Netherlands, Belgium and parts of Germany and the UK had basically been carved off into a rival, the Gallic Empire. In the eastern end of the Mediterranean a crescent of land stretching from Egypt, the most valuable province in the Empire, to modern Turkey had become the Palmyrene Empire, run by one of antiquity’s most powerful women, Queen Zenobia. Making matters worse, in addition to the empire being fractured, what was left was regularly under siege from barbarians on all sides.
This is the empire Aurelian found himself leading. He began his reign by expelling various barbarian tribes from northern Italy. Next he went to the Balkans and crushed the Goths. But, there is no rest for the weary.
Over in the formerly Roman aligned Palmyra, now the Palmyrene Empire, Queen Zenobia (Acting as regent for her son, Vaballathus) was seeking to convince the Romans to recognize Palmyrene independence. To demonstrate her power she cut off the Egyptian grain supply in 272. The result was not the one she had hoped for. Aurelian made his way east and easily defeated her. The next year he would take back Egypt and it was during that period that the city of Alexandria was burned and along with it what is said to have been the greatest library in history.
With the east in order Aurelian headed for the west to crush the so called Gallic Empire and bring it back into the Roman fold. Unlike the east however, Aurelian brought the west back with relatively little bloodshed. He secretly negotiated with the “Gallic Emperor" Tetricus to defect to his side and made him a Senator. Although a battle ensued, it was short lived as no one involved was interested in fighting a battle when both leaders were on the same side.
By 274 Aurelian had reunified the Empire and had implemented policies to fix two of the most important domestic issues, the corruption at the Mint of Rome (and others) and the grain dole system. Mike Duncan, the host of the extraordinary History of Rome podcast calls Aurelian the Sandy Kofax of the Roman Empire, not the longest reigning emperor, but the most dominant while he was there. For the five years Aurelian ruled, he was virtually unstoppable.
But as a man, he was stoppable. In one of the great ironies in world history, Aurelian was assassinated in 275 by officers of his Pretorian Guard. Despite the fact that the Guard’s raison d'être is to actually protect the emperor, this murder wasn’t particularly unusual, but in this case, it was the result of a lie. Aurelian was a strict disciplinarian and one of his secretaries worried he’d be punished for telling a minor lie. He thus forged a document claiming Aurelian was planning to execute a number of his officers. Fearing for their lives these “accused” officers killed Aurelian. They soon discovered they were victims of a ruse and killed the secretary, and very possibly met similar fates themselves.
So, we have an empire that’s coming apart at the seams, where government employees are corrupt and are demanding more and more money and power be handed to them. We have an empire where inflation is rampant and the citizens are addicted to government giveaways. We have an empire whose borders are being breached by countless invaders. Then a competent man steps in to take control and try to fix the problems. He begins to right the ship, and he’s killed by corrupt officials.
Much of this kind of sounds like America today.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ...
BTTT
His birthplace was in Dacia Ripensis, but as Emperor he had to abandon the territory. He was 'Restitutor Orbis' The Restorer of the Roman Empire and accomplished a lot in a short time, but he had an employee who (it has been said) was embezzling who thought he was about to be caught, and through fraud induced some officers to ambush and kill the emperor. Gosh, I'm glad that kind of thing doesn't happen in our political system.
The rest of the keyword, sorted:
It’s because of you that my reading list keeps growing exponentially.
LOL! I’ve got more time now, and among the many plans is to get the books out, shelved, organized. I’m not positive there’s space around here. Oh, and best of all, I swung into a bookstore for the first time in almost a year and picked up four new ones. I spend about 25 minutes a month reading now. I really need everything to be on audiobook...
I am, and have always been a book worm. Can’t retain much anymore, though.
Nice thing is, we’ll never run out of stuff to read. :^)
I once bought the same book twice.
I’ve done that recently, because I was trying to re-read one or look up something, and, well, I’m not a good housekeeper.
Bttt.
5.56mm
I’ve read only one of his works. You can probably guess which one.
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