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[Assistant] His eastern flank was already badly exposed by the death of Odinothus, and now Oriolus was exposing his western flank to a possible invasion by Posthumus. Luckily for Gallienus,


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[Assistant] Postumus appears to have never indulged in ambitions beyond what he had already achieved.


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[Assistant] Despite Orioles begging for aid, and even going so far as to use the Mint in Milan to issue coins and posthumous his name.


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[Assistant] The Gallic Emperor never lifted a finger to help Orioles. There was just no profit in it.


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[Assistant] If he threw in with the usurping general, he risked everything that he had built. But if he did nothing, well, he risked nothing. And so he did nothing.


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[Assistant] When the Imperial army returned to Italy, Orioles and what troops he had at his disposal rode out to meet them, but they were easily routed and forced to flee back behind the walls of Milan.


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[Assistant] Galleen is settled in to lay siege to the city that he had just helped put on the map.


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[Assistant] And while he waited for Milan to fall his officers began to talk amongst themselves.


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[Assistant] Though I did say last week that much of the supposed dissatisfaction with Gallienist can be traced back to the biases of the senatorial class, that does not mean that there was no dissatisfaction at all.


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[Assistant] I had begun to grow disenchanted with Galienus' leadership.


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[Assistant] Just because defending the borders from invasion while simultaneously bringing posthumous and the palmyrenes to heel seemed really hard, well that did not mean that it was impossible.


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[Assistant] And many of the career soldiers in the upper ranks believe that if they had a chance, that they could do a better job than Galienis.


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[Assistant] Who was dealt almost exactly the same hand as Gallienus.


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[Assistant] Was able to do in just four years what Gallienus had been unable to do in eight.


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[Assistant] So eventually, all this insubordinate talk became serious, and a plot was hatched.


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[Assistant] But the most dramatic account has it that the murder was the result of a clever ruse.


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[Assistant] Late in the evening, one of the conspirators burst into Galienus's tent.


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[Assistant] To tell the emperor that Oriolis was leading his men out of Milan on a night raid.


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[Assistant] Not even pausing to don his armor, Gallienus rushed out of his tent and mounted his horse to go assess the situation for himself.


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[Assistant] But as soon as he was caught alone and exposed outside the camp he was cut down by the waiting assassins.


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[Assistant] It is of course debatable whether this particularly fantastic story is true.


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[Assistant] But there is no doubt that a conspiracy of top officers got together and killed Gallienus. Maybe by the sword, and maybe by poison in 268 AD.


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[Assistant] Later revisions to history have Galienus recommending Claudius as his successor.


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[Assistant] Though it seems highly unlikely that Gallien has really spent his dying breaths making noble suggestions about the best man to succeed him.


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[Assistant] Gallienus was 50 years old and had been emperor first with his father and then by himself for a remarkable 15 years.


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[Assistant] When Gallienus died, the officers did indeed rally around Claudius, the captain of the cavalry.


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[Assistant] Which may help explain the later stories about, wink, wink, Gallienus recommending Claudius for the job. And then the Senate fell quickly into line.


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[Assistant] If Orioles thought the death of his former master would mean that he could extract himself peacefully from Milan though, well, he was in for a bit of a surprise.


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[Assistant] Far from granting Orioles amnesty, Claudius made it clear that everyone inside the city walls was as good as dead if Orioles' head wasn't brought to him immediately.


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[Assistant] So, inside Milan, a similar conspiracy of officers dispatched with their chief. And then they came out to make peace with the new emperor.


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[Assistant] Who, once Orioles was dealt with, was feeling pretty magnanimous.


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[Assistant] He went so far as to order that Gallienus' family should not be harmed in any way.


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[Assistant] But the order didn't make it to Rome in time to stop the revenge-minded Senate from executing Gallienus' brother and Gallienus' son.


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[Assistant] Up in Gaul, a posthumous watched all of this with a mixture of satisfaction and concern.


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[Assistant] He had to have been pleased with himself for avoiding getting tangled up in the fight between Orioles and Gallienus, which had now led to the assassination of both men. But a new leader in Rome meant new policies.


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[Assistant] And posthumous had to have known Claudius if not personally, then at least by reputation.


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[Assistant] And if Claudius' dissatisfaction with Gallienus in any way stemmed from the Emperor's inability to reclaim the Gallic provinces, well, that didn't bode well for Posthumus at all.


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[Assistant] Fortunately, he would never have to face Rome's final attempt to recapture the West.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, it's because he wound up, in the end, sharing the fate of Gallienus and Oriolus and Odinothus.


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[Assistant] But brief revolts or mutinies had flared up here and there in keeping with the times.


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[Assistant] In either 268 or early 269, one of his officers along the Rhine decided to make a bid for the throne and had himself declared emperor at his home base in Mainz.


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[Assistant] Impostumus quickly raised an army and marched in to put the usurper down, and in short order the revolt was squashed.


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[Assistant] The problem for Posthumus was that now his soldiers wanted to sack mines to punish the city for its disloyalty, yes, but mostly to carry off the wealth of the city for themselves.


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[Assistant] But Posthumus was the emperor of everyone, and it really wouldn't do to let his army just go and sack one of the key urban centers of his domain, so he ordered the city left untouched.


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[Assistant] And after some confusion, one of Posthumus's officers, a man named Marcus Aurelius Marius, finally stepped forward and attempted to seize power.


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[Assistant] But he only lasted a few days before being brushed aside and killed by a man named Victorianus.


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[Assistant] Who came from an extremely wealthy family and whose mother apparently opened up the family bank account to buy her son the throne.


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[Assistant] The Near Simultaneous Depths of Odinothus, Gallienus, and Posthumus.


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[Assistant] Brought to a close the second phase of the crisis of the third century.


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[Assistant] At the beginning of phase three, their successors will duke it out to see whose vision of the future will reign supreme.


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[Assistant] In the East, Zenobia dreamed of creating a permanent, independent Palmyrene Empire.


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[Assistant] In the West, Victorianus dreamed of simply trying to hold together what Posthumus had built. And in the middle, Claudius and his soon to be successor Aurelian dreamed of reunification.


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[Assistant] All three would have to deal with persistent threats to their frontiers. From the Sassanids, and from the Goths, and from the Franks, and from the Alamani.


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[Assistant] All of whom dreamed their own dreams of what the fate of the Roman Empire ought to be.


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[Assistant] I hate to do this so soon after taking a week off, but there will be no episode next week, as The History of Rome is heading down south to San Antonio to cheer on Mrs. The History of Rome as she runs her half marathon.


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[Assistant] But we will of course be back in two weeks for the short reign of Claudius.


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[Assistant] And then, the totally impressive reign of Aurelion.


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[Assistant] Who has fast become one of the history of Rome's most favorite emperors.


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[Assistant] As I said at the end of the last episode, the assassination of Gallienus in 268 marked the beginning of the end for the crisis of the third century.


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[Assistant] In the 33 years since the death of Alexander Severus, the Roman Empire had been on a pretty impressive downhill slide.


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[Assistant] But inch by inch and mile by mile, the successors of Gallienus are about to pull Rome out of its skid and put it back on top of the geopolitical food chain.


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[Assistant] These successors were notable not just for their achievements, but also for the fact that they all hailed from the same part of the empire.


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[Assistant] Though I usually refer to the third phase of the crisis period as the recovery phase, it could just as easily be known as the era of the Illyrian emperors.


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[Assistant] If anyone out there is still clinging to the notion that the Roman Empire fell because it stopped being a Roman Empire,


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[Assistant] Well, I can promise you that it would have fallen a whole lot earlier had it not been for the succession of native Illyrians who pulled Rome out of the ditch that it had driven itself into.


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[Assistant] Claudius, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, Constantine, these are the men who salvaged an empire that looked like it was headed straight for the dustbin of history. The Roman Empire wasn't a Roman Empire anymore, and it was a good thing for the Romans that it wasn't.


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[Assistant] Despite his impressive sounding name, Marcus Aurelius Valerius Claudius most likely had no aristocratic connections anywhere in his family tree.


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[Assistant] His origins are too obscure to say definitively, but like other young men from the Danish frontier who joined the legions, he probably came from peasant stock and was looking for a ticket to a better life that service in the army sometimes provided.


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[Assistant] Usually it provided hardship, suffering, men, and early death.


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[Assistant] But to the youths of Pannonia and Moesia, that can't have sounded too different from the lives they could expect to lead staying at home.


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[Assistant] At least in the Legions, there was an outside chance you might get promoted to Centurion or something, and pick up a few cash bonuses along the way.


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[Assistant] Born around 213, Claudius and his fellows would have entered the legions in the early 230s.


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[Assistant] And though we know these years as the moment when the Empire slipped into crisis mode, for the common soldier, these were the years when, really, anything became possible.


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[Assistant] A legionary who showed courage, discipline, and who kept his wits about him in the heat of battle was likely to find himself not just in charge of a cohort, but a whole legion.


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[Assistant] And after the ascension of Maximinus Thrax, maybe even the whole empire,


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[Assistant] Claudius was courageous and disciplined and kept his wits about him in the heat of battle. And so he slowly climbed up the ranks.


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[Assistant] He had the further good fortune of coming into his own during the reign of Gallienus when legions run by career military men rather than the usual gang of aristocratic social climbers was becoming the rule rather than the exception.


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[Assistant] Claudius seems to have excelled everywhere he went, and as Aureolus faded as Gallienus's favorite general, Claudius stepped in and became one of the Emperor's most trusted military advisors. When Aureolus was stripped of the all-important cavalry command, Claudius was quite literally handed the reins.


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[Assistant] Claudius' role in the assassination of Gallienus the next year has never been fully ascertained, but no one doubts that he was at least aware of the plot.


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[Assistant] Constantine's revisionist historians attempted to absolve Claudius of all guilt, but their claims are far-fetched to say the least.


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[Assistant] As the senior ranking general of the officer corps, he was not only the natural choice to succeed Gallienus, but also a man whose at least tacit consent would have been required for a plot to move forward.


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[Assistant] On a more personal level, he was also the senior ranking Illyrian, and it was native Illyrian officers who were the prime movers in the plot to remove Galienus.


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[Assistant] To think that Claudius did not know what his friends and countrymen were up to, strange credulity.


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[Assistant] When the deed was done, the conspirators arranged for the men to proclaim Claudius Emperor, and he accepted, no doubt feigning surprise.


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[Assistant] Having assumed power by way of a coup though, Claudius was quick to distance himself from the assassins and promote the legacy of Gallienus.


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[Assistant] In stark contrast to the rewards they were probably expecting, Claudia singled out a number of the officers behind the plot to kill Gallienus and had them executed or exiled.


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[Assistant] The new emperor wanted the world to know that he did not approve of regicide, especially since he was now the rege who could possibly be cited.


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[Assistant] To further distance himself from the conspiracy, when Claudius traveled to Rome to cement his new powers, he took the surprising step of demanding that the Senate deify Gallienus. The Senate, of course, balked at this.


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[Assistant] Far from wanting to deify Gallienus, when Claudius' order came down, they were preparing to vote to damn his memory, a la Domitian.


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[Assistant] Forced to swallow their pride, which is of course what had made them so mad at Gallienus in the first place.


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[Assistant] The Senate instead voted to deify him, as Claudius instructed.


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[Assistant] His hands now relatively clean. Claudius took stock of the empire he had inherited.


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[Assistant] Despite being solidly separatist though, the Gallic provinces maintain a non-aggressive attitude towards Rome. So, for the time being, they could wait.


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[Assistant] In the East, Odenoth's death had led to the rise of his widow, Zenobia. There was definitely something that needed to be done about that.


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[Assistant] It was one thing for the East to be run by Odin office, but his wife, this latter day of Cleopatra? No, that wouldn't do it all.


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[Assistant] What if she decided to do something crazy like take over Egypt?


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[Assistant] After all, have they not all just been involved in staving off a massive gothic invasion when Orioles had decided to revolt? Was that invasion even over yet? No?


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[Assistant] Well, that is going then to have to be priority A1.


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[Assistant] So, after spending a few months in Rome, Claudius ordered the troops in Milan back to the Danube, where either loose Goths from the previous invasion were still running around, or a whole new invasion force had come in, depending on which theory you buy into about the Gothic invasion patterns of the late 260s AD.


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[Assistant] Well, that is, he headed over to the Danube directly from Rome, as long as you believe that one particular theory about Claudius' movements during his 18-month reign.


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[Assistant] But just so you know, there is another theory that has Claudius dealing with the penetration of an Alamani horde into northern Italy before he went to the Danube to face the Goths at Nicus.


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[Assistant] But this just doesn't seem logical to me from the Alamani's point of view.


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[Assistant] The theory I happen to believe is that Claudius went to the Danube, fought the Goths at Nisus, and while he was busy, the Germans made their move, and Claudius was forced to return to Italy to deal with them.


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[Assistant] To argue that the Alamani invaded right away means arguing that they decided to charge headlong into an imperial army still encamped outside Milan.


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[Assistant] Better to wait until the Romans withdraw the bulk of their forces back to the Danube, right? That seems like the savvy play.


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[Assistant] So Claudius marched the Imperial army back to the Balkans, aware the withdrawal of Gallienus the previous year had left the Danube provinces open to further Gothic attack.


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[Assistant] Scholars have gone back and forth about whether the threat Claudius rode off to face represented a continuation of the previous invasion.


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[Assistant] Or whether the Goths had abandoned Roman territory, regrouped and were now launching a second invasion.


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[Assistant] If there was a second invasion, it followed very closely the route taken in 267.


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[Assistant] With a massive gothic fleet heading down the Black Sea coast, passing into the Sea of Marmara, and from there into the Aegean, sacking and pillaging all along the way.


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[Assistant] When Claudius entered the Balkans, a gothic horde, that is, women and children, along with the men, possibly a hundred thousand strong, was loose in the mainland.


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[Assistant] The Romans and Goths met outside the city of Nisus, and though we don't know the size of the army Claudius led, the Goths are said to have fielded an army somewhere north of 50,000 men.


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[Assistant] The battle that followed was an extremely hard fought affair, but showing off that old Roman discipline, the Goths were finally broken when Claudius pulled the old faker retreat, then whirl around and smash your surprised opponent trick.


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[Assistant] But even a victory as great as the one at Gneissus was not decisive.


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[Assistant] A sizable contingent of the Goths managed to break free and push west into Macedonia.


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[Assistant] When Claudius broke through these defenses, the Goths once again took flight.


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[Assistant] But as I had no provisions to speak of, the chase itself was taking more of a toll on their remaining numbers than the Romans were.


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[Assistant] They finally holed up on the side of a mountain and found themselves immediately besieged and trapped.


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[Assistant] Disease and famine ripped through the gothic ranks and the chiefs quickly determined that they would not survive like this for very long.


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[Assistant] So they broke out again, and amazingly enough, the starving and exhausted Goths managed to penetrate the Roman line and point themselves towards home. But the final battle took too much out of them.


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[Assistant] And the last of the last survivors were quickly tracked down by the Roman cavalry, and with no strength left to fight, they gave up.


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[Assistant] But the circumstances of the times demanded that the Romans break out of the old enslave and annex routine that had served them so well for so long.


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[Assistant] The combination of disease and famine, near constant warfare and economic upheaval, had left the empire, and particularly the Danube provinces, overworked and undermanned.


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[Assistant] So Claudius decided to initiate a policy that had been used occasionally in the past, but never in any sort of systemic way.


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[Assistant] Putting them to work to boost the Roman economy rather than suck it dry and provide a new recruiting ground for the legions.


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[Assistant] Their brothers and sisters back north of the Danube were sure to take note of this shift in policy, though they would be well advised to also note that only defeated barbarians are allowed the privilege of Roman settlement.


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[Assistant] As we go forward, this policy of resettlement and enrollment of the able-bodied men into the legions will become standard imperial policy and serve as one of the key strategies employed to maintain peace in the borderlands.


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[Assistant] It should always be remembered that the massive defeat, for example, at Adrianople was caused not because the Goths were led into the empire by Valens, but instead because the migration was so badly mismanaged.


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[Assistant] As with most of Rome's victories these days, there was not long to savor the win at nices.


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[Assistant] After a ten year hiatus, the Alamani got the band back together again and decided to launch a comeback tour through northern Italy.


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[Assistant] The presumption is that after their defeat near Milan around 260, the Germans felt that they had made a peace deal between themselves and Gallienus, without necessarily recognizing the Roman state itself as a party to the negotiations. So, when Gallienus died,


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[Assistant] Well, that meant that it was now open season on Rome again.


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[Assistant] My assumption is that they waited for Claudius to withdraw back to the Danube before they made their move.


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[Assistant] But it could very well be that they invaded the minute that they heard the emperor was dead.


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[Assistant] Whatever the order of events, the outcome was the same.


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[Assistant] Claudius and his imperial army swept in and crushed the Alamani at Lake Benicus.


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[Assistant] The reported numbers have it that Claudius needed just 35,000 troops to kill or capture half of the 100,000 men of the Alamani army, which would be a stunning victory to say the least.


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[Assistant] But the enemy numbers probably refer to the whole Alamani contingent, not just the fighting men. So it is likely that the battle itself was evenly matched.


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[Assistant] Regardless, Claudius sent the Germans running home and established himself as basically the greatest thing to happen to Rome in a long, long time.


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[Assistant] In the span of just a few months, he had wiped the floor with the Goths and then the Germans and proved to the world that when it needed it, Rome still had it.


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[Assistant] Best of all was the fact that Claudius was leading the legions to all these victories personally. So there was no repeat of the whole victorious general gets proclaimed emperor dynamic that had kept dividing the empire immediately after its victories in the field.


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[Assistant] Rome's foreign enemies were knocked back on their heels enough that the emperor could begin thinking about the real prize, the reunification of the empire.


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[Assistant] Though the situation in the East was essentially the same as when he took office the year before, the situation in the West had changed dramatically. Posthumous was dead, killed by his own troops.


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[Assistant] And the political stability of the Gallic Empire was in serious doubt.


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[Assistant] Posthumous had been followed briefly on the throne by a man with the auspicious name Marcus Aurelius Marius.


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[Assistant] But his reign had been measured in days, and the western provinces were now being controlled by a noble name, Victorinus, backed by the deep pockets of his mother, Victoria.


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[Assistant] Only, the western provinces Victorinus controlled were not the same as the western provinces that Postumus had controlled.


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[Assistant] The Iberian peninsula took the death of posthumous as an opportunity to reconcile with Rome, and they switched their allegiance to Claudius.


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[Assistant] Leaving Victorinus with only Gaul and Britain as his domains.


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[Assistant] So, after defeating the Alamani, Claudius peeled off a good chunk of his army and handed it over to a lieutenant, with instructions to see how much more of the Gallic Empire could be brought back into the Roman fold.


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[Assistant] The answer was not all of it, as Claudius probably hoped.


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[Assistant] But was instead the not insignificant most of the Grown Valley.


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[Assistant] It was progress, and Claudius no doubt looked forward to being remembered as the man who restored the empire.


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[Assistant] He left this important mission to a lieutenant because in mid-269, a new player in our game began to mass on the Danube border looking like they were looking for trouble. The Vandals.


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[Assistant] As with the Goths, the true origins of the tribe that became known as the Vandals is obscure.


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[Assistant] But most scholars agree that they came from somewhere in Scandinavia and were settled northeast of the region between the Danube and Rhine rivers by the first centuries BC.


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[Assistant] Far enough off from the Empire that they were not major players in the early Imperial battles against their German neighbors.


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[Assistant] Though it is recorded that Marcus Aurelius made a separate peace with them during the Marcomannic Wars as he was looking to isolate the tribes from each other.


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[Assistant] During the population shifts of the third century though, they found themselves pressing up against the borders of the empire.


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[Assistant] And, likely hearing of the success the Goths were having, they decided to take a crack at Rome themselves.


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[Assistant] Claudius and the rest of his army made for Sirmium, the capital of lower Pannonia, which the emperor planned to make his headquarters during the coming offensive against the Vandals.


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[Assistant] Claudius, who would shortly become known to history as Claudius Gothicus for his great victory at Nysos, came down with the plague, and he died.


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[Assistant] He was 56 years old and had ruled the empire for just about 18 months.


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[Assistant] Though his short reign was defined by military success against Rome's foreign enemies.


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[Assistant] Claudius' most enduring legacy was the cabal of Illyrian officers he brought with him to the forefront of imperial politics.


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[Assistant] Most of the major military commands were now in the hands of his countrymen.


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[Assistant] And for the next generation, these Illyrian generals would dominate the Roman Empire.


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[Assistant] Culminating in the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, the Illyrian emperors breathed new life into a Roman empire that had been at death's door.


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[Assistant] True, it would be a different empire that emerged on the other side.


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[Assistant] But it would still be an intact empire, and that was what counted. Antiquity was not dead yet.


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[Assistant] Claudius had been so consumed by his labors though, that he never stopped to worry about the little matter of who would succeed him when he died.


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[Assistant] So, when he did die, the question was still hanging out there.


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[Assistant] As had happened when Decius died in the swamps of Ibridis. The Senate had one idea about who ought to rule, and the army had another.


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[Assistant] But there would be no generous concord between these rival choices, as there had been between Galus and Hostilian.


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[Assistant] Twenty years of additional non-stop warfare had made the Senate beyond irrelevant, and ignoring them would not really introduce any sort of significant discord into the mix.


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[Assistant] As long as the armies were of one mind, the possibility of civil war was low. And the armies were of one mind. They wanted Aurelian.


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[Assistant] Back in Rome, the Senate elevated Claudius' brother Quintillus, but he never stood a chance, and neither Aurelian nor his legions were too much worried about what the Senate thought about anything.


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[Assistant] Lucius Domitius Aurelianus had been born around 215 in the province of Pannonia to a tenant farmer of absolutely no consequence.


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[Assistant] He was just a few years younger than Claudius, and so, like the now-dead emperor, Aurelian came of age just as the crisis of the third century was heating up.


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[Assistant] And he thus spent his entire career embroiled in one war after another and rising up through the ranks every time a vacancy opened up.


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[Assistant] By the time of Gallienus's assassination, Aurelian was one of the top two or three generals in the Empire, closely associated with Claudius and the other Illyrian officers who had taken over the high command of the legions.


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[Assistant] He tolerated no fools and likely would have been as hated an officer as the legions could spit out were he not also fantastically talented and virtually unbeatable in the field.


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[Assistant] He took over command of the mobile cavalry when Claudius became emperor.


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[Assistant] And ran them against the Goths at Gnissus, leading the offensive that initially broke the invaders and then leading the pursuit that finished them off.


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[Assistant] They could not have chosen a better man for the job that lay ahead.


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[Assistant] When Aurelian assumed the purple in 270, the empire was not only still divided from itself, but in the east, Zenobia was making moves that signaled she had no intention of ever being brought back into the Roman fold.


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[Assistant] Perhaps as early as the last few months of Claudius' reign, Zenobia had ordered the Palmyrene army to enter Egypt and occupy Alexandria.


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[Assistant] At no point had Gallienists ever granted Oedonothus access to Egypt, let alone had Genome over it, and Zenobia's move was nothing less than an act of war.


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[Assistant] The maker breakpoint had come in the relationship between East and West.


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[Assistant] And the new Emperor Aurelion was absolutely dedicated with every fiber of his being to making sure that it did not break.


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[Assistant] Old Sword in Hand will begin his remarkable five-year run on the throne.


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[Assistant] During the big time question blowout that was the 100th episode of the History of Rome,


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[Assistant] This is a pretty conventional list, and apart from ordering and maybe subbing in Marcus Aurelius for someone, it's not going to cause much controversy.


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[Assistant] But one assumption that I made when putting the list together was that we were talking about career value rather than peak value.


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[Assistant] An obvious similarity between all the guys in my top 5 is that they each ruled for a long, long time.


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[Assistant] Trajan put in the shortest service time of the five, and he still ruled for more than 19 years.


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[Assistant] You can make a big impact when you have 20 or more years to work with, and so it should come as no surprise that my greatest emperors are also some of the longest serving emperors.


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[Assistant] But that's true as long as we're talking about greatest in terms of career value.


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[Assistant] See, when we sit around and debate who was the greatest pitcher of all time, or who was the greatest goalie of all time, or who was the greatest golfer of all time, we always need to make sure that everyone is on the same page.


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[Assistant] Are we talking about career value or are we talking about peak value?


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[Assistant] That is, are we talking about the guy who did the most, scored the most, blocked the most, won the most of all time?


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[Assistant] Maybe his career was cut short by injury, or he hit a wall when he turned 30 or whatever. But for a while, he was unhittable, undefendable, and unstoppable.


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[Assistant] Being the baseball fan that I am, I know the patron saint of peak value as Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax.


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[Assistant] You will not see his name on the list of most strikeouts all time, or most wins all time, or most innings of all time.


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[Assistant] But he put together five of the most dominant seasons that anyone has ever seen in the history of baseball.


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[Assistant] From 1962 to 1966, Sandy Koufax was the left hand of God, and his single season statistics during this period are absolutely mind boggling.


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[Assistant] I'm going to stop now so I don't spend the rest of the episode gushing about Sandy Koufax, and really, this is just a very roundabout way of saying that Lucius Domitius Aurelianus may not have been around long enough to accumulate the kind of all-time stats you need to crack into the top of the Emperor's career value list, but from 270 to 275,


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[Assistant] If you sometimes have trouble remembering which emperor was which during the third century and what happened during whose reign, just remember that Aurelian is the Sandy Cofax of Roman emperors. The rest, hopefully, should fall into place.


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[Assistant] Aurelion was in Thrace, serving as the captain of the mobile cavalry and doing advanced work for the coming campaign against the Vandals when Claudius died of the Cyprian Plague in 270 AD.


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[Assistant] It did not take long for the officers of the imperial army to track down the dead emperor's second in command and offer him supreme authority over the legions and, by extension, the empire.


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[Assistant] Back in Italy though, a word of Claudius' death immediately fired up the ambitions of a man by the name of Marcus Aurelius Claudius Quintillus, the younger brother of the dead emperor.


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[Assistant] Despite their frequent protests to the contrary, the Romans were as much enamored with blood ties as anyone else. And as he took over the role of powder familias from his brother,


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[Assistant] Quintillas had an eye on taking over the role of Emperor as well.


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[Assistant] Now, everyone and their mother knew that the Danublesians were going to turn to Aurelian.


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[Assistant] And there were many in the aristocracy who feared the ascension of Old Swordenhand, the no-nonsense soldier, who would likely have little room at his table for the Senate, who, let's face it, were chock full of nonsense. So they decided to back Quintillus' bid for the throne.


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[Assistant] The Danube legions really were the best of the best, and they made his Italian army look like it was, well, made of little more than hot air.


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[Assistant] Aurelion accepted the acclamation of the legions, and upon becoming emperor, well, one claimant anyway.


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[Assistant] His first move was to turn the armies around and march them back to Italy to establish his authority over the home province.


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[Assistant] Leading the legions away from the frontier to consolidate power right at the moment when they were needed on the borders to consolidate victory.


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[Assistant] Claudius had put his foot into the backsides of both the Alamani and the Goths, and a concentrated push against the remaining northern tribes might reestablish Roman power for a generation or more.


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[Assistant] With Claudius dead though, that all now appeared to be in jeopardy.


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[Assistant] But Aurelian managed to smash his way out of the trap, rather than falling by the wayside like Decius and Amelianus and Gauls before him.


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[Assistant] The northern tribes would take advantage of his withdrawal back to Italy, but they would come to regret it.


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[Assistant] Quintilis gathered his troops at Aquileia in preparation for the assumed invasion of Aurelian.


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[Assistant] But as they met and readied themselves, it became obvious quickly that this was starting to look an awful lot like a suicide mission.


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[Assistant] Eventually, the Danube legions, under the command of Aurelion, are going to come pouring down out of the Alpine passes. And then what are we gonna do? Defeat them in battle? I don't think so.


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[Assistant] Accounts differ as to the fate of Quintilis. That is, whether he was killed by his own troops or committed suicide.


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[Assistant] But they don't differ in having him dead as a doornail when Aurelian arrived in Italy.


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[Assistant] The troops Quintilis had gathered, needless to say, swore allegiance to Aurelion the first chance they got.


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[Assistant] As with everything else to do with the third century, the chronology of Aurelion's reign is very confused. And though we know the things that he did,


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[Assistant] We cannot hope to know exactly the order in which he did them.


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[Assistant] Right off the bat though, it seems that he headed back to the Balkans, because the Vandals had taken his withdrawal of the Legions as an open invitation to attack.


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[Assistant] The Vandals already posed enough of a threat that they were next up on Claudius' hit list when he died.


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[Assistant] And the disappearance of the Imperial Army only inflamed their passions. And before you could say the Emperor is dead, long live the Emperor, the Vandals were running amok in Pannonia.


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[Assistant] So after making sure Quintillus was dead and the troops in Italy were with him, Aurelian immediately charged back to the Balkans to push back the invading tribes.


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[Assistant] Aurelian's strategy for dealing with the vandals was to order that anything that could be consumed by men and horse be drawn inside the towns and cities of the provinces to leave the invading vandals without anything to eat.


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[Assistant] Once the lack of provisions began to drag the Vandals down, Aurelion swept in and crushed them in a quick battle.


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[Assistant] When the fighting was done, Aurelian allowed the remaining Vandals to return home, but with the stipulation that they hand over 2,000 cavalrymen to serve in the Roman army.


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[Assistant] With internal recruitment often coming up dry as a result of 20 years of famine, plague, and warfare, Aurelian knew that fresh recruits for his army were going to have to come from somewhere if he planned to reunify the empire, and the German tribes began to look like an excellent source of soldiers.


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[Assistant] The Vandal Horseman would not be the last, or even the largest, levy Aurelian would lay on defeated northern tribes.


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[Assistant] And it was during his reign that the so-called Germanization of the legions already underway in the form of temporary auxiliaries and sometime mercenaries would really begin in earnest.


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[Assistant] On an ad hoc basis, the Empire had always been able to get tribes from beyond the frontiers to fight for them, going back as far as Julius Caesar.


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[Assistant] But the process was about to become far more systematized and far more permanent.


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[Assistant] While he was overseeing the vandal retreat though, a word came that the Alamani, or likely just the Jathungi, one of their component tribes, was headed into Italy. The third time now in just over ten years that barbarians had set foot on the once perfectly safe peninsula of Italy.


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[Assistant] Leaving behind enough troops to remind the Vandals of their oath, Aurelian headed back to Italy, a trip that was becoming a nearly annual pilgrimage for the men of the Danube legions.


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[Assistant] When they reached the peninsula, Aurelian found that the Jathungi had overrun the Po Valley, sacked a number of towns, and were presently occupying the key city of Placentia.


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[Assistant] Aurelion made straight for the city, but in his haste to meet the enemy, he never gave his men time to rest, and when they finally arrived at Placentia, the legionaries were exhausted.


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[Assistant] Well, actually, that's not true. They never even reach the city.


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[Assistant] The Jethungi had set an ambush for the Romans, and right at sunset, the weary legions were ready to make camp and go to bed.


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[Assistant] But the Germans sprang out of the woods and put Aurelian and his army to a humiliating slight.


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[Assistant] Scattered and disoriented, it took some time to piece the legions back together.


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[Assistant] And in the meantime, the Jathungi pointed themselves south, aiming directly for Rome.


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[Assistant] The ambush at Placentia, though, was by no means a decisive victory for the Jithungi.


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[Assistant] And the embarrassment it caused Aurelion only ratcheted up his motivation to stop them. He regrouped his forces and gave chase.


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[Assistant] This time, keeping a close eye on the Jithungai's movement and waiting for the right moment to strike.


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[Assistant] He found his moment on the banks of the Mataurus River where he broadsided the Germans and ran them into the water, which swept a good number of them down to a watery grave.


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[Assistant] The battered Jathungi sent word to the emperor that they would like to parlay for peace and safe passage home.


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[Assistant] But their attitude was not sufficiently deferential for Aurelian, and he rejected their entreaties.


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[Assistant] Without a guarantee of safe passage, the Germans were forced to head north with Aurelian's army shadowing their movements and waiting again for the perfect opportunity to smash them up for good.


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[Assistant] This time, the opportunity came at PAVA, where Irelian forced the fleeing Jathungi into a pitched battle that they had no hope of winning.


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[Assistant] Completely defeated, the remaining Germans surrendered their captured booty and begged for mercy, which this time Aurelian allowed, if they gave their fighting men over to the legions.


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[Assistant] If they wanted to live, they'd have to fight for the empire, not against it.


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[Assistant] Some reports have this new influx of soldiers coming in at anywhere between 20 and 40,000 men.


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[Assistant] This was not small potatoes to an imperial army, badly weakened by the previous generation's strife.


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[Assistant] With the Frontiers finally quieted down a bit, and Italy free of invaders, Aurelian was finally able to make his triumphal entry into Rome in early 271, almost a year into his reign.


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[Assistant] Sporting the new title Germanicus Maximus for his recent victories, it is likely that Aurelian was expecting, if not enthusiastic greetings from the citizens of Rome, then at least a warm embrace.


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[Assistant] But Aurelian's entry into the city seems to have actually sparked riots and street fighting not seen since the days of the Flavian capture of Rome some 200 years before.


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[Assistant] The causes for this mass uprising were threefold. First,


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[Assistant] Was the disruption of the grain supply, which likely had been caused by Zenobius captured Egypt. And third,


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[Assistant] We have the massive fraud being undertaken daily at the main imperial mint in Rome, which is the reason the riots got started in the first place.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned a few episodes back, debasement of the coinage was a major problem for the Roman economy.


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[Assistant] And the damage done by official imperial policy was being hugely exacerbated by the conduct of the workers at the mint when it came time to actually produce the debased coins.


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[Assistant] Even the nominal amount of silver that was supposed to be going into the coins was having a hard time finding its way into circulation.


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[Assistant] And instead, kept getting routed into the pockets of the workers and administrators of the Mint.


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[Assistant] And of course, the pockets of any official tasked with overseeing the process.


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[Assistant] Aurelion had already signaled that he planned to revalue the coins back up to a respectable level.


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[Assistant] Respectable for the times being 5% silver in the denarius.


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[Assistant] And the mint workers were justifiably worried that when Aurelian found out that their additional graft was making things even worse than he thought, that he would be, well, displeased. And given Aurelian's fearsome reputation, displeased meant that heads were likely to roll. Literally.


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[Assistant] So when Aurelian arrived in Rome, the mint workers took to the streets and began demonstrating against the new regime.


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[Assistant] Soon enough, they had ginned up their narrowly selfish cause into a general strike and full-blown street riots broke out.


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[Assistant] Egged on by senators and equites who had backed Quintillus and who hoped to drive a reliant out of power before he had a chance to do any damage to their interests.


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[Assistant] Angry at the sedition and unwavering in his commitment to putting down the mob.


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[Assistant] Aurelian called in regular troops to back up the urban cohorts who were clashing daily with the enraged citizenry.


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[Assistant] Thousands were dying on both sides. But pretty soon.


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[Assistant] Order was restored as the overmatched civilians were driven back into their homes.


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[Assistant] When the full story of how the Mint Riots got started came out.


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[Assistant] The citizens of Rome found Aurelian had passed well beyond displeased.


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[Assistant] A quick and ruthless purge followed that took the lives not just of the mint administrators, but also the senators and equites who had supported first their fraud and then their riots.


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[Assistant] When Aurelian's harsh justice was done being metered out, the emperor then took the unprecedented step of simply closing the Rome mint down for good.


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[Assistant] Though this extraordinary measure was undertaken specifically because Aurelian did not feel that he could now trust Rome to implement his reformist monetary policies.


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[Assistant] It had the effect of being one of the final nails in the coffin of Rome's political and economic relevance.


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[Assistant] A decade later, Diocletian would be able to come to power and avoid visiting the Eternal City for 19 years without any serious repercussions.


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[Assistant] Its power as a symbolic force was still immense. Even Diocletian could not deny that.


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[Assistant] And the recent string of Italian invasions had gotten Aurelian and his fellow officers thinking about how best to protect the living embodiment of the empire.


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[Assistant] For more than 200 years, the defensive strategy that had been invented by Augustus and brought to a full realization by Hadrian had worked just fine. Post-legionary garrisons on the frontiers, build walls to control cross-border movement,


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[Assistant] And focus militarily and politically on keeping the Rhine and Danube tribes divided from one another.


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[Assistant] For generation after generation, the strategy had worked out as well as anyone could have hoped.


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[Assistant] And with the frontier garrisons easily absorbing whatever foreign encroachments came along,


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[Assistant] There was little reason to worry about maintaining the local defenses of the towns and cities in the interior. But times had changed.


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[Assistant] Squeeze between Rome on one side, and rising eastern powers like the Huns on the other, and we'll get to them soon enough.


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[Assistant] The German tribes were now well down the road towards regional unification.


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[Assistant] Which rendered the old divide and conquer technique obsolete.


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[Assistant] It also meant that the various Legionary Garrisons now face enemy numbers far in excess of anything that they had had to face before or were equipped to handle.


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[Assistant] It used to be that a legion or three could stop up any leak with ease.


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[Assistant] But now torrents of Germans in the hundreds of thousands were blowing past the completely outnumbered garrisons with impunity.


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[Assistant] Compounding this problem was the fact that, for domestic political reasons, emperors could no longer afford to place the kind of troop numbers necessary to combat these supersized invasion forces under the command of some random general.


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[Assistant] If a general had enough troops to face down the Alamani or the Goths, then he had enough troops to steal the throne.


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[Assistant] Gallienus had recognized this problem and made sure that he was always at the head of the most massive army the empire could put together, complete with its totally dominant mobile cavalry.


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[Assistant] But that meant that wherever this great imperial army wasn't, well, that is where the Germans would be. For Gallienus and then Claudius and now Aurelian,


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[Assistant] This meant an awful lot of rushing around, trying to expel invaders after they had already invaded.


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[Assistant] In terms of grand strategy, it meant that the Romans had completely lost the initiative. Which, yeaah, was bad. But on a purely practical level,


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[Assistant] It really meant that the great cities of the empire, including Rome, were now completely vulnerable to attack.


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[Assistant] That the Imperial Army would maybe be able to arrive next month and try to reclaim the captured goods from some raid and punish the raiders usually came as cold comfort to the citizens of the raided city.


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[Assistant] If the outer walls of the Empire, those built by Domitian and Hadrian, were no longer enough to keep foreign invasion at bay, then the Empire needed new walls.


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[Assistant] Walls that would allow communities to stave off defeat until the Imperial Army could arrive and drive the invaders off. What the Empire needed was city walls.


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[Assistant] On their own initiative, many cities near the frontiers had already upgraded their defensive walls.


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[Assistant] But Aurelian now put the imperial stamp of approval on the idea of permanently fortified cities.


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[Assistant] By ordering a massive wall circuit built around Rome itself.


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[Assistant] As Rome's power had grown, so too had the city grown.


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[Assistant] And the old Servian walls, built in the aftermath of the Galaxac, way back in the 4th century BC,


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[Assistant] And for essentially the entire imperial period, Rome was an unwalled city.


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[Assistant] And one so far from the front lines that no one gave it another thought. Now, they were thinking about it all the time.


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[Assistant] During his brief stay in Rome in 271, Aurelian wasted no time sketching out plans for a new fortification circuit.


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[Assistant] That would include areas like, say, the campus marshes.


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[Assistant] Which once upon a time had been an empty field, but was now a bustling urban area that housed some of Rome's most important civic buildings, including the Pantheon and Pompey's Theatre.


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[Assistant] The new wall circuit, eventually dubbed the Aurelian Walls for obvious reasons, would grow to be 19 kilometers long.


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[Assistant] As originally built, the walls were 3.5 meters thick and 8 meters high. Though in the 400s AD, when the going really got rough, the height was doubled to 16 meters.


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[Assistant] Every hundred Roman feet, there was a 26 meter tall guard tower, so that eventually there were over 350 of these fortified towers looming over the city.


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[Assistant] In the end, there were 18 heavily defended main gates that limited access to the city, and five postern gates.


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[Assistant] Which were essentially secret doors that allowed defenders to sneak in and out of the city without the enemy noticing.


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[Assistant] Because Aurelion's overriding concern was that the walls be completed as fast as possible.


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[Assistant] His engineers were ordered to incorporate as many existing buildings as possible into the design so as little new construction as possible would be needed.


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[Assistant] Normally, a project so overtly military as the Aurelian Walls would have been built by soldiers.


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[Assistant] But given the circumstances, Aurelion could not spare a single legionary, and he had to rely on civilian conscripts to do almost all the work.


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[Assistant] leading to irregularities in both the quality of the work and the aesthetic design of the different sections.


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[Assistant] As different crews work double time to complete their designated zones.


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[Assistant] But even the record time Rome went from being naive and open to jaded and shut tight was too long for Aurelian, who died just before the last gaps were bridged.


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[Assistant] It was left to his successor Probus to formally dedicate the completed fortifications.


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[Assistant] I have posted some pictures at thehistoryofrome.typad.com to give you an idea of the size and scope of these impressive new defense systems.


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[Assistant] The Aurelian walls were solid proof that Rome was undergoing a permanent transformation.


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[Assistant] For centuries, the empire had been a bubble, with everyone living inside the bubble, nonchalantly coming and going without a care in the world. Now, that bubble was burst.


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[Assistant] And at any moment, a barbarian horde could come pouring in over the horizon.


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[Assistant] The ever resilient Romans, though, had no intention of ceding their lives and territory simply because the old defensive lines were broken.


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[Assistant] And in place of the one huge bubble that they had lived in for so long, they built hundreds of tiny bubbles that dotted the provinces.


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[Assistant] When Aurelian built his walls around Rome, it was a signal to every other urban center to do the same.


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[Assistant] So now, though the barbarians were still able to cross the borders of the empire with ease, they would no longer find easy pickings on the other side when they did so.


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[Assistant] As the frontiers of the empire were reduced to mere theory.


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[Assistant] The Romans drew back the practical lines of defense right to their city limits. It was a strategic retreat that allowed Rome to regain the initiative. It said to the barbarians, okay, you're here, but now what are you going to do?


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[Assistant] We've hidden everything of value behind these walls, and you completely stink at siege warfare. Your move.


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[Assistant] Confident that he had set the center of the empire on a path to true security.


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[Assistant] He cast his sights on the great prize that had been dancing just out of Rome's reach for the last decade. The reunification of her empire.


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[Assistant] Zenobia's capture of Egypt was absolutely unacceptable.


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[Assistant] And despite the official partnership that existed between Rome and Palmyra, there was no doubt that the two powers were now headed towards war.


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[Assistant] Aurelion planned to not just initiate the final conflict, but to win it outright.


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[Assistant] Palmyra would be laid low and the east would be brought back into the empire.


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[Assistant] Ever since the death of her husband in 267, the Palmyrene Queen Zenobia had shown herself to be a formidable new player in the great game of power politics.


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[Assistant] In an age where every soldier was a potential emperor, and every territory a potential new kingdom.


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[Assistant] Zenobia had not only held onto the power and land she had inherited from Odinothus, but little by little, she managed to expand upon it.


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[Assistant] The power and prestige of Rome was at an all time low, and Zenobia was taking full advantage of the eternal city's eclipse.


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[Assistant] She was shrewd and ambitious and capable, and had the ball of fate bounce this way instead of that, she might just have permanently severed Brohm's claim to the East.


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[Assistant] Empires evolved and devolved all the time, and by Zenobia's estimation, the sun was setting on Rome's almost 350 years of dominance over the Eastern Mediterranean.


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[Assistant] The standing between Zenobia and a new independent Palmyrene empire, though, was an Illyrian emperor named Aurelian, who, like his brother officers, was obsessed with the idea of reuniting the empire.


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[Assistant] It had become their almost religious mission in life and nothing was going to stop them. Certainly not some oriental queen.


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[Assistant] Consumed as he was with Germanic invasions and riots in Rome though.


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[Assistant] Aurelian was at first unable to deal with said oriental queen, even as she thumbed her nose at Roman authority.


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[Assistant] Probably upon receiving the news that Claudius was dead, Zenobia and her top general Zabdis had taken the opportunity to lead the Palmyrene army into Egypt, expel the Roman garrison, and occupy Alexandria.


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[Assistant] Whatever official or unofficial understanding existed between Rome and Palmyra, the status of Egypt was never in play.


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[Assistant] It was a Roman province to be held by a Roman prefect, duly appointed by a Roman emperor, just as it had been since the days of Augustus.


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[Assistant] In other words, her invasion of Egypt was way, way out of bounds.


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[Assistant] But matching her own audacity in seizing Alexandria, Zenobia then pretended like nothing at all was amiss.


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[Assistant] After the brief power struggle following Claudius' death confirmed Aurelian was the new master of Rome.


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[Assistant] Zenobia dutifully issued coins from the Alexandrian Mints, featuring Aurelian's name and image.


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[Assistant] True, the back of those coins feature the image of her young son, Vebalethus, who, it should be recalled, Zenobia was ruling through.


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[Assistant] But her son was not presented as Augustus, as Aurelian clearly was.


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[Assistant] Further, official documents in the East were issued using letterhead that presented Aurelian's name first and Vivaldi's second.


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[Assistant] You see, nothing is amiss here. Rome and Palmyra are partners in power. And as is just, and as is right, Rome is and will remain the senior and dominant partner.


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[Assistant] But while officially downplaying Palmyrian independence, Zenobia was clearly not planning to stop with the annexation of Egypt.


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[Assistant] The Palmyrene claims to the Eastern Empire had always been a weird mixture of personal prerogative and sanctioned super authority.


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[Assistant] And as I mentioned a few episodes back, it is likely that the governance of Syria and its various municipalities had been left in the hands of the same local officials who had been running the show prior to the rise of Odin office. Now, Zenobia sought something a little more concrete.


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[Assistant] Working through agents and allies in the various cities of Syria, especially Antioch.


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[Assistant] She arranged for each in turn to begin the process of formally recognizing Palmyra as their political master.


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[Assistant] Through skillful diplomacy, Zenobia was able to secure direct control of Syria while avoiding the use of military force.


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[Assistant] Following up on this success, she initiated the same process in Asia Minor, and pretty soon, half of Anatolia had come around to recognizing Palmyra as their capital.


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[Assistant] Zenobia could issue all the coins and declarations under Aurelion's name that she wished, but it was obvious that it was all so much kabuki.


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[Assistant] The alliance Gallienus had made with Odinothus had been born of a particular set of circumstances facing Rome at a time of emergency.


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[Assistant] And the mere fact of its perpetuation now that the emergency had passed was already a daily slap in the face to the proud officers of the Roman High Command.


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[Assistant] Zenobia's attempt to revise and extend the power of Palmyra was not just insulting men, it was an act of war.


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[Assistant] So in 271, Aurelian gathered up his imperial army and marched them out of Italy.


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[Assistant] Beginning a journey that would eventually see them march all the way to the gates of Palmyra and back again. And then back to the gates of Palmyra.


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[Assistant] And I can tell you, when Aurelian has to go back the second time, he really, really isn't going to be happy about it.


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[Assistant] But before the legions could begin their march to the east in earnest, they had to settle the situation in the Balkans.


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[Assistant] And despite the fact that the invasions of their countrymen were now routinely ending in defeat at the hands of the legions, some gothic tribes were still keen on the idea of raiding the empire for its wealth.


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[Assistant] So, as Aurelian reached the Danube frontier, he found the provinces once again littered with gothic invaders.


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[Assistant] This batch, though, was nothing like the massive waves that had come down south in the 260s, indicating that Gothic power had been significantly affected by the previous decade's misadventures in Roman territory.


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[Assistant] But there was still enough of them on the loose to require Aurelion to stop short and deal with him.


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[Assistant] An interesting footnote to this brief gothic campaign is that the tide of battle was turned when the gothic king leading the invasion was killed.


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[Assistant] The sources have this gothic king being named as some variation of Kanna-Buddhis.


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[Assistant] Which is similar enough phonetically to a certain gothic king who, twenty years before, had destroyed the legions out of British and killed two emperors, to make some wonder if King Cannibutus and King Canoeva were not in fact the same person.


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[Assistant] If they were, then his death would have been sweet revenge for the Romans, much like Galerius' future capture of the Sassanid royal family will come as sweet revenge for the Persian imprisonment of Valerian.


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[Assistant] As concerned with the future security of the Danube frontier as he was with the future security of Rome, Aurelian likely took this moment to initiate his controversial plan to dramatically tighten up the Roman defensive line.


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[Assistant] The province of Dacia, sticking out like a sore thumb north of the Danube, had only avoided Hadrian's consolidation of Roman holdings some 150 years before, because the blood, sweat and tears that had gone into winning it was still fresh in everybody's mind.


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[Assistant] To give it up would have been an affront to the memories of those who had just fought and died to take it.


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[Assistant] So Hadrian was forced against his better judgement to leave it be. Also, it had some pretty sweet gold and silver mines. But the mines were dried up now.


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[Assistant] And in every way, Dacia was a lead weight around Rome's neck.


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[Assistant] It added over 500 miles to the military perimeter of the empire without offering any kind of strategic or tactical value in return.


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[Assistant] The mountainous province had never been colonized or romanized properly. And, bottom line, hanging on to Dacia put the empire in greater danger than it needed to be in. The empire was already in great danger. It didn't need to be in greater danger.


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[Assistant] He was careful to make the process as steady and organized as possible.


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[Assistant] That is, he didn't just go around blaring a siren telling everybody to grab what they could and get out.


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[Assistant] But he made it very clear that in the near future, the order was going to come for the troops on the Dacian frontier to abandon their posts and reentrench on the south bank of the Danube. Anyone left in Dacia would be on their own.


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[Assistant] Some, living lives far closer to their quote, barbarian enemies than their Roman neighbors, did indeed stay put. But most everyone else packed up and headed south.


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[Assistant] When the order finally came to remove the Roman troops, a collection of Goths was ready and waiting to move in.


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[Assistant] Their migration into Dacia came with the approval of Aurelian, who worked out a deal involving trade rights and certain other concessions in exchange for these new Dacian Goths to agree to act as a military buffer to other Germanic tribes.


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[Assistant] The new frontier line was thus not only shorter and easier to defend.


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[Assistant] But it came equipped with a buffer zone that absorbed the brunt of many a potential invasion force.


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[Assistant] The evacuation of Dacia was as sound a policy as Rome had seen in a long time.


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[Assistant] But there was no mistaking the fact that good old Terminus, the implacable Roman god of boundaries, who once planted, refused to be moved, had now been moved. That did not bode well for the future.


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[Assistant] Probably because he was not totally insensible to the optics of abandoning a fully incorporated province.


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[Assistant] Aurelian carved out of Moesia, a new province, which he dubbed Dacia.


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[Assistant] Now he could plausibly argue that he had not abandoned Dacia so much as moved south of the Danube. See? There it is right there on the map.


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[Assistant] Okay, maybe he couldn't plausibly argue that, but it is worth noting that a province called Dacia still existed after Trajan's territory had been abandoned.


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[Assistant] The main point though was that while a Dacia still existed, the old Dacia was now gone.


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[Assistant] It had long been a back door into the Empire, exploited endlessly by Rome's enemies, and Aurelian had now locked that door.


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[Assistant] Rome was safer and more secure for his decision.


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[Assistant] With walls being built around the cities of the Empire and the long Ganyu frontier now left far more manageable, Aurelion could finally turn body and soul to his divinely ordained mission.


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[Assistant] Number two, reassert realm and control over the rest of the eastern provinces. And three, knock Palmyra down a peg or five.


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[Assistant] His own army was too cumbersome to quickly deal with the first priority. So Aurelian ordered one of his officers, possibly the future Emperor Probus, to gather up a fleet and sail immediately for Alexandria.


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[Assistant] With luck, Probus, or whoever it actually was, there are good reasons to believe Probus was actually in Gaul through this whole period.


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[Assistant] The Imperial Army could focus all of its energy on regaining control of Syria. Priority 3 would then be a foregone conclusion.


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[Assistant] The preparations underway in the Imperial camp did not pass unnoticed by Zenobia.


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[Assistant] Knowing that Aurelian was likely coming no matter what her next move was, the Palmyrene Queen decided to go all-in, abandoning any pretense of partnership with Rome and issuing coins and orders under the auspices of Vibalithus alone.


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[Assistant] The Palmyrene court then advanced to a Mesa, where Zenobia set up a forward base from which to confront Aurelian when he emerged into Syria.


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[Assistant] With a little luck, the cities of Asia Minor that she had recently brought into the Palmyrene Fold would stick with their new eastern benefactor and resist the advance of Aurelian.


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[Assistant] And it would hopefully be a much worn down Roman army that Zenobia and Zabdus would have to face.


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[Assistant] But Aurelion, as I think I've mentioned, was a no nonsense kind of guy.


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[Assistant] He had no time for prolonged sieges and no intention of continuing without ensuring that all of Anatolia was subdued.


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[Assistant] So, much to Zenobia's chagrin, Aurelion picked a third option from the hat.


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[Assistant] Forced the cities of Asia Minor to capitulate with minimal fighting and then proceed safely and securely onto Syria.


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[Assistant] The further west you went, the looser the ties to Palmyra. And as Aurelian advanced east, the cities that he approached opened their gates without a fight.


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[Assistant] Aurelion had a fierce reputation and there was very little doubt that should he be defied that the Emperor's wrath would be swift and deadly.


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[Assistant] Aurelion was well aware that his reputation was preceding him, and he used it to great effect.


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[Assistant] But to no greater effect than when he finally reached a city that attempted to hold out.


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[Assistant] Moving south towards the Cilician gates, the Imperial army reached the city of Tyna.


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[Assistant] Closer now to the center of Palmyra's power, the leaders of Tyna made a calculated decision to hold out against Aurelion and hopefully find great rewards for themselves in a new Palmyrene Empire.


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[Assistant] But resisting Irelian and enduring a prolonged siege was not on the to-do list of everyone in Tyna, and the city was quickly betrayed into Irelian's hands. Everyone held their breath.


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[Assistant] Here was a city that had essentially spit in the face of Rome. How bloody was Aurelian's retribution going to be?


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[Assistant] The soldiers prepared to do some serious sacking. The citizens prepared to endure some serious sacking.


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[Assistant] But Aurelian emerged from his tent, and to the surprise of everyone, announced that there would be no reprisals, no sacking, no punishments. Instead, a general pardon was declared.


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[Assistant] According to the official legend, Aurelian had been visited in a dream by Apollonius, the famous philosophical son of Tyna, who by the third century was being put forward as a sort of pagan answer to the growing cult of Jesus Christ.


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[Assistant] According to the legend, on the eve of Tyne's capitulation, Apollonius visited Aurelian and told the emperor that if he desired to rule, that he must abstain from shedding the blood of innocence, and that if he planned to conquer, he must also plan to be merciful.


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[Assistant] Whether it was the ghost of a dead philosopher or the shrewd mind of a Raelian that led Tyna to be spared, the decision was a masterstroke.


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[Assistant] Further east, the leading men of the cities that had gone over solidly to Palmyra had rightly feared punishment at the hands of Aurelian.


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[Assistant] But the example of Tyna proved that the emperor was in a forgiving mood.


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[Assistant] As the Imperial Army continued Southeast cities that would have resisted out of a desperate belief that they were doomed one way or the other, now threw open their gates.


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[Assistant] Each city was given the same light treatment, compounding a wave of capitulation that led Aurelian all the way to the doorstep of Antioch.


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[Assistant] The Emperor's surprise decision to play off type led not just to a far easier campaign for his legions,


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[Assistant] But also, it laid the groundwork for an amicable return of the eastern provinces into the Roman fold. Aurelian wanted to reunify the empire.


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[Assistant] Laying terrible waste to the countryside might allow him to occupy the east, but it would unify nothing.


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[Assistant] As the emperor continued his march, a word came up from Egypt that the fleet he had dispatched to retake Alexandria had landed and easily expelled the Palmyrian garrison, meaning that priority one was already now checked off the list.


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[Assistant] Watching her recently won political games melt away, an undeterred Zenobia prepared for war.


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[Assistant] Deploying Zabdus and the Palmyrene army between Aurelian and Antioch.


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[Assistant] Now, the Palmyrene army, especially the cataphracts, their much vaunted armored cavalry, was a force to be reckoned with in any situation.


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[Assistant] But fighting on their home turf against legionaries not used to combat in the heat of the desert appeared to make them invincible.


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[Assistant] But Irelian was a master strategist and tactician and he had a plan to defeat the Palmyrenes and troops who were disciplined enough to pull it off.


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[Assistant] After a few days maneuvering around Antioch, Aurelian and Zabdus finally met in battle in May or June of 272.


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[Assistant] Knowing that defeating the Cataphracts was the key to victory, Aurelion employed the same ruse Claudius had used against the Goths at Nysas.


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[Assistant] Aruz, Aurelian knew the devastating effects of first hand, as he had been the general leading the cavalry that day.


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[Assistant] While the infantry on both sides shuffled their feet, Aurelion ordered his cavalry to directly attack the cataphracts.


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[Assistant] At a pre-arranged moment, the Roman cavalry suddenly broke apart and began to flee from the field.


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[Assistant] With the Roman horsemen retreating in what appeared to be a panic, the Palmyran cataphracts gave chase, smugly convinced that they were about to secure their own legend by crushing the cream of the Roman legions. But, you know what comes next.


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[Assistant] After leading the cataphracts on a merry chase that wore out the heavily armored Palmyrenes, the Roman cavalry wheeled around at a second prearranged moment and as one unit barreled straight into the surprised and exhausted cataphracts, devastating their ranks and allowing only a few to escape with their lives.


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[Assistant] As soon as Zabdis learned the fate of his armored cavalry, he knew that the battle was lost. His infantry was no match for the Roman infantry.


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[Assistant] And wasting little time, Zabdis ordered a retreat back to Antioch.


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[Assistant] Inside the city, panic gripped the local leaders, who had, rashly they now realized, thrown their lot in with the enemies of Rome.


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[Assistant] Aurelion had thus far displayed almost supernatural clemency, but who knew how long that was going to hold out.


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[Assistant] Nervous as they were though, the city fathers figured that as long as the Palmyrene army was there to protect them, that there was still hope.


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[Assistant] had packed up and marched his army in the direction of a Mesa in the middle of the night.


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[Assistant] Aurelion entered Antioch unchallenged and was greeted by a citizen body prepared for the worst.


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[Assistant] But again, Aurelian proved to be of a much higher mind than anyone gave him credit for. Another general pardon was issued, and Syria was back in Roman hands.


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[Assistant] With priority one already accomplished and priority two well in hand, all that was left was priority three, the crushing of Palmyra.


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[Assistant] Aurelian lingered in Antioch for a few weeks, waiting on reinforcements to ensure they would only have to make one trip into the desert. And when they finally arrived, the emperor headed northeast to the city of Ammisa, where Zenobia and Zabdus were holed up with the Palmyrene royal treasury and an army 70,000 strong.


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[Assistant] The significance of the coming battle nor the significance of the coming battle site were missed.


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[Assistant] Though it seemed like a lifetime ago, only 12 years had elapsed since Valerian had walked out to meet his fate on the same plains beside Emisa.


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[Assistant] Would Aurelian exercise Rome's demons, or would the desert city become known to history as the Slayer of Emperors?


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[Assistant] In the battle that followed, Aurelion once again attempted to lure the palm irons out with a fake retreat.


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[Assistant] But this time, his lines came too close to the Palmyrenes and the chase was over before it got going.


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[Assistant] The Roman ranks, infantry and cavalry alike, were soon engulfed in bloody confusion.


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[Assistant] But the less disciplined Paul Myerings pushed their advantage too hard, which led to a breakup of their line.


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[Assistant] A breakup which was exploited to deadly effect by the Romans.


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[Assistant] First flanking, and then surrounding the Palmyrenes, slaughter ensued.


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[Assistant] Zabdas and a few officers escaped back to the city, where they collected Zenobia and the rest of the royal family, and dashed back to the relative safety of Palmyra. There was not even time to collect the treasury.


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[Assistant] Which was music to the ears of the cash strapped Aurelian.


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[Assistant] Still defiant, Palmyra refused to yield just yet, and Aurelian was forced to begin a siege in the middle of the desert in the middle of summer.


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[Assistant] Now, being the oasis city that it was, Palmyra was well situated to hold out against the Romans and their dicey supply lines, but that was just in the near term. Long term,


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[Assistant] Zenobia recognized that they were going to need help if they wanted to get out of their fight with Rome Alive.


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[Assistant] The only place they could possibly turn to for help, though, was, awkwardly, the Sassanids.


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[Assistant] The Persians were not likely to have forgotten that Odinothus had brought Palmyra to power by defeating and humiliating them.


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[Assistant] But in her desperation, Zenobia felt that she had no choice but to turn to them for aid.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately for the Palmyrenes though, Sharapur, the great king who had captured an emperor and sacked Antioch, was dying.


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[Assistant] And the Sassanids were divided and distracted by the question of who was going to succeed him.


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[Assistant] Under different circumstances, the Persians might have decided to go to war for Palmyra. But right now, it was out of the question.


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[Assistant] So she decided to risk everything by traveling to the Sassonid capital and making her case in person.


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[Assistant] Aurelion was alerted to the fact that the Queen had slipped out of the city and was heading east.


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[Assistant] A Roman cavalry detachment quickly caught up and overtook the Palmyrenes and Zenobia.


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[Assistant] The Eastern Queen, who very nearly made herself the equal of a Roman Emperor, was now his prisoner.


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[Assistant] The rank and file of the legions clamored for her death, but Aurelion would have none of it.


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[Assistant] After a generation of bad news, Aurelian was finally putting together a record the Romans could celebrate, and he planned to let them celebrate his victories with a good old fashioned triumph.


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[Assistant] And what was a triumph without Rome's enemies marched through the streets of the eternal city in chains?


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[Assistant] Back inside Palmyra, news of the Queen's capture sparked a brief fight between moderates and diehards about whether to capitulate.


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[Assistant] The war-weary moderates quickly suppressed the diehards and the gates of the city were opened.


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[Assistant] As he had done for the entirety of his eastern campaign, Aurelian showed restraint when dealing with the citizens of Palmyra, announcing that there would be no bloody reprisals for their breach of faith.


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[Assistant] Unlike the cities of the Empire proper though, this time, Aurelian allowed his men, who had thus far been denied any real spoils, a nice organized sacking of the rich oasis city in the desert.


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[Assistant] And of course, the Palmyrene High Command could not be treated as lightly as the leaders of Antioch or Tyna.


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[Assistant] After a brief public trial, the leaders of Palmyra, including Zabdis, were put to death.


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[Assistant] The fate of Vibalethus is unknown, though by one account he's going to die on the trip to Rome. But he's not very important anyway. Zenobia was the real prize. And Aurelian had her.


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[Assistant] With the eastern half of the empire now back under Roman control, Aurelian could turn to the west.


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[Assistant] The dream of a reunited empire was still only half fulfilled.


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[Assistant] And next week, Aurelion will turn his full attention on the Gallic Empire.


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[Assistant] The death of posthumous had left the western provinces without a strong leader.


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[Assistant] And Aurelian reckoned that capturing Gaul would be a whole lot easier than recapturing Syria. And he was right.


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[Assistant] I want to close this week by letting you all know that the history of Rome has apparently been nominated for a podcast award.


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[Assistant] We are in the running for best educational podcast of 2010 and the award will be decided by an internet vote.


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[Assistant] And vote for us, then we have a pretty good shot at me forever after referring to the history of Rome as award winning podcast, the history of Rome.


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[Assistant] Kind of like the way Pabst has gotten so much mileage out of that one blue ribbon they won that one time.


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[Assistant] You can vote once a day, so feel free to go crazy, and let's win this thing.


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[Assistant] I also want to mention that the final nominees were selected based on the number of nominations each show got.


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[Assistant] After a grueling march across the empire and an even more grueling summer campaign in the desert, Aurelian finally defeated Palmyra and captured Queen Zenobia in late 272 AD.


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[Assistant] Under different circumstances, a victory of this magnitude might have earned the Emperor a rest from his labors, but no such luck.


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[Assistant] Leaving behind a garrison under the command of a lieutenant named Marcelinus, the indefatigable Aurelian gathered up his equally indefatigable army and marched back to the Danube. An emperor's work is never done.


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[Assistant] Once Aurelian had left Palmyra though, some of the leaders of the defeated city began to regret their surrender.


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[Assistant] Apparently, the ambitions of these leading citizens was only stifled when the emperor was right there on top of them.


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[Assistant] Now that he wasn't around, it was time to go back to dreaming about an independent Palmyrene kingdom again.


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[Assistant] These leading men quickly joined in a conspiracy that centered around Zenobia's youngest son, still basically an infant, but the best they could do on short notice.


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[Assistant] The men of Palmyra grew bold enough in their plans that they actually approached Marcellinus, the Roman garrison commander, offering him great rewards if he and his men joined their cause.


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[Assistant] The savvy Marcelinus told the Palmeirans that this was a very tempting offer and that he would surely take some time to think the matter through fully.


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[Assistant] The Palmyrene's left thinking that a nudge in the right direction is all it would take to flip Marcellinus.


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[Assistant] Marcelinus left thinking that he better send a message to Aurelian right away so that the emperor could come back and crush these ungrateful wretches.


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[Assistant] Aurelian was engaged along the Danube in an operation that required the presence of the Imperial army, but not much more than that, when he received the note from Marcellinus about the conspiracy.


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[Assistant] The garrison commander assured Aurelian that he had bought the emperor some time by pretending to consider joining the revolt, but that his little game would not play forever. Aurelian sighed, packed up his army, and marched back to Palmyra. In a foul mood.


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[Assistant] Under the impression that the emperor was far away and fully engaged with a Germanic invasion, the Palmyrians showed themselves to be simultaneously overconfident and ill-prepared.


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[Assistant] While they laxadaisically got ready for war, they made contact with allies in Alexandria and induced a faction there to revolt in advance of the new Palmyrene Offensive, which they all thought they had plenty of time to prepare for.


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[Assistant] It came as a mortal shock to everyone then, perhaps even Marcelinus himself, when Aurelian and his army appeared on the horizon right at the beginning of Spring 273.


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[Assistant] A half-hearted effort was made to defend Palmyra, but nothing was in place and no one was ready.


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[Assistant] Aurelion took the city without a fight and once again marched in as its conqueror.


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[Assistant] As in his previous conquest, Aurelian showed himself unwilling to engage in a bloody free-for-all. And after executing everyone associated with the revolt, he let the rest of the citizens live.