If Rome Hadn't Fallen

by Timothy Venning

  Long-term results

  The extra, Germanic, manpower available for these wars would have been invaluable besides enabling the Emperors and local generals to campaign more on the lower Danube and less on the Rhine. There would have been no need for Domitian’s distracting Chatti wars in the 80s – though he could have attacked other Germans to gain much-needed (in his mind) glory. Holding ‘Marcomannia’ as far as the Northern mountains of Bohemia too would have provided Rome with a more easily-defensible frontier in the North, with the enemy only able to use the gaps in the mountains – the Elbe valley, the Moravian Beskids, to either side of the Tatra, and Ruthenia – to invade the Empire. Thus there would not have been the need for huge garrisons on the upper Rhine or upper Danube, and more troops could have defended the Elbe and the gaps in the chain of Carpathian ranges. In this case, it is less likely that the Empire would have lost crucial battles such as Abrittus against the Goths in 251 – at least on account of troop-numbers, if not incompetence. The avoidance of the raids into the Empire and political ‘break-up’ of the Roman state in the 250s would have been momentous, though it should be remembered that Rome would still have lost manpower in the plague from 252. Incompetent leadership and/or the bad luck of a civil war were crucial factors that better frontiers would not have affected. There was also, of course, the perennial possibility of conquest in the Augustan/Julio-Claudian period followed by a ‘pull-back’ after 69 to save on men and money.

  (b) Instability from AD180: some of the ‘What Ifs’ of the period after 180 and how instability escalated. Bad luck or inevitable?

  AD180–93. The start of serious political problems in Rome

  As will be argued, the instability that afflicted Rome from the later second century onwards owed its beginnings to crucial events in 180. Firstly Marcus Aurelius died prematurely at the age of 58 during his Northern border campaigns against Marcomanni, leaving the throne to the weakwilled and inexperienced 18–year-old Commodus who proved a disaster as Emperor and opened his court to vicious in- fighting, favouritism and the most venal ministers seen since Nero’s reign. Commodus’ extravagance, divine pretensions, and fondness for performing as a gladiator had no serious political implications as far as government was concerned. However, his failure to listen to competent advice and his reliance from c.182 on men such as Saoterus, Cleander, and Perennis caused a mixture of heightened court intrigue, senior appointments of people who had openly bought office or were the personal nominees of the all-powerful favourite rather than experienced, a rash of executions that led to prolonged fear among the political classes in Rome, and a collapse in military discipline and morale (especially among the laxly-supervised Praetorians). The chaos in Rome in 193 was directly the responsibility of him and his ministers, and the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear at the ‘court’ at the time of his murder was as apparent as under Domitian (a similar victim of alarmed intimates fearing that they were about to be executed).

  The run of good luck for Imperial successions that ended in 180: how it could easily have ended earlier

  Once the situation at the centre of government had been allowed to decline like this for over a decade, it was hard to restore order without repression that created its own problems. The end of the system of orderly succession – either within a dynasty or by nomination of an heir by the Emperor before he died – also caused the return of the chaos and insecurity seen at the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in 68. But it should be said that orderly succession was always a matter of luck in Rome, and there was no ‘wise’ and ‘meritocratic’ policy of adopting the best man as heir in the period from Nerva’s adoption of Trajan (in 98) to 180. None of the emperors who adopted an heir had a son to succeed him, which the dynastically-orientated Guard seem to have preferred.

  Galba, Nero’s childless successor who took over in June 68, tried to adopt a well-respected young noble called Piso. He was thwarted by a Guard plot egged on by an ambitious ex-Neronian courtier, Otho, whose own hopes had been disappointed, and killed. Nerva, childless and over 60, needed to adopt a tough and competent general to ward off the threat from his undisciplined Guard who had just defied him in a rampage hunting down Domitian’s killers in 97–8. Trajan adopted his nearest adult male relative, Hadrian, but the latter felt insecure enough to kill four ex-consuls on his accession in 117. Hadrian, third emperor in a row to have no children, initially adopted an unsuitable – and already ailing – candidate, Aelius Verus, who luckily died before him. He then selected his young protege and distant cousin, the teenage Marcus Aurelius (then ‘Marcus Verus’), and Aelius’ son Lucius as heirs for his new successor Antoninus ‘Pius’. Antoninus had no sons either, and his daughter was married off to Marcus who was also his wife’s nephew.1

  The ‘What Ifs’ of 180 and of 31 December 192: no civil war in 193?

  Had Marcus had no sons, he could have adopted an heir in this fashion and selected a better candidate than his surviving son Commodus. The latter could have fallen victim to one of the numerous plots against him and not spent twelve years misruling the Empire and allowing the Praetorians to become slack and arrogant. His first and probably most dangerous foe was his sister Lucilla, who was probably behind the attempt to stab him in a corridor at the amphitheatre in 182. The assassin, Quadratus, nephew of her husband Tiberius Pompeianus’, stopped to declare ‘The Senate sends you this!’ as he waved his sword and was seized by bodyguards.2 Either he or Prompeianus would have been the new ruler, as Lucilla’s candidate, with her as power behind the throne like Agrippina ‘the Younger’. Thereafter, the Emperor was on his guard and rounds of killings put off plotters until the Household and the current Praetorain Praefect turned on Commodus. Pompeianus, in exile but suspiciously back in Rome in time for the coup, was considered for the throne when Commodus was killed on 31 December 192. He turned down the offer of the throne from the assassins’ choice: Pertinax, 66–year-old disciplinarian ex-governor of Britain. Had Pompeianus accepted, he might have avoided Pertinax’s fate of being murdered by sulky and exasperated Guardsmen annoyed at the reimposition of strict military discipline on 28 March 193.

  The coup may have been instigated by Praefect Laetus, who had fallen out with Pertinax, but the Emperor gave the troops enough reason to listen to such suggestions.3 The civil war which followed took the form of refusal to recognise the next Emperor by three senior provincial governors – Septimius Severus on the upper Danube, Clodius Albinus in Britain and Pescennius Niger in Syria. All had recognised Pertinax, so, unless that had been a short-term expedient to cover intended later revolt, the civil war resulted from the second, not the first, coup. By that reasoning, had Laetus been exposed and removed or Pertinax been less personally abrupt to the troops, civil war would have been unlikely. Moroever, he had a son to succeed him if he could have stayed on the throne successfully.

  What if Commodus’ brothers had not died young?

  From the events of 180–92 arose both the murder of the insecure new ruler, Pertinax, and the humiliating sale of the Imperial title that followed the murder. This led to civil war against the successful bidder, Didius Julianus. But it should be pointed out that Commodus happened to be the only survivor among Marcus’ three sons, and if the other two (one his twin) had not died young in the 160s one of them would have been the beneficiary of Commodus’ murder.4 There would possibly have been two Emperors – brothers – ruling after Marcus, who had himself had a co-ruler, Lucius Verus, in 161–9. If both twins had survived, appointing both as Emperor was logical – not least if Commodus was already showing signs of poor judgement and laziness. Given Commodus’ fondness for gladiatorial combat and parties, he could well have left politics and adminstration to his brother – until his ambitious courtiers encouraged him to demand more power? Lucius Verus, reputedly lazy and spendthrift, had left government to Marcus in the 160s without any apparent tension. If the jealous Commodus had attempted to kill his brother(s), there is no guarantee that he would have succeeded and not been killed inste
ad.

  In the second place, the evacuation of troops from the territories of modern Bohemia and Moravia aborted the attempt to create a new province there and ‘Romanise’ the local tribes. If they had been at least partially tamed by occupation from c.180 to 250, and sending their menfolk into the Roman army, they would not have been in a position to raid the Empire when it was weakening. Their war-leaders, who launched the attacks, would have been Roman officers and possibly been moved from the region. The attacks of the Germanic tribes across the Rhine and the Danube – the centrepiece of the ‘third-century crisis’ – would have been easier to contain by the available troops. (This is dealt with later.)

  The Severans, 193–235 – part of the solution or part of the problem? Did Septimius Severus make Rome’s instability worse, and could he have avoided this?

  Septimius Severus, the victor in the civil war of 193–7, proved to be a competent Emperor and in particular a much-needed success as a general, defeating both the Parthians and the Caledonians and restoring Rome’s prestige after the civil war. He could not claim convincingly to have been the choice of Pertinax as his successor, though he did his best by arranging a retrospective ‘adoption’ and stressing his role as the late Emperor’s ‘son’ and avenger in his propaganda,5 and it is clear that a substantial part of the Senate hoped that his rival Clodius Albinus would win their confrontation in 197.6 The repressive measures that he carried out in Rome were notably harsher after this, once he had faced the danger of revolt among people who had supposedly accepted him as their ruler in 193 but had proved to be potentially disloyal.

  Severus’ reliance on a small clique of his ‘trusties’ from his home province of Tripolitania, most notably the ruthless, venal, and arrogant Praefect Plautianus, was an inevitable result of his being a provincial outsider who faced potential disaffection in his capital and had no established networks of eminent friends to rely on there. (Albinus, by contrast, was an Italian.) He was not the only Emperor to impatiently flaunt traditional civilian mores in his the capital, enter the Senate in armour (though more circumspect rulers had worn it under a toga), and treat Senators with open anger as potential enemies, carrying out mass executions without due care to see that only the obviously guilty suffered

  It was said in mitigation that at least he did not kill people for their money.7 Nor was he the only Emperor to rely on a ruthless and unhindered Praefect to keep order and terrorise his potential opponents into submission, Sejanus being the most obvious example (though Tiberius had more excuse in view of his age and his desire to retire at the time).

  Severus had more excuse for running an effective ‘reign of terror’ against the civilian nobility than Tiberius or Domitian had, on account of the political situation. Augustus had been just as ruthless at purging the nobility, and both duly built up Senate inflitrated by their loyalists.8 However, his attitude towards the centre of power and its traditions was markedly more contemptuous than any except the more eccentric of his predecessors, and sat ill with his claims to be restoring order and good government – Caligula, Nero, and Commodus had been openly determined to satisfy their whims. Apocryphal or not, there is a ring of truth to his supposed advice to his sons on his death-bed to keep the peace with each other, give the soldiers what they wanted, and ignore everybody else.9 In his naked and cynical realpolitik, only Imperial Family unity and a loyal army counted as they alone could affect the holding of power.

  Severus’ reputation suffered on account of his lack of concern for preserving the appearance of traditional government. He was nicknamed the ‘Punic Sulla’, stressing both his foreign origins (and that he came from the same area as Hannibal) and his harshness.10 It is probable that this sort of contemptuous remark about his origins made him even more suspicious of the Italian nobility. The excessively trusted Plautianus was an old crony from his home town, who was rationalised by one story as his ex-lover.11 As with Sulla’s ruthless re-establishment of the rule of the traditional oligarchy of senior patrician families by massacring all possible opposition, the façade of government was restored but the main lessons that future political and military leaders learnt was from the methods used to do it. Naked military power and the destruction of opposition rather than conciliation were effective in succeeding in restoring stability in the aftermath of 193 as they had been after 82 BC. But in both cases the regime established by the victor of a civil war was not long-lasting and it was challenged by men using the same methods that they had excelled at. From the point of long-term stability, it is possible that the Empire may have been better off if Albinus had defeated Severus in their final battle outside Lyons in February 197. This was a very real possibility as Severus’ army blundered into a series of hidden pits and their Emperor was thrown off his horse.12

  Severus’ weak position as an outsider and the extent of instability and real or potential plotting and military mutiny seen since 180 partially explain his ruthless – and effective – reaction to the situation that faced him. He was in a weaker position than Vespasian, a similar victor of civil war but an insider from the capital’s political classes (if only a marginal member of the elite), and unlike Vespasian he lacked an adult and competent son to act as his effective deputy. Titus was 29, a battle-hardened general, and the respected conqueror of Jeruslaem in 70; Severus’ eldest son Caracalla was only 5 in 193 (and 9 in 197) and half-Syrian as well.

  It is unthinkable that Vespasian could have tolerated the sort of arrogance and presumption that Plautianus displayed, for example, in erecting statues of himself in company with those of the Imperial Family, whether or not the story is true that when Plautianus was ill he would not let even Severus into his bedroom without the customary body-search. 13 Whether or not Plautianus coveted the throne, and however justified his son-in-law Caracalla was in killing him, it is clear that Severus allowed him incredible license and was reluctant to act against this supposedly loyal lieutenant despite evident abuse of his position. Plautianus’ behaviour was diminishing the Emperor’s own position (and majesty if the story about his securityarrangements is true), however useful he was in terrorising potential opponents. The supposed heir of Marcus Aurelius and Pertinax as a good ruler was putting himself in the same league of Emperors who let a favourite get out of control as Tiberius, Caligula (with Praefect Macro), Nero (with his freedmen and Praefect Tigellinus), or Commodus. But even today statesmen can find it useful to allow remarkable license to over-powerful ‘hard men’ in terrorising domestic opposition. Plautianus was the Beria or the Himmler of his day, or in modern British terms a sort of Prime Minsterial ‘enforcer’ ( New Labour ‘Director of Communications’?). It was Caracalla who eventually had to act to deal with the problem, unlike Tiberius had done in facing up to Sejanus, even if his father evidently allowed him to do so. 14

  Severus showed a similar personal indulgence in refusing to do anything about the signs that Caracalla could turn into a poor and/or tyrannical ruler after his death, ignore his arrangments for the succession by killing his brother Geta, and endangering the dynasty’s continuance and the stability of the Empire. The sources should be treated with some caution as they may suffer from hindsight in projecting clear signs of Caracalla’s later character back into his father’s reign and relating apocryphal stories, such as that he was suspected (including by Severus) of plotting to use his favour with the army during the Caledonian campaign to carry out a coup against his ailing father.15 But it is apparent that the chosen senior heir, already a grown man of nearly 23 by the time of his accession in 211, had shown signs of his violent and impulsive nature and in particular that he and Geta loathed each other and could barely be restrained from personal violence.

  Severus supposedly chose to take them on campaign to Britain to teach them some discipline after they had shown signs of getting out of hand in peacetime in Rome, and was aware that his death could well lead to fratricide.16 It is apparent that, unlike the case of Marcus and Commodus who was younger (18) at the time of his accession, th
e Emperor had had adequate warning of what his son was capable of doing but had chosen to evade the issue. The solution he chose, of making both his sons joint heirs, was unlikely to do anything but postpone a violent resolution to the conflict. If he had been properly concerned for the State’s welfare rather than that of his family, he had every excuse at least by 210 to have Caracalla executed (especially if he had been heard contemplating a coup during the Caledonian campaign) and to secure the succession of the more amenable (though still apparently headstrong ) Geta.

  The results of Severan repression, naked reliance on military power, and indulgence for the likes of Caracalla and Plautianus were such as to negate the Emperor’s good work in restoring political and military stability. The worst threat facing Rome from 193 was political instability at the summit of power rather than any foreign enemy, together with that of the success of provincial governors in seizing power in Rome proving infectious and tempting one general after another to try his chances. But the danger of this occurring from 69 had been averted, and there is no reason why wise policies (and luck) could not have restored stability in a similar manner after 193. The essential lesson of both 68–9 and 193 had been to avoid a powervacuum or disputed succession in the capital. The arrogant and mutinous Praetorian Guard of 193 that had been indulged by Commodus, murdered his disciplinarian successor and sold its services to the highest bidder, had been broken up and replaced with a new Guard of loyal Severan provincial troops.17 If a succession of able and firm Emperors had continued to inspire confidence and obedience among their soldiers there is no reason that the crisis of 193 should have been resumed – until the next disputed succession

  Military rule and instability: would it have been better for Rome if Caracalla had been killed or exiled by his father and Geta had succeeded alone?