Gordian III and Severus Alexander in Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome: Crisis of the Third Century & Severan Dynasty respectively
(12) GORDIAN III & SEVERUS ALEXANDER
(GORDIAN III – CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY 238 – 244 AD: 5 YEARS 6 MONTHS)
(SEVERUS ALEXANDER – SEVERAN DYNASTY 222 – 235 AD: 13 YEARS 8 DAYS)
And now we come to two similar emperors, both effectively child emperors – indeed the first and second youngest sole emperors of a united empire respectively – puppeted by their mothers.
Gordian III was the weaker of the two. I mean, it was not exactly auspicious that he was chosen for one of Rome’s lamest “dynasties” – the so-called Gordian dynasty, as grandson of Gordian I and nephew of Gordian II, through his mother Gordiana.
You may recall the two preceding Gordians, father and son Gordian I and Gordian II, were proclaimed emperors by a mob in the province of Africa – a proclamation welcomed by the Senate desperate to put any imperial candidate between themselves and the wrath of Emperor Maximinus Thrax.
That left the Senate empty-handed when both Gordians were killed – Gordian I by his own hand – after the mob militia commanded by Gordian II was crushed by the professional military force of the only actual legion in the region, commanded by the governor of the neighboring province loyal to Thrax.
The Senate proclaimed two more emperors from their own members – Pupienus and Balbinus – to throw against Thrax, but that didn’t help as those two senators weren’t exactly popular. So they hit upon proclaiming as emperor the family member of those imperial candidates who had been popular with a mob. Enter Gordian III, under the watchful gaze of his mother Gordiana – uncannily echoing the end of the Severan dynasty with Severus Alexander before him.
So imagine everyone’s surprise – probably most of all that of Gordian himself – when Gordian found himself the sole emperor of the whole empire at the age of thirteen years, the youngest emperor to do so. Luckily for Pupienus and Balbinus, Thrax was killed by a mutiny of his own troops, but that luck was short-lived as they were then killed by the Praetorian Guard – leaving Gordian III as sole emperor.
And the young emperor didn’t have it easy as that’s when the Crisis of the Third Century really started, well, crisis-ing. There were severe earthquakes, the empire’s frontiers weakened against the Germanic tribes at the Rhine and the Danube, and worst of all, the Persians attacked the eastern provinces. And not those pansy Parthians either – these were the new and more dangerous Sassanids who had overthrown the Parthians, led by Shapur I.
Gordian I didn’t do too badly, mainly through his policy of clinging on desperately to Timesitheius, his praetorian prefect and new father-in-law, as Timesitheius became the de facto ruler of the empire – and a good one at that, leading a successful campaign against the Sassanids driving them back over the Euphrates into Persia. Gordian even joined the army and was preparing for an invasion of Sassanid Persia.
So the wheels came off Gordian’s reign when Timesitheius died in unclear circumstances. Gordian celebrated the success of the first campaign with a triumph and boasted of it to the Senate, so there was really nothing for it but to follow it up with a second campaign.
That went as well as you might expect. Actually, in fairness, it started much better than you might expect, with the Sassanids fighting back to halt the Roman advance to their capital Ctesiphon, but then it turned out as you might expect. Gordian was killed, possibly in a plot by his new praetorian prefect, Philip the Arab, or possibly in a major Roman defeat in battle – certainly something in the nature of defeat is suggested by the “shameful” peace with the Sassanids negotiated by Philip as Gordian’s successor, although it was not as bad as all that as Philip did manage to retain some of the territory taken by Timesitheus.
Gordian III as child puppet emperor for his mother Gordiana echoed Severus Alexander only a few years before him. Severus Alexander was not particularly bad, just weak, but his weakness was ground zero for the Crisis of the Third Century.
The historian Herodian portrayed him as a mother’s boy, which is unfair – he was more her puppet, as well as that of his grandmother Julia Maesa, who used him as the instrument of her coup against his predecessor and cousin, Elagabalus. He then ascended the imperial throne as a teenager and never outgrew his awkward teenage phase – or his reliance on his mother, Julia Mamaea.
Similarly to Gordian III relying on Timesitheius as the de facto ruler of the emperor, Severus Alexander didn’t do too badly in the domestic management of the empire, helped by capable advisors such as Ulpian or Cassius Dio. As usual for weak emperors, he came undone in the management of the empire’s military and foreign policy, starting with the rise of the new Sassanid empire in Persian (from the collapse of the preceding Parthian empire). Again in fairness, the Sassanids caused problems for many Roman emperors over the next four centuries or so.
Alexander was no Alexander the Great. He did respond with a threefold invasion of Persia, leading the main army in the centre while two other armies advanced to the north and south. He was widely perceived to have bugged out and retreated from the campaign – certainly, he did the latter after indecisive results (although his army had retaken some of Mesopotamia), with his army “wracked by indiscipline and disease”. The southern army was surrounded and destroyed by Sassanid horse-archers. The northern army did have some success, but suffered losses in that bane of armies – retreating in winter “due to a failure through incompetence to establish adequate supply lines”.
Despite the relative failure of his Persian campaign (and the mutiny of a legion which proclaimed a short-lived usurper as emperor), Alexander celebrated a triumph in Rome, which did not improve his army’s mood.
After Persia, trouble came from that usual other source – Germanic tribes crossing the Rhine and Danube. So Alexander, accompanied of course by his mother, went to the front line at the Rhine – but once there, took the advice of his mother to not get involved in battle, and worse, just buy the Germanic tribes off.
Spending money in tribute or other forms protection money to pay off adversaries from attacking imperial territory or avoid war was not unprecedented for the Roman empire, albeit more so in the later empire, and was probably not a bad option to literally buy time. Here it had the unfortunate appearance of paying the Germans rather than the legions, since Alexander was perceived to have skimped on the latter – “the emperor’s miserliness (partly the result of his mother’s greed)”.
And so Alexander and his mother found themselves overthrown and assassinated by what we would call a military coup – the last of the Severan dynasty and “the first emperor to be overthrown by military discontent on a wide scale”, something that would become depressingly familiar in the Crisis of the Third Century it kicked off.
As perYoutuber Spectrum, “he could have turned out into a good emperor but unfortunately his mother took too long to die”. Of the two emperors, he was clearly better or less weak than Gordian III, consistent with a longer reign.
DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT?
Yet two more emperors destined for wojak depiction, although it always amuses me that child wojaks never actually look younger, just older. Dovahhatty does right with deliberately parallel depictions of the two wojak emperors and their wojak mothers.
RATING: 2 STAR**
D-TIER (LOW TIER)
EMPIRE BREAKERS
