Mary Beard

But the Augustan system had worked very well, partly through a series of adoptions of successors, not just biological successors, really to the end of the second century CE.

It then, for whatever reason, starts to fall apart.

You do get a period then.

of the army backing its favourite candidates.

You get a period when people do appear, unlike what was the case in the first 200 years of the Augustan regime, do appear to be being made emperors without, as it were, any connection with Rome itself.

Rome appears to be getting sidelined.

In certain respects, it's still the Augustan regime and it never ceases to be the Augustan regime.

But it's a bit battered at that point.

It recovers really afterwards, but things are never quite the same again.

And in the end, it's geography that's always the enemy for Rome.

And one of the things they do is they decide, well, they're going for devolution in our terms.

It's devolution.

And they have mini capitals, places like Split or Ravenna.

They kind of disaggregate the empire.

The reason for this is absolutely obvious, that you want centres of command beyond the centre of command for just a single province, a bit closer to where the action is.

The consequence is that it kind of undermines the whole geopolitics of the Roman Empire.

And Rome then is becoming more sidelined.

Now, there are some emperors who've never been there and make their first visit to Rome when they become emperor.

And there's a sense in which there's an increasing misalignment between Rome as the symbolic capital of the empire and Rome as where the decisions are really made.

Now, you can add into that all kinds of other factors, if you like.