Tag Archives: Rome

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (5) Palmyrene Empire

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Palmyrene Empire in 271 AD by Ennomus – Wikipedia “Palmyrene Empire” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(5) PALMYRENE EMPIRE
(270-273 AD)

 

And now we come to the other usurper state during the Crisis of the Third Century when the Roman Empire split into three, with two breakaway empires at either end of it, west and east.

The Palmyrene empire was the more dangerous of the two, since it seized most of the wealthier eastern part of the empire, including the empire’s breadbasket in Egypt.

Ironically, the Palmyrene empire originated from the city of Palmyra (now in modern Syria) which while styling itself as a kingdom loyally defended the eastern borders of the Roman Empire from the Sassanid Persians, under its king Odaenathus, who defeated the Persians in 260 AD.

For his loyalty to and defense of the Roman Empire, he was rewarded with the position of Governor of the East, holding the highest political and military authority in the region, superseding that of the Roman provincial governors.

Unfortunately, he and his son were assassinated, so the Palmyrene kingdom now came under the control of its queen, widow of Odaenathus – one of those femme fatale figures to the empire that so alarmed Rome like Cleopatra before her, Zenobia.

Although it’s somewhat sad that Cleopatra eclipses Zenobia in popular imagination, since the shade of Cleopatra wishes she was Zenobia – Zenobia did what Cleopatra could only dream of doing, forge an eastern empire as a genuine rival to Rome.

Zenobia trod lightly at first, but her Palmyrene kingdom slowly transformed into the Palmyrene empire in open rebellion against the Roman Empire and conquering much of the latter’s eastern territory from 270 AD, although historians debate to what extent that rebellion was aimed at Palmyrene independence or more ambitiously at the imperial throne in Rome itself.

And she might have succeeded, certainly in the former and perhaps even the latter, had she not been opposed by the legendary restorer of the world himself, Emperor Aurelian, who made short work of her Palmyrene Empire in 272, as well as a brief revival of its rebellion under her successors in 273

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (4) Gallic Empire

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(4) GALLIC EMPIRE

(260 – 274 AD)

 

And now we start to dip beneath the surface of the Roman Empire iceberg, with one of two breakaway states as the Roman Empire broke into three parts during the Crisis of the Third Century – in the western part of the Roman Empire as the Palmyrene Empire took over the eastern part.

The Gallic Empire – the name given to it by modern historiography – was established by a Roman commander (of German origin) Postumus in 260 in the wake of barbarian invasions of Gaul and instability in Rome. At its height it included Roman territories in Germania, Gaul, Britannia and Hispania.

There followed a series of contenders for it, resulting in and becoming more heated after Postumus’ assassination in 269, albeit with the ’empire’ losing much of its territory in the process (particularly Hispania) – before a certain restorer of the world, Emperor Aurelian, took all of it back at the Battle of Chalons in 274, because he was just that good.

In fairness to the Gallic Empire, they largely kept to themselves as a de facto separate state, not attempting to invade Italy or otherwise seize the central Roman administrative apparatus.

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (3) Western Roman Empire

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The Western Roman Empire in 400 AD by Shuaaa2 for Wikipedia “Western Roman Empire” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

 

(3) WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE

(395 – 476 AD)

 

That “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.

We’re still at the surface of the Roman Empire iceberg – in the fundamental continuity from the classical Roman Empire, after its formal division into de facto separate eastern and western empires in 395 AD (although they still saw themselves as the one empire) – with the latter pretty much falling stillborn from that division, somehow limping through the 81 years of its sorry existence until the barbarians clubbed it on the head and put it out of its misery.

We’re a long way from the Rome that made the Mediterranean their Mare Nostrum, along with making everything else part of their Pax Romana. Hell, Rome wasn’t even the capital of the western empire from 402 AD – that was Ravenna and historians should really call it the Ravennan empire rather than add insult to the injury to the western empire’s ignominious decline.

Indeed, there’s been a video meme to this effect – with Ryan Gosling’s sad sack of a beaten character from Blade Runner 2049 standing in for the western empire, in contrast to Ryan Gosling’s exuberant showboating Ken from the Barbie film standing in for the eastern empire.

Or for that matter, a meme of that heartfelt scene from Avengers: Endgame with Thor back from the future seeing his mother one last time in the past – Freya as the Roman empire in the 2nd century saying sadly to Thor as the Roman empire from the 5th century “The future has not been kind to you, has it?”

I exaggerate for rhetorical effect, but it’s not hard to see the eastern empire abandoning the western empire as a hopelessly lost cause or an act of cutthroat triage, much like the western empire then did with Britain.

And perhaps I exaggerate the plight of the western empire, but not by much. While I tend to see the western Roman empire as doomed with just too many things coming together against it – not least too many barbarians – it might have at least endured longer or better than it did, but for two of the worst emperors in Roman history, compounded by the length of their reigns somehow enduring for most of it, nearly 60 years or so between them.

I am of course talking about Emperors Honorius and Valentinian III, although they might as well have been the same emperor, given how uncannily similar they were – with each of them betraying the loyal subordinate who was the one holding things together and stabbing that man in the back, Stilicho for Honorius and Aetius for Valentinian III (literally for the stabbing in the back part), each with one of the two notorious sacks of Rome following shortly afterwards, the Visigoths for Honorius and the Vandals for Valentinian III.

On the other hand, there was also Emperor Majorian reigning from 457 to 461 AD – the empire’s last best hope for someone like Aurelian two centuries earlier to pull it out of its spiral of doom, as Majorian defeated all of Rome’s enemies he fought even in that twilight of the empire, until he too was betrayed and assassinated. After that, it was all downhill into the Dark Age, until the last western emperor was deposed in 476 AD.

Yet for all that, it still is what I see as the Roman Empire proper, even if much diminished. And as I observed in my Top 10 Empires, I just have a particular interest in empires holding the line against all odds as they decline and fall. And let’s face it – even as a shadow of its former self, I still see it as being able to take any of the others below it in the top ten, hence the ranking.

 

 

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (2) Eastern Roman Empire

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The eastern Roman empire at its greatest extent in 555 AD under Justinian the Great – map by Tataryn for Wikipedia “Byzantine Empire” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

(2) EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE / BYZANTINE EMPIRE

(330 / 393 – 1453 AD)

 

We’re still well above the surface of the Roman Empire iceberg here – in the fundamental continuity of the Roman Empire from its classical empire to its eastern empire that endured for over a millennium after the fall of its western half. Historiographical convention has snubbed it as the Byzantine Empire, so as to avoid acknowledging it as the glorious continuation of the Roman Empire – it just stayed more to the east and became more Greek after a certain point. But for familiarity with that convention and for convenience (as it’s shorter), I’ll keep using Byzantine rather than eastern Roman Empire.

There seems to be two recurring arguments among Roman history enthusiasts – whether one ranks the Roman Republic over the Roman Empire, and whether one ranks the Byzantine Empire over the Roman Empire. I’ll have a look at the former in my special mentions but there’s a solid argument to be made for ranking the Byzantine Empire over the classical Roman Empire.

Sure, the Byzantine Empire wasn’t as big as the Roman Empire. After its relatively brief glory days as half the former Roman Empire – or its briefer and even more glorious days when it took a damn good swing at reclaiming the western half under Emperor Justinian – it spent most of its time at about a quarter the Roman Empire. At best, that is – because it spent substantial amounts of time as not much more than its capital in Constantinople.

But for sheer endurance, it has to take the title from the Roman Empire, lasting for a millennium past the fall of the western half, including feats of rebounding from defeats that bordered on resurrection. More like Lazarus Empire, amirite?

And that endurance and those feats were achieved against a more formidable and seemingly eternal encirclement by enemies, from west and east, by land and sea – from which the Byzantines could rarely catch a break, except by soundly defeating one or more of those enemies, and usually not even then.

In the end however, the empire suffered one defeat too many – wounded, fatally as it turned out, from the Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople in 1204, although it resurrected itself even from that for two centuries. Alas, it simply lacked the scale of time or resources to see it through, particularly against a rising rival empire in its prime – the Ottoman Empire, which finally conquered Constantinople in 1453.

 

 

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (1) Roman Empire

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The Roman Empire under Trajan 117 AD – by Tataryn for Wikipedia “Roman Empire” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

(1) ROMAN EMPIRE

(27 BC – 330 / 395 / 476 AD)

There it is – Roman Empire original recipe. Why’d you have to go and mess with the classics?

But of course you must have been expecting this – that in a list of Top 10 Roman Empires, THE Roman Empire would rank on top. By Roman Empire, I mean the ‘classical’ Roman Empire – what most people think of as the Roman Empire.

Of course, it’s not the whole of the Roman Empire – as I did for the Roman Empire in top spot in my Top 10 Empires, spanning from the legendary founding of Rome to the fall of Constantinople. However, as I stated in my introduction, this top ten is essentially my Roman Empire iceberg, in which I look at different permutations of the empire beneath the surface of that span or fundamental continuity, becoming more remote or wild breakaway or vestigial states the deeper we go.

Usually the classical Roman Empire is at least what historians have termed the Principate or the empire founded by Augustus from the Roman Republic in 27 BC, essentially by making as little fuss as possible about it being an empire with himself as emperor, although his successors made a lot more fuss about it. Generally, it also extends to what historians term the Dominate, the empire as reformed by Diocletian, anywhere from the start of his reign in 284 AD onwards.

As to where it ends, there are a number of points of demarcation, typically from the division of empire into its western and eastern imperial halves – as defined by Constantine founding Constantinople as the capital of the eastern empire in 330 AD, more usually when the division of imperial administration became permanent in 395 AD, or when the western empire fell (or more precisely, the last western emperor was deposed) in 476 AD. Of course, one can simply continue on with the eastern Roman empire to its fall in 1453, or perhaps some earlier point to mark the transition of the empire from ‘classical Roman empire’ to ‘medieval Greek empire’, typically either the end of the reign of Justinian in 565 AD or that of Heraclius in 641 AD.

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires

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A Roman Legion (from Trajan’s Column), from “Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae” (The Mirror of Roman Magnificence) – public domain image, Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Roma Eterna!

At the time of writing this, a meme from social media has come to the attention of mainstream media that men think about the Roman Empire a lot (from the viral trend of asking how often they did).

It reminds me of that old anecdote (of dubious authenticity) that the average male thinks of sex one in every seven seconds, which always begged the question to me of what all those other males were thinking about in those other seconds. Well, I guess we know the answer now.

So given its enduring topicality, I thought I’d compile my Top 10 Roman Empires.

Wait – what? Top 10 Roman…Empires? Plural?! Wasn’t there only the one Roman Empire?

Well, yes – except perhaps when there wasn’t.

My tongue is (mostly) in my cheek, but there has been a tendency to demarcate the Roman Empire into different parts, even while maintaining the fundamental continuity between those parts.

The foremost demarcation is the division of the Roman Empire into its western and eastern halves, reflecting the empire’s own division of imperial administration, with the latter enduring for a millennium after the fall of the former but which was named retrospectively by historiographical convention as the Byzantine Empire to distinguish it from being the direct continuation of the Roman Empire.

For that matter, the ‘classical’ Roman Empire is sometimes demarcated into two parts, the Principate to describe the empire instituted by Augustus in 27 BC, and the Dominate to describe the empire as reformed under Diocletian in 284 AD – the latter ultimately overlapping with the division of imperial administration into western and eastern halves.

The eastern Roman Empire is similarly often demarcated into two parts – its original ‘Latin’ empire (literally by its official imperial language) and its transition to its ‘Greek’ empire from the seventh century or so.

One could also parse either the ‘classical’ Roman empire or eastern Roman Empire further by imperial dynasty (or periods when there was no dynasty).

This top ten mostly won’t be concerned with such academic divisions, but don’t be surprised if those eastern and western divisions feature prominently. Rather, it will be concerned with the exceptions to the rule of the Roman Empire – the various breakaway or vestigial states that were either substantial claimants to the Roman Empire or usurping it. Indeed, you could think of it as my Roman Empire iceberg meme – in this case my iceberg of Roman Empire continuity.

Hence I won’t be doing my usual top ten countdown but just counting them out, mostly in chronological order albeit with some exceptions. The top three entries are all within the fundamental continuity of the Roman Empire as the iceberg above the surface, with the subsequent entries as the iceberg beneath the surface becoming more remote or wild breakaway or vestigial states. Don’t worry – I’ll have even wilder entries in my special mentions as we follow the iceberg all the way down claimants to the succession of the Roman Empire.

Note that reference to substantial – arguably the various breakaway states or claimants might extend to any territory controlled by any rivals or usurpers to the imperial throne but let’s not go crazy here. It’s not like we’re just any with delusions of imperial grandeur in the Crisis of Third Century or something. This top ten must have some standards beyond the local barracks emperor.

So that said, these are my Top 10 Roman Empires…

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Worst Roman Emperors (Dishonorable Mention) (3) Silbannacus

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(3) SILBANNACUS –
NON-DYNASTIC / CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY

A mystery numismatic emperor too obscure even for Dovahhatty – if he had done anything worthwhile, someone would have written something about him, amirite? As it is, we only know about him from two coins.

Once again I refer to Adrian Goldsworthy’s observation that our list of imperial claimants is likely never to be complete or exhaustive, given the paucity of the contemporary historical record and that we are still finding ‘imperial’ coins minted in the name of new or unknown claimants.

Well, Silbannacus is one such imperial claimant, about whom almost nothing is known as he doesn’t appear in any literary historical sources. It may seem a little unfair to rank him as dishonorable mention and so low in my rankings to boot – but hey, at least he outranked two other dishonorable mentions even only as two coins, although that may say more about those other mentions.

Silbannacus makes the Wikipedia list of emperors as being of “ambiguous legitimacy”, hence my dishonorable mention for him, which he earns from two coins in his name found in the twentieth century.

“Based on the design of the coin and its silver content, Silbannacus was most likely concurrent with the reigns of Philip the Arab (r.244–249), Decius (r.249–251), Trebonianus Gallus (r.251–253), Aemilian (r.253), or Valerian (r.253–260). The two most prevalent ideas are the older hypothesis, that Silbannacus was a usurper in Gaul during the reign of Philip the Arab, at some point between 248 and 250, and the newer hypothesis, based on the design of the second coin, that Silbannacus was a briefly reigning legitimate emperor, holding Rome between the death of Aemilian and the arrival of Valerian.”

Shout-out to Sponsian while we’re taking numismatic mystery emperors – too obscure even to make the Wikipedia list of emperors or anything more than this footnote in my dishonorable mentions, although he does have a Wikipedia entry as a possible usurper in the Crisis of the Third Century, apparently from a few coins in his name in a hoard of coins found in Transylvania in the eighteenth century but only verified as authentic in 2022. There seem to be two leading theories for him. The first is that he was a usurper during the reign of Gordian III or Philip the Arab, based on the other coins found with his coins. The other theory is that he was a military commander who proclaimed himself emperor when Dacia was cut off from the rest of the empire around 260 AD.

RATING: 1 STAR*
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Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Worst Roman Emperors (Dishonorable Mention) (2) Priscus Attalus

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Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome XVIII: Barbarians at the Gates

(2) PRISCUS ATTALUS –
USURPER: THEODOSIAN DYNASTY (ITALY & GAUL)
(409-410 AD & 414-415 AD)

You know – this one surprised me in ranking him as my worst usurper and second worst dishonorable mention.

After all, he usurped the Theodosian dynasty and its worst emperor Honorius at that, so you’d think I’d be all on board for him but I just can’t forgive him the circumstances. Foremost among them being that it wasn’t really him doing the usurping – he was a Senator acclaimed as emperor by the Visigothic leader Alaric just prior to sacking Rome as a puppet against Honorius, the first western emperor to be raised to that office by a barbarian and precursor of the last western Roman emperors to come.

And as easily deposed and stripped of his imperial regalia by Alaric as Alaric alternated between beseiging Rome and seeking to achieve his aims through negotiations with Honorius instead.

Or rather, I might have been able to forgive him, given that Attalus did show some signs of trying to be more than a mere puppet, if it hadn’t happened twice – and he’d had the good sense to know when to call it quits, as he was again acclaimed as emperor in Gaul by Alaric’s successor Atalphaus, only to again be deserted by his Visigoth patrons. This time, he didn’t get off so easy, as he was captured by Honorius’ men and exiled to an unknown fate, although it might have been more pleasant than he deserved since he was exiled to the Aeolian Islands.

RATING: 1 STAR*
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Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Worst Roman Emperors (Dishonorable Mention) (1) Volusianus

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Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome: Crisis of the Third Century

 

(1) VOLUSIANUS –
NON-DYNASTIC / CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY
(251 – 253 AD: 2 YEARS)

 

Surprisingly not a usurper but one of those emperors of “varying ascribed status” in Wikipedia’s list of Roman emperors, Volusianus earns my worst dishonorable mention entry because he couldn’t even achieve his uselessness on his own, but as the son and junior co-emperor of that equally useless embodiment of the Crisis of the Third Century, Trebonianus Gallus.

Trebonianus Gallus first acclaimed his son as caesar, then as co-emperor or co-augustus – possibly murdering the preceding co-emperor Hostilian, the son of his predecessor Decius, to do so, at least according to Roman historian Zosimus.

Anyway, Volusianus was equally as weak and useless as his father, but without even achieving his imperial position for himself – “both chose to stay in Rome rather than confront the invasions” of Goths and Sassanid Persians that were overrunning large parts of the empire.

The governor of the province of Moesia, Aemilian, at least succeeded in repelling the Goths – and for that his soldiers proclaimed him emperor. He marched on Rome with his legions. Characteristically, the father and son team of Gallus and Volusianus called for help from someone useful, the future emperor Valerian as military commander in Gaul, but Aemilian got to them first – or rather, their own troops did, mutinying and killing both of them so as to avoid battle with Aemilian.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*
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Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Worst Roman Emperors (Dishonorable Mention)

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But wait – there’s more!

I’ve ranked the thirty Roman emperors I consider as ‘good’ emperors and the balance of fifty-one Roman emperors I consider as ‘bad’ emperors, a total of 81 emperors from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus – but as I noted for my good emperors, the bad emperors don’t quite end there. There’s my dishonorable mentions for imperial claimants that don’t quite have the same authenticity or legitimacy as those I ranked in my Top 10 Worst Roman Emperors or special mentions.

Yes – it’s usurping time! Or at least, those imperial claimants generally generally labelled as usurpers. That term is bit elastic or a question of degree for Roman emperors, with the primary distinction being those who succeeded in their imperial claim and those who did not – “A large number of emperors commonly considered as legitimate began their rule as usurpers, revolting against the previous legitimate emperor”.

As I said at the outset of ranking the emperors, I’ve gone by Wikipedia’s list of Roman emperors but reserved honorable mention – or in this case dishonorable mention – for those entries in the Wikipedia list which are noted as being of “ambiguous legitimacy” or “varying ascribed status”. The junior co-emperors marked as the latter “are figures, mostly children, who are usually not counted as “true” emperors given their submissive status to the senior emperor, but are still present in some lists of rulers”.

And in contrast to my three honorable mentions, there’s a lot more dishonorable mentions for usurpers and other dubious imperial figures. After all, usurpers by definition tend to be ‘bad’, although some of them come close to or sit right on the line between my ‘good’ and ‘bad’ rankings.

Ultimately, I’ve ranked twenty such emperors or imperial figures in fifteen dishonorable mentions (obviously ranking two together in some dishonorable mention entries where they were essentially similar or close enough for the one entry)