Dr. David Gwynn

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The Ancients · Rome's Crisis of the Third Century · 9 Jan 2025 podcast

It's an economic crash for the imperial structure. This is where I think you'd get a lot of different answers from different scholars here. Because if we're focusing on the imperial structure, so the tax system, which relies on a stable coinage, it's collapsing. Buying things based on coins, well, debasement means inflation. If coins are worthless, you need more coins to pay for them.

So inflation is going to be a major problem. But a lot of the Roman Empire is still an agricultural world where people are largely living by subsistence agriculture. Now, as long as an army doesn't march over your fields, you can carry on doing that. So what seems to be really crashing is the empire-wide economic structures that allowed for a higher standard of living.

Without a good coinage system, trade becomes problematic. The Silk Road is in a state of current flux, not least because the Sasanian Persians are still trying to work out exactly how best to profit from that famous great trade route that heads out all the way to China. And the Red Sea as well, the connection with India, does that continue?

And the naval routes, so the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf routes are still trading. But the main thing that the Romans sent east was actually gold and silver coinage, because they didn't have the spices, the silk. And if you don't have that coinage, So that kind of luxury trade is going to diminish.

But what's likely to happen in, say, an Egyptian village is now you're just going to revert to a barter economy. Was ist die Wertschätzung zwischen einem Schaf und einem Vogel? Wie viel Futter gibt es für diese Pfanne? Und die meisten der romänischen Empire können auf diesem lokalisierten Niveau überleben. Es ist also nicht so, dass es einen kolossalen Verlust in den Lebensstandards gibt.

Wir sehen keinen riesigen Verlust in der Bevölkerung. Die romänische Empire ist bis zum Ende des dritten Jahrhunderts wahrscheinlich noch um die 60-Millionen-Mark. That's where I'd temper it. Was it a great time to be alive? Well, especially if you were anywhere near the battlefields, definitely not.

Aber für viele der römischen kleinen Landwirte, also in Britannien, in Spanien, in Nordafrika, in Ägypten, aber auch in Asia Minor, können sie weitergehen.

The roots are there. One suspects the number of people using them is diminishing. This world's becoming localized. So you get the Gallic Empire, the Palmyran Empire. So you're getting more local distinctions there. Someone like Kiprian can still send messages with letters across these routes, so the routes are potentially available.

But they're nowhere near as safe as, say, they were in the 2nd century, when you've got the 50 years of near total stability. And it's going to be more stable again in the 4th century. So the roots don't disappear. They're there to be revived when the great recovery fully takes effect. But during the heart of the third century, so the worst years, which is basically 250 to 270. 20 whole years.

The other great theme of this period is religion and the role religion is playing. Now, in older scholarship, and there's a famous book called The Age of Anxiety, that this is a period of superstition of different views. Actually, what seems to be happening is it's an age of quite active intellectual philosophy. Und auch unvergesslich Menschen, die Antworten in verschiedene Richtungen suchen.

Und es ist keine Frage, dass die Krise einen Einfluss hat. Und Sie sehen es vor allem mit der Christianity. Denn die Christen waren eine kleine Minorität Anfang des 3. Jahrhunderts und immer noch eine kleine Minorität am Ende. Aber Anfang des 3. Jahrhunderts sind sie vielleicht 2-3% der Bevölkerung. Am Ende des 3. Jahrhunderts sind es mehr als 10%. Es gibt oder nimmt 6 Millionen Christen.

Christianity grew in this period. Now, partly that is this emphasis on charity, welfare in a time of crisis, of plague, of famine. The Christians provide support. But it's also very noticeable that this is the same period where for the first time Christians are really attracting detailed imperial attention. Wir denken oft an Christen, die ständig von der romänischen Empire verletzt werden.

Aber tatsächlich, für die ersten 250 oder so Jahre, können Christen überall leicht verletzt werden. Also haben wir große lokale Verbrechen von Gewalt. Aber was nie tatsächlich passiert ist, war ein umweltweiter Angriff auf die Christianity. Selbst, sagen wir, Nero, einer der wenigen Empressen, die wirklich versuchen, zu verletzen, macht es im Stadtgebiet von Rom. Aber Decius,

while he's trying to fight the Goths, is responsible for what becomes the first persecution of Christians. He's not even reigning that long. He's only got a two-year reign. And yet he's very prominent in, say, Eusebius Caesar's church history for this reason. Um Decius zu kritisieren, denken wir nicht, dass er die Versuchung der Christen auslösen wollte.

Was er tatsächlich glaubte, war, dass diese Krise wegen der göttlichen Angst zu tun hat. Nach allem, fast jeder in diesem Weltraum, Pagan oder Christ, glaubt an die göttliche Providenz, dass die Wille der Götter eine wichtige Rolle spielt. Decius beurteilt also, dass jeder in der Empire vertreten wird. Jeder, um seine Piety zu zeigen, lässt die göttliche Unterstützung gewinnen.

The problem is, there is one particular group who will not sacrifice to the old gods, so Decius' order to sacrifice becomes the Decian persecution. Now, Decius then gets killed by the Goths, so the persecution stops. What's interesting is, six years later, Valerian decides that's the right answer again. We need divine support. So you get the Valerian persecution of the Christians.

And unlike Decius, Valerian definitely meant it. So he targets clergy. Kyprian gets caught up in this. He targets churches as far as they exist, because they're really just small house churches. But it's a targeted persecution. Then Valerian becomes a Persian monument and Gallienus abandons it.

I mean, you can see how the Christian writers are going to treat the fact that the two people who tried a persecution are Decius and Valerian. And then for the next 40 years, Christians just get left alone. Gallienus' View does seem to have been, there are bigger priorities than this.

And the subsequent emperors, like Aurelian, basically just ignore Christians unless they're forced to pay attention.

I mean, it's one of the problems that still religious history is often treated in slight isolation from wider history. I mean, after all, the Christians have been there ever since Augustus, but they have been low profile except for those rare moments of persecution.

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