Consciousness Of Crisis At The End Of The Roman Empire

“Complaints of evil times are to be found in all centuries which have left a literature behind them. But in the Roman Empire the decline is acknowledged in a manner which leaves no room for doubt.” This quotation from Jacob Burckhardt shows the importance of the historical self-awareness during the period of the great crisis of the Roman Empire in the third century. Reflection upon contemporary history, in the sense of its consideration and interpretation, will make it possible for us to understand a society by its capacity or incapacity to recognize its own position as well as its moving forces and changes, especially during periods of crisis and at turning-points of history. It is not necessary to emphasize the importance of the crisis of the third century for the history of the ancient world and for history in general.

Burckhardt, it is true, spoke only of a ‘stormy moment’ as far as the beginning of this transformation of the Roman world was concerned, although in his work about the age of Constantine he had characterized it as the vital crisis of the Ancient World; he regarded the migration of peoples as the first ‘genuine crisis’ in Roman history. But the ‘genuine crisis’ of the Roman Empire began neither with the migration of peoples nor, as A. J. Toynbee saw it, as early as the fifth century B.C., but rather with the crisis of the third century (not to be understood in the exact chronological sense). This is true even in Burckhardt’s conception of crisis, the coincidence of economic, social, political and spiritual changes causing an accelerated general process in the course of which an old system would be replaced by a new one. Already late Roman historiography saw this process, in particular under Gallienus, almost as a collapse of the Empire: Eutropius saw here a catastrophic period, in desperate circumstances and almost destroyed the Roman Empire, the author of the Historia Augusta the danger that this venerable Roman empire would have ended, and Zosimus saw total confusion.

The tradition of Roman pessimism regarding the history of one’s own time was, as we know, as old as Roman literature itself, and it is not the subject of this paper to trace this pessimism back to the time of the Republic and early Empire. But it is necessary to make two suggestions as to the beginning of crisis-literature in the Severan age. First, from the early Empire one could doubtless quote several complaints about decline in politics, ethics and above all in culture; this pessimistic idea of decline was not, however, identical with a statement of a general crisis embracing decay in all sections of public life, as it was in the third century. Secondly, in the period preceding the crisis of the third century, Roman self-reliance had been, in spite of isolated laments about a decline, perhaps stronger than ever before: one may recall the idea of Florus about the rejuvenation of the Empire or the speech of Aristides on Rome. An atmosphere of general pessimism emphasizing the present crisis spread only after the beginning of military catastrophes under Marcus Aurelius, after the political struggle under Commodus, and particularly after the collapse of the Antonine monarchy and the ensuing civil wars.

Literary sources of the Severan age give detailed evidence of the decay. Ulpian and Philostratus emphasized manpower shortage and physical degeneration. Contemporary history from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the reign of Severus Alexander was described by Cassius Dio as an age of iron and rust after the golden age of Marcus Aurelius, and all the political, social, economic and spiritual disturbances of his time caused in his view a crisis of the whole Empire, which had been symbolized already by the fire in Rome under Commodus. This opinion was not confined to the upper classes. A few years after Dio had finished his monumental Roman history, the author of the twelfth book of the Oracula Sibyllina, a Jew in the East who was loyal to Rome, saw in the present age a new, bloody and catastrophic period in the history of the Empire which had begun with the reign of Commodus and especially with the civil wars following the year 193. But men such as Dio and Philostratus were still convinced that, in spite of all present evil, the sound world of the past (in Dio’s view the Antonine monarchy) could be restored: this is the idea of the speech of Maecenas and also of the speech of Apollonius of Tyana before Vespasian, as written by Philostratus.

All these changes in the history of the Empire must have convinced contemporaries that a general transformation was in process, threatening total destruction because all changes were attacks on the traditional order. This common thought as to contemporary history may allow us to speak of consciousness of crisis (Krisenbewusstsein) in the third century: this feeling was more than the recognition of decline in only some sections of life, as it had been in the early Empire when ethical or cultural or even political decline might have been lamented, yet at the same time there had been pride and satisfaction as regards successes in foreign politics. The patterns of this crisis-theory can be described in the following way.

Many contemporary problems were of course not new, but there was the general feeling that they were now becoming catastrophic. Cyprian pointed this out clearly. Wars, for example, appeared to him under Philip as quite ‘normal’. But after the defeat of Decius he suggested that at present wars arise more frequently and they continue more often than earlier. The moral and political decline of pagan Rome was to him not at all a new phenomenon, and under Philip he saw the meaning of Christian life in the ready escape from sinful pagan society. But some years later the growing internal crisis of the Empire appeared to him already so catastrophic that he saw no possibility for a ‘splendid isolation’, for between the very adversities…the narrowed and confined soul scarcely breathes. He admitted that even Christians were by no means always honest, but since the time of Decius lapsi and heretics had caused a crisis within the Church. Even heresy, he said, was getting more dangerous than before: this evil…it had already begun long ago, but now it has grown into a fierce destruction of the same evil.

However, there were other problems which appeared to be completely new. According to Cassius Dio, the innovations of Elagabalus were very dangerous because they made possible a ‘revolution’ against the traditional order of the State. One of the main subjects of Herodian’s stories was to point out ‘new’ developments in contemporary history: Commodus, the first emperor without any merits of his own, had already ruled in an authoritarian way as nobody had before him; by the fate of Pertinax the political power of the army had been demonstrated for the first time; the fall of this emperor had been followed by civil wars which had been more severe than ever before; under Alexander, Rome had been defeated by the Persians more heavily than ever before, etc.

The main point in this theory of crisis was, however, that all unfavourable changes coincided. The Roman Empire was affected, as Cyprian said, by all the old and new bad continuously and all at once; so quickly, at such speed, so greatly, that the present time seemed to be the final period of apocalyptic prophecies, in the end times evils and adversities will be multiplied and varied…more and more the wrath of an angry god was sent into the plagues of the human race.

-excerpted from “The Crisis of the Third Century as Seen by Contemporaries” by Geza Alfoldy (1973)