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Commodus
Aurelius died with an heir, the first emperor to do so since Vespasian. Commodus, however, was the opposite of his father. Hedonistic and self-obsessed, he began his reign by forming a treaty with the Germanic tribes that both returned tribal prisoners and saw Rome paying a subsidy to the tribes to keep them away. For the next 12 years, Commodus concerned himself more with fun than government. Retiring from public life except for sporting events in which he competed, he allowed courtiers and favorites to run the government. The administration quickly crumbled. In 192 CE, when he tried to appear in public as both a gladiator and a consul, he was killed by members of the palace’s Praetorian Guard.
The Severan Dynasty
The Praetorian Prefect then selected as emperor Helvius Pertinax, a close adviser to Marcus Aurelius, and the Senate accepted. Pertinax began his reign in a serious tone, rehabilitating depleted royal finances, taking the title princeps as opposed to the more imposing imperator, and insisting on stricter terms for military service. The Praetorians tired of him quickly, though, and murdered him in 193 CE. They then chose another successor, Didius Julianus, but he was not popular. Various imperial legions then proclaimed their own commanding generals as emperor, thus beginning the Year of the Five Emperors.
Finally, the able general Septimius Severus (reigned 193-211 CE) of Pannonia (the Balkans) emerged victorious. Arriving in Rome, he held Pertinax's funeral, and then abolished the Praetorian Guard, choosing instead to select his personal guard from his own legions. From this moment on, guard service in the palace was no longer reserved to men of Italian birth. Like many emperors before him, Septimius waged war against Parthia, but received nothing in return. On the political side, he and his son Caracalla (211-17 CE) disregarded senatorial prerogatives, and equalized citizenship status of all free men in Roman lands. The Severan dynasty would continue to rule until 235 CE, featuring many pairs of co-emperors and short-lived reigns of only a few years.
Pressure at the Empire’s Borders
Major geopolitical changes from the 220s CE onward further strained the Empire. In 226 CE, the Sassanid dynasty took over Parthia. Reviving ancient territorial claims as far west as Palestine, they ignited constant war in Rome's East. When soldiers were moved from the Danube and Rhine borders to fight the Sassanid threat, Germanic tribes took advantage and began invading in the 230s CE. Rome lost upper Germany by 254 CE, Belgium by 259 CE, and much of Gaul by 268 CE. Attacks ranged from the Iberian Peninsula to Northern Italy. The Goths proved to be particularly troublesome, with the Visigoths (Western Goths) attacking Thracia and the Balkans, and the Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) attacking Asia Minor and modern-day Turkey.
Emperor after emperor battled both the tribes and the Sassanids, most hailing from the Balkans and Danube frontier, and all elevated by their legions and ruling for a while until assassinated by rival generals. Over time, they gradually secured the Rhine and Danube frontiers, with Gallenius (reigned 260-268 CE) reforming the army, Claudius Gothicus (268- 269 CE) scoring major victories, and Probus (276-282 CE) finally securing the borders. With Europe now relatively stable, the next emperor, Carus (283-284 CE), pushed an Eastern offensive to the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon, but was killed. His successors, his sons Carinus and Numerian, were defeated by the general Diocletian.
Political Upheaval in the Third Century CE
With the advent of the Severan Dynasty in 193 CE, Rome was set on a course from Principate to Dominate. The ideal of Roman society had always been a republic, ruled by a senate that expressed the will of citizens (in Italy). When Augustus first established the Principate, he somewhat followed this ideal. He and his successors for at least a century respected the Senate, preserving some of its powers. Furthermore, almost every single emperor until Marcus Aurelius was of Italian origin, or at the very least, high-born and heavily Latinized, and thus committed to Roman ideals.
Following Marcus Aurelius, a new kind of emperor arrived. The military became the key route through which emperors gained power, with increasingly non-Latin soldier emperors proving themselves on the battlefield before being proclaimed emperor by their troops. Many of these men were low-born, Balkan or Germanic, and solely focused on maintaining imperial frontiers rather than Roman ideals. Once again, imperial succession remained a problem for Rome, and its consequences would be much more far reaching in an age of foreign military pressures on all sides.
Economic and Cultural Upheaval in the Third Century CE
The Roman economy strongly felt the effects of the political upheaval, particularly in the provincial agricultural sector. From the end of the 1st century CE, senators and other rural elites started to acquire large tracts of land, called latifundia, that were farmed by hired labor. This was a major change from the previously dominant small peasant landholdings, and led to a decreasing number of tax-paying citizens. This prevented both peasants, now dependent on the latifundias, and aristocrats, protective of their land, from being effective soldiers and military leaders. Similarly, the town bourgeoisie had grown accustomed to peace and were not ideal soldiers. The military source of preference for the new emperors thus became Balkan peasantry or Germanic people, both of whom these new emperors were often related to. Thus, the Roman army, weakened by a lack of manpower, became heavily Germanized.
