(12) GALLIENUS –
NON-DYNASTIC / CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY
(253-268 AD: 15 YEARS – WESTERN EMPIRE AS CO-EMPEROR, THEN WHOLE EMPIRE)

 

“Don’t push me cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under”

That’s right – Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s The Message pretty much sums up the reign of Gallienus. One can easily imagine him rapping it, albeit with lyrics more contemporary to Rome – perhaps along the lines of Alemanni in the alley with a baseball bat.

Gallienus was a good emperor. It was just that he was faced with overwhelming circumstances that he largely inherited from his predecessors, none other than the height of the Crisis of the Third Century.

To quote Spectrum who similarly ranks him as a good emperor –
“He just happened to be caught up in a time when being good wasn’t enough. Gallienus is pretty much the definition of ‘Oh God, everything’s burning, everything’s on fire, and I’m just trying not to lose it!’…disease rampant, endless barbarian invasions, entire provinces seceding, and God knows how many usurpers. Under these circumstances, it’s a miracle he lasted fifteen years in power.”

Like Constantius II, he had a negative or mixed reputation, particularly among the Roman historians (although modern historians see him in a more positive light), hence my entry for him as the matching Crisis of the Third Century counterpart to Constantius – similarly attempting to hold the empire together against usurpers, civil war, and Germanic barbarian tribes, all while waging war with the Persian Sassanid empire in the east.

Of course, Constantius was more successful in that he held the empire together over a longer reign, but he faced less overwhelming circumstances or threats – and at fifteen years, Gallienus had the longest reign of any emperor during the Crisis of the Third Century, indeed one that compares quite well even to the reigns of other good emperors in better circumstances.

One could also propose other counterparts to Gallienus – Stilicho and Majorian also come to mind, with more similar fates to that of Gallienus. Indeed, in his Barbarians at the Gates episode, Dovahhatty has Stilicho sigh that he’s “feeling like Gallienus right now” with the crises faced by him.

I’ve seen a quip that Gallienus held the line, Claudius Gothicus turned the tide, and Aurelian beat the odds – a quip with which I tend to agree. On the other hand, one might snort – some line! He lost two thirds of the empire!

Two thirds that is, approximately speaking, with one third being the Gallic Empire that seceded in the west, and the other being the Palmyrene Empire that seceded in the east. However the latter is somewhat unfair to Gallienus. They may have been effectively independent, but during his reign the Palmyrenes were still loyal to Rome under their ruler Odaenathus and more limited in size. It was only after the death of Odaenathus – and Gallienus himself – that it became openly defiant under Zenobia and conquered Roman provinces, notably Egypt. Furthermore, Gallienus had little choice but to rely on the Palmyrenes to fight the Sassanid Persians after the Sassanids defeated and captured his father (and his co-emperor in the eastern empire). And choice or not, it seems a reasonable strategy, deflecting potential rebellion to your own defence (and effectively tallying up the losses on both sides as your wins) – and what’s more, it worked, defending the eastern provinces of the empire during his reign.

It was more his failure to win back the secession of the Gallic Empire which contributed to his negative reputation among Roman historians – with the Historia Augusta in particular implausibly presenting “him as a lover of luxury, who dressed in purple, sprinkled gold dust in his hair, and built castles of apples”.

Yes – he failed to win back the Gallic Empire led by the usurper Postumus, but that’s a combination of bad lack as well as that he had to deal with too many other usurpers and barbarian invasions at the same time. There’s a whole Wikipedia article titled Gallienus usurpers – and those are the ones we know about from a patchy historical record. Gallienus was the very definition of someone fighting on too many fronts against too many enemies with too few allies and too few forces – that last arising from an empire depleted in population and manpower by the Plague of Cyprian which raged during his reign.

I would venture to say that even the best emperors would have been hard pressed in those circumstances (as indeed were Claudius Gothicus and Aurelian after him) and all but a good emperor would have been completely overwhelmed.

Gallienus acceded to the throne as co-emperor of his father, effectively dividing rule of the western and eastern halves of the empire between them, with his father in the eastern empire waging war against the Sassanid Persians.

As it was, Gallienus successfully defended the Rhine and Danube borders from about 253 to 258, defeated the usurper Ingenuus in the Balkans, defeated an invasion of Italy to the outskirts of Rome itself by Alemanni and other Germanic tribes (safeguarding the empire from the Alemanni for another ten years), dealt with a Frankish invasion of Gaul and Hispania, faced the usurper Regalinus in the Balkans, became sole emperor when a Sassanid Persian invasion defeated and captured his father, dealt with the usurper Macrianus in the east, fought inconclusively against the Gallic Empire of the usurper Postumus, dealt with the usurper Aemilianus in Egypt, fought an invasion of the Balkans by Goths and other Germanic tribes, and fought the usurper Aureolus in Italy after Aureolus betrayed him and defected to Postumus.

And so it goes. More substantially, Gallienus is credited with military reforms to create a core of cavalry that could quickly respond to threats anywhere within the empire – cavalry that included as its commanders Claudius Gothicus and Aurelian, as well as being the impetus behind the Illyrian emperors who saved the empire.

In the end, however, it was too much like a jungle and Gallienus did indeed go under, assassinated by his troops as he besieged the usurper Aurelous in Italy.

 

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT?

 

I’m again pleased Dovahhatty bucked the classical criticisms of Gallienus to depict him as a chad, holding the line even as he is beleaguered by hostile forces on all sides – which as I noted he had Stilicho (aptly) invoke later. The violet eyes are a nice touch – inherited from his father Valerian, in turn a play on the Valyrian family of the Targaryens in Game of Thrones (or more precisely Song of Ice and Fire).

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
EMPIRE SAVER? Well perhaps empire preserver would be a better ranking, since he held the line for his successors to save it.

 

(11) CONSTANTIUS II –
CONSTANTINIAN DYNASTY (EASTERN EMPIRE THEN WHOLE EMPIRE)
(337 – 361 AD: 24 YEARS 1 MONTH 25 DAYS)

 

And now we come to some special mention matched pairings, in which one emperor is similar to or echoed by another emperor in the Crisis of the Third Century. Also special mentions that while good, drop down a tier from top-tier to high-tier – often coinciding with a mixed or even negative reputation.

For Constantius II, I guess there was something to the name – there were three emperors with the name and they were all pretty decent. Granted, Constantius II wasn’t as good as the other two, which included his namesake grandfather and first Constantius. For that matter he wasn’t as good as his father Constantine the Great, although he was the only one of Constantine’s three sons worth a damn as emperor.

Constantius II has a mixed reputation but deserves his place among the good emperors for holding the empire together for almost two and a half decades, mostly in its eastern provinces but also the whole empire for about a third of his reign – despite his brothers fighting each other, usurpers, civil war, and Germanic barbarian tribes, all while waging war with the Persian Sassanid empire for most of his reign.

He and his brothers had succeeded their father as emperor, with Constantius reigning over the eastern third of the empire while his brothers Constantine II and Constans reigned over the western and middle thirds respectively. Constantius had played the leading role in doing the dirty work for their uncontested succession – the massacre of the princes, eliminating the other adult male members of the family as rivals to that succession.

His attention as eastern emperor was preoccupied foremost with constant warfare with the Persian Sassanids rather than the shenanigans of his brothers – Constantine II invaded Italy to usurp Constans but was defeated by Constans’s troops and killed instead, leaving only the two brothers maintaining an uneasy peace with each other until Constans was successfully usurped by the general Magnentius.

Constantius then fought one of Rome’s costliest civil wars, the civil war of 350-353 AD against Magnentius, defeating him at the decisive battle of Mursa Major in 351 AD, albeit the war dragged on until the final battle of Mons Seleucis in 353 AD. The battle of Mursa was one of the bloodiest battles in Roman history, bearing in mind that as a civil war the Romans lost soldiers on both sides. Contemporary writers lamented its losses as a disaster for the empire – with Eutropius opining those losses could have won triumphs from foreign wars and brought peace, while Zosimus believed they left the army so weakened that it could not counter barbarian incursions. Even modern academics have labelled the battle a pyrrhic victory for Constantius.

While perhaps an apt observation for civil war later that century and battles such as the Battle of Frigidus in 394 AD, it does seem overstated for Constantius – given that he successfully defeated the Alamanni at the Rhine frontier and the Quadi and Sarmatians across the Danube before having to turn his attention back to the east against a renewed Sassanid Persian threat. And for that matter, his junior emperor Julian was also able not only to defend the western empire but campaign across the Rhine, while Valentinian was able to robustly defend and campaign across the Rhine and Danube frontiers in his reign from 363 to 374 AD.

This negative observation of the civil war is mirrored by Wikipedia stating that Constantius was “unwilling to accept Magnentius as co-ruler”, an easy observation in hindsight, but it is difficult to see what else Constantius could have done or how his own position could have been secure if he had accepted Magnentius’ usurpation of his brother – and he demonstrated he was willing and able to compromise with usurpers where circumstances permitted, cutting a deal with another usurper Vetrantio (whose usurpation had effectively blocked further usurpation by Magnentius).

Anyway, his victory in the civil war left him sole ruler of the empire, although he appointed junior members of the far flung Constantinian family tree – whom had been children at the time of the massacre of the princes and thus avoided the purge – as junior emperor or caesar. Firstly Constantius Gallus in the eastern empire, who had to be, shall we say, written off, and then Julian in the western empire, who proved far more capable. Indeed, too capable, as civil war loomed between them but was fortunately averted when Constantius became gravely ill, naming Julian as his successor for the whole empire before he died.

 

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT?

 

I was pleased to see Dovahhatty did right by Constantius II, the only one of Constantine’s three sons inheriting the empire to be depicted as a chad. (We’ve seen Constantine III depicted as a virgin in my Top 10 Worst Roman Emperors – and Constans will be featured later). He also captured something of the weariness of Constantius II facing the challenges of the reign – as in the screenshot in my featured image. Youtuber Spectrum similarly ranked Constantius II among his ten most underrated emperors.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
EMPIRE SAVER