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[Assistant] Actual administration of the provinces, though, was critically left in the hands of a general by the name of Ingenus, who we will have cause to deal with in just a moment.


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[Assistant] The invasion Gallienus rush pack to deal with eventually became serious enough to draw all three members of the Imperial Tripartite to the lower Rhine.


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[Assistant] Valerian took a gamble that he would be able to leave the east in the hands of subordinates without triggering an invasion by Sharpor, and, with Syria mostly rebuilt, he headed to Gaul in 257 to personally oversee the situation. That gamble would not pay off.


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[Assistant] As soon as Valerian left, the Sassonids were once again on the move.


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[Assistant] Obviously, this raises the question, what in the world could have been so serious that it brought Valerian all the way back from Syria to face?


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[Assistant] The answer lies in a super confederation of Germanic tribes making their first, but certainly not last, appearance in the history of Rome. The Franks.


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[Assistant] The Franks, who in time would become the reason why we call France, France, and not Gaul, were, as I just said, formed out of a collection of Germanic tribes who lived primarily along the lower Rhine.


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[Assistant] Likely included among their number were the Batavians, who, you'll recall, revolted against Roman rule while the empire was occupied with the year of the four emperors.


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[Assistant] The Chatti, who demissioned so successfully propagandized victories over, and elements of the Cheruski, the tribe Arminius had led to victory in the Tudiburg forest.


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[Assistant] This new confederation was formed gradually over the years, as the various Germanic leaders realized that they were getting nowhere fighting amongst themselves.


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[Assistant] The new Frankish supergroup was by no means a unified whole at this point, and the various barbarian kings still exercised a great deal of autonomy.


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[Assistant] But this new spirit of Germanic cooperation would in time become one of the answers to the question, why did the West fall when it did?


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[Assistant] Well, let's just say that there's a reason we call France France and not Gaul.


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[Assistant] In 257, Valerian Gallienus and Valerian II all appear to have been in the modern city of Cologne, along the lower Rhine, dealing with the sudden Frankish onslaught.


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[Assistant] Though the Franks were pushed back like all the other invaders of the mid-250s AD, at least one group kept moving forward and eventually crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, sacking the undefended coast towns of the deep interior.


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[Assistant] But with all three emperors posted on the Rhine, the rest of the Empire began to slip quickly back into what was becoming its natural state. Chaos.


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[Assistant] In the north, a gothic tribe hit upon a novel idea that their compatriots would use to great effect in the years to come.


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[Assistant] Constructing a fleet to carry them down the Black Sea coast on a raid of Asia Minor


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[Assistant] With the Franks mostly contained, Valerian left Gallienus in charge of Gaul, while he himself headed east.


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[Assistant] But the Emperor wound up having no time to pause on this new Gothic invasion and instead replanted Valerian II as Imperial figurehead along the Danube while he continued on to Syria.


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[Assistant] He was forced to keep moving because word had reached him that far from leaving well enough alone Sharpor was attacking Roman territory with renewed vigor.


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[Assistant] The next two years get really tricky for historians trying to cobble together a chronological narrative as Valerian chose this moment to revive Roman persecutions of the Christians, leading eventually to the death of St. Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage in 258.


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[Assistant] Cyprian was a voluminous writer and his collected correspondence has proved to be an invaluable resource to head to when we want to double check when an event happened or whether it happened at all.


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[Assistant] Cyprian's writings act as a tiny little lighthouse in the distance, helping us navigate our way through the historical fog. But then the Romans went and killed him.


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[Assistant] Leaving us with only random inscriptions, some coins and gut instinct to lead us the rest of the way. So, thanks for that.


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[Assistant] There are three big things that happen during this two year period that we have trouble dating and putting in order.


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[Assistant] The Battle of Edessa and Valerian's subsequent capture by the Sassonids, the death of his grandson Valerian II, and the revolt of Ingenus along the Danube.


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[Assistant] Some sources claim that Valerian II died of natural causes, and that when Ingenus heard that Valerian had been captured, he decided that the Imperial family was now weak enough to revolt against.


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[Assistant] Others claim that the ambitious Ingenus decided to revolt simply because Gallienus and Valerian were both occupied elsewhere.


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[Assistant] That he killed Valerian II to kick off his campaign, and only later learned of Valerian's capture.


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[Assistant] Finally, we have the common version whereby it was the news of Valerian's capture that led in Genus to kill Valerian II and revolt against Gallienus.


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[Assistant] I don't have a good answer for which of these versions is actually correct, and I don't think anyone else does either.


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[Assistant] But a consensus seems to have grown up around the idea that Valerian II died under suspicious circumstances in 258.


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[Assistant] Right around the time news reached the Danube that Valerian had joined the Sassanids in battle.


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[Assistant] In this telling, it is the news of war in the East that got in Genus's imagination running wild, rather than the news of the Emperor's defeat.


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[Assistant] In this telling, there is a bit of a lag between the death of Valerian II and the official beginning of Ingenis' revolt.


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[Assistant] But that when the commander on the Danube did have himself declared emperor, that Gallienus rushed over from the Rhine to put down the revolt before word of his father's capture reached the West.


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[Assistant] This all leaves 260 AD as the watershed year when the empire really melted down, with news reaching Gallienus almost simultaneously that the Sassanids had captured his father and that his own withdrawal from the Rhine had triggered a new invasion by the Germans.


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[Assistant] The defeat of Valerian at Edessa in the east and the Germanic invasions in the west were, of course, the two events that led directly to the empire breaking into thirds.


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[Assistant] A state of affairs that would persist for more than a decade until Lucius Domitius Aurelianus, the unconquered restorer of the world, put the pieces back together again in the early 270s.


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[Assistant] To deal with poor Valerian first, we must follow the Emperor East in 258, after dropping Valerian II off in Pannonia.


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[Assistant] The emperor probably passed through Antioch on his way to the city of Odessa in northern Mesopotamia, where he planned to stage his coming counteroffensive.


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[Assistant] But this counter-offensive would never really get off the ground, as a nasty bout of the Cyprian Plague broke out amongst the Legions in 259, and Valerian's forces were left thin and weak as a result.


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[Assistant] Sharpor decided to take advantage of the situation by marching on Edessa and challenging the Emperor directly.


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[Assistant] Though we know very little about the details of the battle, it is reported that despite the toll taken on the legions, they still outnumbered the Sassanids by an almost 2 to 1 ratio.


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[Assistant] Leaving Valerian confident that he would still be able to steamroll sharp horse forces.


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[Assistant] But, for whatever reason, in the battle that commenced on the plains outside of Dessa, the Romans were utterly routed, and practically the entire army Valerian had brought with him were either killed or captured.


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[Assistant] We don't know how exactly Valerian fell into Sharpor's custody.


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[Assistant] But the traditional Roman version has it that after the battle, Valerian arranged for a meeting with Sharpor to hammer out the terms of the settlement.


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[Assistant] And after arriving at the Sassanid court, the emperor was seized by the treacherous Persian king and taken prisoner.


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[Assistant] The alternative is that Valerian was simply tracked down during the battle and seized, making it easy to see why the Romans would prefer a version of events that allows the humiliating capture of their emperor to be painted as a result of a double cross rather than trying to explain how an honorable Roman could have allowed himself to be taken alive.


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[Assistant] As with just about everything to do with this period, there are two versions of what happened next.


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[Assistant] The boring version is that the Larian and his senior officers were treated well by Sharpor and lived out the rest of their days as comfortable if involuntary guests of the Sassanids until the Emperor's death in 264.


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[Assistant] The more salacious version is that the no good wicked Persian king took every opportunity to humiliate the captured Valerian and used the Roman Emperor Daly as a stepping-school to get in and out of his royal litter.


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[Assistant] Then, when Valerian finally died, his body was flayed and stuffed, and posted in the Persian court as a trophy for all of the East to mock and gloat over.


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[Assistant] Once again, it is easy to see why the Romans would prefer to paint the Sassanid King in the worst possible light.


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[Assistant] But barring a time machine, we'll never know the true fate of Valerian. We do know that he died in Persian custody.


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[Assistant] And that for a variety of reasons, no attempt was ever made to rescue him or pay a ransom for his return.


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[Assistant] He was in his mid-60s when he died and had ruled the empire for seven years.


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[Assistant] Those variety of reasons why nobody came looking for him had to do mostly with the fact that while the eastern empire was going to hell in a handbasket, the middle of the empire was going to hell in a handbasket, and the western empire was going to hell in a handbasket.


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[Assistant] In the final calculation, the life of one captured emperor was simply not worth the time and expense.


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[Assistant] Not with so much hell being crammed into so many hand baskets.


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[Assistant] When news reached Gallienus that Ingenus was in revolt, he was forced to immediately withdraw a significant portion of the Rhine troops from the border to help him put down the rebellion.


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[Assistant] As he had previously done with Valerian II, Gallienus left his second son Salonius in Cologne as Imperial figurehead under the protection of the commander Marcus Cassianus Latinius Postumus and sped off to the Danube.


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[Assistant] Leading the suppression effort was a man who, at this point, Gallienus had supreme confidence in.


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[Assistant] As commander of the Imperial Cavalry, Oriolus led the charge into Pannonia, where the sudden appearance of Gallienus' army took the wind out of Ingenus' sails, and the usurper either died in battle, was killed by his own troops, or committed suicide after realizing that his cause was hopeless.


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[Assistant] The upshot of all this, as I just mentioned, was that Gallienus's new position on the Danube led to a significant invasion of Germanic tribes along the Rhine.


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[Assistant] The Franks poured across the frontier as posthumous scrambled to hold them off with what forces he had been left with.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, a huge group of Alamani, a tribal super confederation similar to the Franks operating along the upper Rhine,


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[Assistant] ...poured through the under Garrison gap between the Danube and the Rhine, but rather than making for Gaul as would have been expected, they instead decided to head directly into Italy.


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[Assistant] Obviously, this invasion of the home province was Gallienus' top priority.


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[Assistant] He ignored calls to go avenge his father in the east who he just learned had been defeated and captured.


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[Assistant] Reinforce posthumous in the west or stay put on the Danube and hold off the Goths.


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[Assistant] He chose instead to make with all haste to Milan in northern Italy. A city that, with Gallienus' help,


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[Assistant] was about to become one of the most important cities in the empire.


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[Assistant] The Alamani crossed the Alps into Italy before Gallienus could get in their way, and they apparently raided all the way down to Rome itself before being turned back by a hastily raised militia.


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[Assistant] Not necessarily needing to embroil themselves in a prolonged siege of the imperial capital after having grabbed so much of northern Italy's wealth, the Alamani turned around.


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[Assistant] But on their way back north, they were met by Galienus, who beat them decisively outside of Milan.


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[Assistant] One independent faction of the Germanic invaders escape back through the Alps with their captured treasure.


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[Assistant] But the rest were stopped short, and those who survived the battle headed back home empty handed.


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[Assistant] Though in the end it turned out to have no long-term ill effects, the invasion of the Alamani was nonetheless a significant psychic blow to a population of Romans already dealing with a lot of bad news.


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[Assistant] But I guess that to say that the invasion had no long-term effects is misstating the case a bit. Yes, the invaders were beaten and driven off.


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[Assistant] But the time, energy, and manpower required to do so.


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[Assistant] Left every other region of the Empire, feeling like they had been abandoned by the Emperor.


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[Assistant] In the east, the shattered legions were facing down a Sasadan army they could not hope to contain.


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[Assistant] In the West, posthumous was being overwhelmed by the Franks.


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[Assistant] Stared across the river at a host of tribes, itching to take advantage of the emperor's recent withdrawal to Italy.


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[Assistant] Rather than receiving congratulations from his generals then for having driven the Alamanni out of Italy,


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[Assistant] Galiena spent the weeks after his victory, instead receiving notes that each of them had been proclaimed emperor by their troops.


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[Assistant] On the eve of his battle with the Germans, Gallienus had ruled an empire that stretched from Gibraltar to the Euphrates and from the Sahara to Scotland. The next morning, he found himself barely in control of Italy.


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[Assistant] Next week, we will watch the empire split into thirds.


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[Assistant] Though Gallienus was able to reassert his dominion over the Balkans, he had neither the money nor the manpower to do much about the east or the west, and they quickly devolved into autonomous political territories of their own. But this was not all bad news for Gallienus and Rome.


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[Assistant] Posthumous is Gallic Empire, and the about to be established Palmyrene Empire.


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[Assistant] We're far more concerned with repelling foreign invasion than they were with domestic squabbles.


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[Assistant] And it turns out that they were both so successful at fighting off the Germans and Sassanids respectively.


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[Assistant] That it is hard to see how Gallienus himself could have ever done a better job.


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[Assistant] Ironically, the temporary breakup of the empire was perhaps one of the key reasons it was able to survive at all.


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[Assistant] Though I haven't yet stated it explicitly, I think the nature of the military campaigns the Romans have lately been engaged in against the Goths and the Sassanids and the Franks and the Alamani collectively speak for themselves. The Romans are now on the defensive.


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[Assistant] For its entire history, Rome had always projected outward.


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[Assistant] When battles were fought, they were fought in enemy territory.


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[Assistant] When battles were won, they enriched the empire with new wealth and new subjects.


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[Assistant] When battles were lost, it simply slowed the rate of Roman expansion.


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[Assistant] But now, the battles are being fought in Roman territory.


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[Assistant] Well, the very foundation of imperial legitimacy was the ability to provide physical security for its citizens. So, you do the math.


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[Assistant] In 260 AD, this legitimacy was finally shattered by simultaneous attacks on all the major frontiers.


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[Assistant] When the central government proved itself unable to provide the security demanded by its people, the people abandoned the central government, and the Roman Empire broke apart.


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[Assistant] Now one thing that we should clear up right off the bat is that while the administrative reach of Gallienus' government is about to be radically reduced, at no point should the rise of the Gallic and Palmyrene empires be viewed as a repudiation of Roman values.


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[Assistant] Posthumous' Gaelic Empire may have seceded from the Union as it were, but it did not reject the values, forms, or ideals that that Union had been based upon.


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[Assistant] Right down to its senate, annually elected consuls and praetorian guard, the Gallic Empire was in every sense a Roman Empire, pursuing Roman policies in a Roman fashion.


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[Assistant] In the east, the career of Odinothus was at all times acknowledged as occurring within the established structure of the empire.


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[Assistant] He was, for all intents and purposes, leading an independent kingdom, but both he and Gallienus recognized the expediency of allowing Rome to officially bless the new leader of the East.


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[Assistant] to cloak Odin office's actions behind a screen of imperial titles and offices to make it seem as if the two men were partners rather than rivals.


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[Assistant] Odenothus never pressed for the title of Augustus, and Gallienus never attempted to assert control over the east, and this was a state of affairs that suited both just fine for the time being.


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[Assistant] That is all to say that the two sixties did not represent the rise of native independence movements.


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[Assistant] The decade represented instead an estrangement between the governing elites of the three regions. All of whom bought into the basic Roman political ideologies that had dominated the Mediterranean for the last few centuries.


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[Assistant] As I noted in the introduction, the underlying legitimacy crisis that faced the empire in the two sixties was that the central government was no longer able to provide the kind of basic security its citizens had grown to expect.


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[Assistant] The myriad foreign invaders successfully overrunning the borders and sacking the provinces were not just running off with the empire's wealth, they were running off with the empire's raison d'etre.


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[Assistant] Whether or not there was a set of policies Gallienists could have pursued to create a more unified, centrally guided response to the invasions is interesting to think about, but ultimately irrelevant.


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[Assistant] He did not do so, and was very likely unable to do so.


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[Assistant] And it's not like he was fiddling while Rome burned. He was beating off an invasion of Italy itself when the political structure of the empire began to fracture.


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[Assistant] He was doing everything he could, but there was too much to do.


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[Assistant] To take the west first, you'll recall that when Gallien is headed to the Danube to put down the revolt of Ingenus, that he elevated his teenage son Salonius to the rank of Caesar.


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[Assistant] And left the defense of the Western provinces in the hands of the eminently capable General Marcus Postumus.


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[Assistant] Postumus shared overall administrative authority with one of the Praetorian prefects who Gallienus had also left behind, a man by the name of Sylvanus.


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[Assistant] Postumus and Sylvanus divvied up responsibility for the region between them, with Sylvanus running civilian affairs and looking after young Salonius, while Postumus controlled the army. And what an army it was.


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[Assistant] The ranks of the Rhine legions had already been thinned by the recent Frankish invasions, and Galleinus had now absconded with the cream of what was left to go off and fight in Genus.


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[Assistant] This put posthumous in a very tight spot and put the troops remaining in Gaul on edge.


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[Assistant] How were they supposed to defend the entire frontier when they were this undermanned and this undersupplied?


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[Assistant] Into this atmosphere of fear and resentment stepped a fairly innocuous incident that would lead directly to the secession of the West.


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[Assistant] A raiding party of Germans was headed back towards the Rhine sometime in mid to late 260, when they were caught and defeated by posthumous.


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[Assistant] Well aware that he and the army he had been left with had been assigned a nearly impossible mission.


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[Assistant] Posthumous decided to take the opportunity to reward his men and order that the captured wealth of the Germans be distributed amongst them.


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[Assistant] This endeared posthumous to his soldiers, but it did not endear him to the men who the wealth had been stolen from originally.


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[Assistant] When Sylvanas heard about all this, he ordered Posthumus to send the property he had recovered back from whence it had come. But Posthumus refused the order.


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[Assistant] After all, didn't his men deserve something for risking their lives in defense of the provinces?


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[Assistant] When Sylvanas refused to back down, Posthumus and his army took the next logical step.


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[Assistant] Logical in the context of the third century anyway. And Posthumus was acclaimed emperor.


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[Assistant] He then wheeled around and marched on Cologne, where he planned to force Sylvanus and Salonius to submit to his authority.


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[Assistant] The young emperor and his guardian attempted to resist, but the far superior resources of posthumous allowed him to overcome the city defenses and capture his rivals.


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[Assistant] Well aware that there was no turning back now, Posthumus likely executed Sylvanus and Salonius and announced that he was taking over control of the Rhine.


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[Assistant] His agents spread the word, and in no time, replies came back from the governors of all three Spanish provinces, all three Gallic provinces, and the island of Britannia, supporting Posthumus's claim to power.


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[Assistant] Their willingness to support Postumus was premised on his ability to halt the Germanic invasions that Emperor Gallienus had deemed not important enough to attend to personally.


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[Assistant] It was not that they did not appreciate Galienus' presence when he was around, it was just that there was no counting on him to stick around.


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[Assistant] Twice already he had surveyed the empire and deemed the problems of the west not as important as the problems along the Danube or in Italy.


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[Assistant] And it's not even that they were arguing that the emperor could or should have done something different. It was just that, well, they couldn't go anywhere.


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[Assistant] Their homes and families and estates and clients were all stuck here.


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[Assistant] Whether or not the Frankish invasions were the worst problems the Romans faced was immaterial.


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[Assistant] When your house is on fire, you want someone to put it out. You don't want someone to tell you that some other, more important building is on fire, and that they need to go put out that one first.


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[Assistant] Postumus was promising to never leave, and to focus on putting out the fire along the Rhine, and so, they supported him.


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[Assistant] This mandate, though, meant that unlike previous usurping generals, posthumous could not immediately pack up the army and march to Italy on a mission to overthrow Gallienus.


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[Assistant] Part of the reason why he was able to rule for a decade over half the empire, which puts his tenure in office amongst the longest of the whole century by the way,


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[Assistant] Was because he never forgot that his primary responsibility was to protect the West from invasion.


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[Assistant] By focusing on that limited objective, he was able to rule practically unopposed for 10 years.


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[Assistant] Right away, he reorganized the political order of the west and invited men of senatorial rank from the provinces loyal to him to meet in Gaul and form a new senate who would, like their new emperor, focus solely on the administration and safety of the west.


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[Assistant] No gothic invasions would distract them. No sassonid power plays would draw them away. It was time for the West to look out for itself.


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[Assistant] He had spent the majority of his years in office dealing with invasions along the Rhine and had only abandoned the western frontier when a revolt had broken out along the Danube and when Germans had invaded the home province. What did they want from him?


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[Assistant] The Empire was a big place, and to get all cranky because he couldn't provide them with his undivided attention 100% of the time, was, in a word, childish.


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[Assistant] But as he sat in Milan mopping up after the Alemannic invasion, he quickly realized that as much as it burned him up, there was probably very little he could do right at that moment about posthumous.


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[Assistant] There was no doubt that as soon as he was able to, Gallienus was going to revenge himself upon Posthumus.


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[Assistant] But right now, all those things that had drawn his attention away from the Rhine in the first place were still going on and still getting worse.


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[Assistant] When Gallienus looked at the big picture, the problems in the West were minor compared to the full-blown emergency that was currently marching across the Eastern Empire.


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[Assistant] Sharpor had taken his capture of Valerian as an invitation to sack as much of the Roman Empire as he could get his hands on.


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[Assistant] Possibly with the idea of softening the region up for eventual annexation by the Sassanids.


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[Assistant] According to some sources, the defeat at Edessa had cost the Romans something like 70,000 men, and though a great deal of those had been brought west by Valerian, the eastern legions were still a pale shadow of their former selves.


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[Assistant] As the Sassanids crashed into Syria, two Roman officials stepped forward to organize a defense.


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[Assistant] The first was a general name Ballista, or possibly Callistus, depending on what source you read.


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[Assistant] Who took over the remnants of the legions and organized a pseudo guerrilla campaign to harass Sharpor's supply lines, pick off isolated detachments, and generally make life frustrating for the invading Sassanids.


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[Assistant] The other official was one of Valerian's chief financial officers, a man named Folvius Macrianus.


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[Assistant] Who had been left behind in Antioch, along with the traveling Imperial treasury, when Valerian had marched forward to Edessa.


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[Assistant] With Ballista's help, Macrianus was able to keep the treasury out of Sharpor's hands and use it to fund the effort to expel the Sassanids from Roman territory.


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[Assistant] For the rest of the year, the two men did everything they could to halt Sharpor, and though they slowed him down, they were unable to prevent him from marching into Asia Minor on a campaign that Sharpor's own propaganda claimed led to the sacking of 36 Roman cities.


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[Assistant] By the end of the year though, constant harassment and the fatigue of his own men led Sharpe were to opt for withdrawal back to Sasanian territory.


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[Assistant] Layden with captured slaves and treasure. The Sassonid king was feeling pretty good about himself, and likely thinking that the next time he marched west, he might just make a play at staying permanently.


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[Assistant] Palmyra was an oasis town located in the deserts between Persia and Syria, and it served as a key link in the east-west trade routes, acting as the last way station on the northern leg of the Silk Road.


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[Assistant] Not only did the city's isolated location allow it to grow wealthy from the duties and taxes levied on traders who had no other option but to pass through Palmyra,


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[Assistant] But it also allowed them to run a protection racket, supplying local muscle to help ward off desert thieves who might set upon an unprotected caravan.


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[Assistant] That there was something of a revolving door between the desert thieves and the local muscle is of course neither here nor there.


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[Assistant] Palmyra's location out in the middle of the desert also allowed it something that most cities in the ancient world had long since lost. Independence.


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[Assistant] The age of the city-state had long ago given way to the age of the multinational empire.


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[Assistant] But Palmyra lay out in a nebulous grey area between Rome to the west and Persia to the east.


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[Assistant] As such, it was often claimed by both but controlled by neither.


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[Assistant] As Parthian power had waned though, Palmyra had more and more come into the Roman sphere, and many of its leading citizens had also been made Roman citizens.


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[Assistant] Emperors understood the economic importance of the oasis city and wanted to make sure that the rulers of Palmyra were given every privilege and perk of status enjoyed by the leading men of Rome.


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[Assistant] As his name suggests, the family of Lucius Septimius Odinothus had been granted citizenship by Septimius Severus around the turn of the third century.


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[Assistant] And though they were not technically Roman senators, they were recognized as being of senatorial rank in the economic sense of the term, if not in the strictly political sense.


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[Assistant] By the two fifties, Oden office was the leading man of Palmyra and acting as the city's chief executive.


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[Assistant] He had close ties to Rome, but the growing power of the Sassonids had left him and his city in a precarious position.


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[Assistant] The Romans were content to let Palmyra enjoy its nominal independence as long as the trade routes continued to function and the taxes on Roman merchants didn't get out of hand.


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[Assistant] But sharp work seemed an altogether more ambitious sort.


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[Assistant] Oedonothus had been worried for some time that the Sassanids would attempt to take over direct control of Palmyra, and with the Romans being dealt several defeats in a row at the hands of the Persians, his anxiety had to have grown immeasurably by the time Valerian was captured in 260.


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[Assistant] Some sources claim Odinothus made overtures to Sharpor, attempting to forge an eastern-looking alliance, but that the Sassanid king had rejected the notion of a treaty, clearly indicating that a takeover of Palmyra was coming down the chute.


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[Assistant] But others reject the notion that Odinoth has made any attempt to bargain with the Sassanids and that from the get-go he believed that the fortunes of his city were best served when they were tied to the fortunes of Rome.


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[Assistant] Whatever the underlying reasons, when Sharpor made his way back to the east in 260 laden with treasure, he was met by an army raised and led by the Palmyrene prince.


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[Assistant] The result of the meeting was a complete route of the unprepared Sassanid army.


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[Assistant] Sharpor, a thought himself a thousand miles from anything resembling a real threat.


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[Assistant] And was as surprised as his men to find himself suddenly fleeing back to Tessifon after being smacked around by some cobbled together army led by an obscure Palmyrene.


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[Assistant] By putting Sharpoor to flight though, obscure Odin Othis vanished forever.


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[Assistant] Replaced in the minds of East and West alike by legendary Odin Othus.


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[Assistant] Legendary Odinothus went on to become one of the most unique figures in Roman history.


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[Assistant] His capital was Palmyra, technically beyond the Roman frontier.


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[Assistant] And though he held Roman citizenship, he was still considered by most Romans to be a barbarian.


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[Assistant] A smart barbarian and a cultured barbarian, but a barbarian nonetheless.


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[Assistant] There is always something to be said for promoting men of merit wherever you can find them.


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[Assistant] And anytime the Romans faced a dire crisis, they always did well when they laid down their traditional class biases to elevate the most capable man to lead them out of the danger, whoever he might be and wherever he might come from.


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[Assistant] But the rank, power, and status gained by Oedonothus was something altogether different.


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[Assistant] After defeating the Sassanids, this foreigner essentially leased the eastern provinces from its Roman owners.


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[Assistant] He never held the title, but he lived in the house and he called the shots. All with Gallienus' technical blessing.


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[Assistant] Were he not viewed as the only thing standing between the Romans and a complete Sassanid takeover, nothing even remotely close to this arrangement would have been possible, and Oedonothus probably would have been executed for even suggesting it. But desperate times call for desperate measures.


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[Assistant] And in these desperate times, the Romans gave themselves over to a Palmyrene prince who promised to keep the Persians at bay.


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[Assistant] As the West was giving itself over to Posthumus and the East was giving itself over to Odinothus, there was one other trouble spot that Gallienus faced after his defeat of the Alamani in 260 AD.


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[Assistant] Back on the northern frontier, the troops that had been left behind after Gallienus headed to Italy following his suppression of Ingenus were dealing with a host of German tribes ready, willing and able to overrun the Danube.


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[Assistant] As was the case with the Rhine legions, the Danube troops resented the Emperor for dashing off after deeming their problems not sufficiently dire enough to remain in country with them. Again, their resentment may not have been rational.


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[Assistant] The emperor was after all going to defend Italy, the home province, the invasion of which probably was the most dire threat facing the empire at that particular moment.


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[Assistant] But that didn't stop them from taking the emperor's absence personally, and as they steeled themselves to fend off the Germans, they elevated one of their generals, a man named Regalianus, to the rank of emperor.


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[Assistant] As with Posthumus, the elevation was not taken by Regalianus as his cue to march on Rome and establish his authority over the capital.


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[Assistant] Instead, he took it as his cue to lead a vigorous defense of the Danube provinces, which he now considered his personal responsibility.


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[Assistant] And it is possible that they were already joined by two more, the sons of Macrianus in the east.


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[Assistant] It is hard to tell when, in this mishmash of events, Quietus and Macrianus the Younger were elevated to the rank of co-Augusti by the Eastern legions at the behest of their father.


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[Assistant] But it probably came not long after Odin office's victory over Sharpor.


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[Assistant] It is not hyperbole to state that at this moment the Empire's executive leadership had never been as fractured, as local citizens and soldiers alike each looked to local commanders to see them through these dangerous times.


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[Assistant] In Italy, Gallienus still considered himself the ultimate master of the whole empire. And while his rivals focused on defending the borders, Gallienus focused on how to win back all that had so suddenly been stolen from him.


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[Assistant] Though the East and West would remain outside of his jurisdiction for the rest of his life.


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[Assistant] The Danube provinces were quickly brought back into the fold, as Regalianus was killed shortly after his elevation, battling a tribe of invading Germans.


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[Assistant] Gallienus immediately marched up from Italy to restore his mastery over the Legion, and with the Emperor on hand once again, the Legions quickly fell back into line.


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[Assistant] One of the biggest problems facing Galienus at this point was that events were unfolding so fast and invasions occurring over such a wide area that it was difficult to deploy legionary forces in a timely manner.


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[Assistant] For all his rushing about, Galienas always seemed to be arriving too late to nip problems in the bud.


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[Assistant] And seemed to forever be showing up just in time to close the barn door after the horses had run off.


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[Assistant] This inability to efficiently reinforce hotspots was not just increasing the amount of devastation being wrought on the provinces, but, as we've just seen, it was also leading to an exponential increase in the number of usurpers challenging his rule.


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[Assistant] But if the provincial legions could be convinced that the emperor would be able to quickly provide help when they were attacked,


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[Assistant] Gallienus figured they would be less prone to supporting rivals.


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[Assistant] Right now though, the Legionary Apparatus was too cumbersome to move quickly from one zone to another.


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[Assistant] So Gallien has hit upon an idea that though it would not become official Roman policy for another generation,


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[Assistant] It would one day become a staple of Roman defenses in the fourth century. The mobile cavalry.


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[Assistant] Up until this point, cavalry units were attached to infantry legions, and they would all move around and fight together.


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[Assistant] But as quickly as the Roman legions could move, a couple of thousand foot soldiers are never going to be able to move as fast as a couple of thousand horsemen.


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[Assistant] What Gallienus did was collect all the various cavalry detachments and mass them together into a single force that would be run by a single commander and be answerable directly to the Emperor.


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[Assistant] From this point on, wherever there was trouble, the Emperor would order his mass cavalry unit to the scene.


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[Assistant] And in many cases their mere presence would be enough to deter invaders.


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[Assistant] And not only did this cavalry serve as an excellent deterrent,


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[Assistant] It also served as a good psychological connection between the far-flung provincial legions and their emperor.


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[Assistant] They no longer felt they were being left to fend for themselves out on the frontier.


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[Assistant] Maybe the mobile cavalry wasn't based in their territory, but when they needed help, help was on the way.


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[Assistant] Galien is strategically based this new force in the city of Milan, where they could keep an eye not just on Posthumus, whose long term ambitions were at this point unknown,


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[Assistant] But also, on any Germans thinking about crossing through the Alps into Italy.


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[Assistant] They were also near enough the Danube frontier that if the Goths got itchy feet, and they would over the next decade,


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[Assistant] The mobile cavalry could spring into action and be on the scene in no time.


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[Assistant] It was an idea born of the particular circumstances Gallienus was facing at the time, with domestic revolts and foreign invasions cropping up all around him.


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[Assistant] Simply posting legionary garrisons along the frontier was no longer sufficient to ward off foreign threats to the Empire.


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[Assistant] There are many reasons why Gallienus' reign is seen as a period of transition, and the mobile cavalry is just one obvious example.


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[Assistant] Next week, we'll get into a few more examples.


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[Assistant] In particular, Gallienus's relationship with the Senate and the growing divide between a political career and a military career.


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[Assistant] would lead to the armed forces finally becoming a completely separate branch of the state.


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[Assistant] Rome had always intermingled its political leaders with its military leaders.


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[Assistant] And indeed, the most important function of the Consul had, once upon a time, been to act as the Commander in Chief of the Army.


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[Assistant] The days of combining military and civilian careers though, was about to end.


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[Assistant] Generals would now be generals, and politicians would be politicians, and only in the person of the Emperor would they ever meet again.


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[Assistant] Last time, we left Rome in a state of disrepair.


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[Assistant] The East had been invaded by the Sassanids, the Danube had been invaded by the Goths, Italy had been invaded by the Alamani, and the West had been invaded by the Franks.


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[Assistant] Unable to handle all of these foreign threats at once, and still reeling from the capture of his father, Gallienus watched helplessly as the legions across the empire elevated their own local commanders to the purple, breaking the empire into pieces.


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[Assistant] The son of Valerian would never again rule a united empire, though he would spend the rest of his life vainly pursuing the dream of reunification.


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[Assistant] Though we know that the East eventually fell into the hands of Odinothus and his wife Zenobia, when all the trouble began in 260, it actually looked like ex-treasury official Macrianus would be the man calling the shots in Antioch.


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[Assistant] You'll recall from last time that Macrianus and the General Ballista had organized a resistance to the Sassanid invasion following Valerian's capture, and when the Persians were finally pushed out, the Eastern legions naturally looked to the man with the money to continue leading them.


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[Assistant] Ballista seems to have been content to support Macrianus rather than compete with him, and so Macrianus became the dominant Roman official east of the Hellespont.


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[Assistant] But for some reason, possibly because he was a cripple, though I'm not entirely sure that that's accurate,


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[Assistant] Magrianus did not himself assume the imperial dignities.


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[Assistant] Instead, he induced the legions to elevate to the purple his two grown sons, Quietus and Macrianus the Younger.


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[Assistant] The two men were dutifully hailed as Augustus, following in the footsteps of the Rhine legions and the Danube legions, who had elevated Posthumus and Regaleonus respectively.


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[Assistant] But unlike these other two competing Augusti, the Macriani family had no intention of staying put in the east and simply keeping an eye on the Sassanids.


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[Assistant] Macrianus did not want to just defend Syria. He wanted to formally oust Gallienus and capture the whole empire for himself.


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[Assistant] In pursuit of this goal, he and his son, Macrianus the Younger, packed up 30,000 troops and marched them west to confront Gallienus.


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[Assistant] Now those numbers are likely exaggerated, but still, after the catastrophic losses suffered at Edessa, the removal of any soldiers at all had to have dangerously weakened the frontier defenses.


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[Assistant] I would like to say that the fact that the Macriani are about to get stomped into the ground by Gallienus is somehow divine retribution for leaving the East so undermanned.


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[Assistant] But Regaleonus did write about the Danube, defending the Empire, rather than trying to capture it, and he died too. So, unfortunately, it seems that blind fate, rather than karmic justice, was doing the yeoman's work throughout the 260s AD.


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[Assistant] Macrianus had left his son Quietus in charge at Antioch while he and Macrianus the younger marched on Italy in 261.


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[Assistant] They only made it as far as the Balkans though, where they were met and defeated in battle by an army led by Gallienesis top general, Orioles.


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[Assistant] Both Makriani were killed in the battle, but, perhaps more importantly, the battle cost the lives of way more troops than the Empire could afford to lose.


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[Assistant] Things in the East probably would have spiraled out of control had not Odinothus and Palmyra picked up the slack Macrianus had left behind.


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[Assistant] Leading a motley army composed of various eastern auxiliaries, his own Palmyrene heavy cavalry, and probably what was left of Valerian's legionary forces.


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[Assistant] Oedonothus patrolled the border with vigor and kept Sharpor's imagination from drifting back to visions of conquest.


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[Assistant] Of critical importance to his own future career, Odin Authis did not throw his lot in with the Macriani, and chose instead to remain loyal to the government of Rome.


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[Assistant] That did not mean that he went out of his way to defend the honor of Gallienus when the Assyrian legions declared Macrianus the younger and quiet as their new Augusti.


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[Assistant] But it did mean that when word came back that Gallienus had successfully fended off their challenge, that Oedonothus took the opportunity to display his fidelity to the true Emperor.


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[Assistant] The army he led far outshone anything left in the hands of Quietus and Ballista, and after camping his imposing forces outside Antioch, Odinoth is ordered that Quietus be captured and executed.


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[Assistant] No one knows what happened to Ballista, as he simply disappears from the historical record without a trace around this same time, but the presumption is that he too was killed by either Odinosa or some other officer loyal to Rome.


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[Assistant] The rise and fall of the Macriani left the east, by default, in the hands of Odin office.


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[Assistant] He held Roman citizenship and had obviously been a loyal ally, but he was seen by practically everyone as an outsider. After all, he did hail from a city beyond the frontier.


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[Assistant] But for the moment at least, the citizens of the East had very little time to indulge in prejudices.


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[Assistant] Odenothis was there, leading an army in defense of the Empire. Who cared where he came from?


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[Assistant] Galienus himself certainly did not seem to care much about Oedonothus' origins, or, at this point, what his ultimate intentions may be.


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[Assistant] Unable to spare any resources to reinforce the east, let alone reassert his full control over it,


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[Assistant] Galleinus was, for the time being, willing to cede Odin office dominion over the east, as long as the palmyring prince remained loyal to Galleinus and focused his attention on the Sassanids rather than on accruing more territory for himself within the empire.


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[Assistant] These terms were amenable to Odinothus, and from 262 until his death in 267 or 268, the Palmyrene prince was the de facto ruler of the Eastern Empire.


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[Assistant] He was given the title Imperator, in the old military sense of the term, rather than the more recent political meaning. But, as was the long standing custom,


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[Assistant] The victories of the Palmyrene were technically credited to Gallienus, a subtle piece of propaganda which helped maintain the appearance of subordination on the part of Oedonothus.


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[Assistant] Perhaps betraying his long-term goals, though, shortly after rising to power, Oedonothus began styling himself as the King of Kings, just as would a traditional Eastern monarch.


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[Assistant] In most ways, the rise of Odinoth has had very little effect on how the east functioned.


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[Assistant] It appears that the legionary garrisons were kept mostly intact and that the commanders were for the most part left in place.


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[Assistant] The various municipal governments kept running just as they always had, and the lives of the citizens changed not at all.


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[Assistant] This is all to say that Oedonothus ruled with a very light hand.


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[Assistant] There were no dramatic purges and no mass firings.


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[Assistant] The only time he really exercised his power was when he acted as the arbitrator of last resort, settling legal disputes or making the final decision on some infrastructure project.


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[Assistant] Other than that, he did indeed keep his attention focused squarely on the task of defending the provinces from attack.


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[Assistant] Indeed, the one major difference between life before Odinothus and life after Odinothus was the existence of this huge independent army roving around the deserts, weaving in and out of Sassanid territory, attacking when necessary and defending when necessary.


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[Assistant] This army was both the reason why Syria was not captured by Sharpor and the reason why Gallienus stayed on the west side of the Hellespon.


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[Assistant] It was an efficient, disciplined and highly mobile force.


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[Assistant] Over the course of the two sixties, Odanothus did not just keep the Sassanids at bay, but he also pushed east and reasserted Roman dominion over territory that Sharpor had annexed during the course of the past decade.


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[Assistant] There is a reason Oedonothus receives near universal praise in the ancient histories, and it's because he seemed to be some quasi-divine savior sent by the gods to rescue the Eastern Empire at its darkest hour.


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[Assistant] With the eastern question more or less settled, and the middle provinces back under his control following the death of Regalianus.


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[Assistant] The West now loomed as the last big finger pointing Gallienus and Rome in the eye.


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[Assistant] Where Oedonothus had diplomatically parlayed his position into one that bore the imperial seal of approval.


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[Assistant] Posthumous ruled in direct competition to Gallimus.


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[Assistant] Where the eastern provinces still recognized the overall legitimacy of the Roman Emperor, and critically, the Mint and Antioch still coined in Gallienus' name, the west had gone over to posthumous completely.


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[Assistant] The Gallic mint coined for posthumous and celebrated his role as the protector of the West. This was an affront that Gallienus could not tolerate.


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[Assistant] There is, as was so much else to do with this period, some controversy over the date or dates of Galenis' attempt to reconquer the western provinces.


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[Assistant] Some claim that there were two attempts, one in 261 in the immediate aftermath of Posthumus' revolt, and another, more concerted effort in 266.


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[Assistant] Others claim that there was just one attempt and that it occurred sometime between 263 and 265.


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[Assistant] Despite the confusion of the dating though, the outcome remains the same.


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[Assistant] Gallienus was able to establish a permanent beachhead on the far side of the Alps, but he was unable to decisively defeat Posthumus and reunite the Empire.


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[Assistant] As usual, the man leading the attack for Galienus was Oriolus, the captain of the cavalry.


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[Assistant] Starting from their headquarters in Milan, the Imperial army marched up through the Alps and crossed over into Gaul on their way to the capital of Gallia Belgica, which also served as the capital of Posthumus' Gallic Empire.


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[Assistant] Posthumous had been made aware of the invasion by spies in Gallienus' camp, and was ready when the army led by Orioles finally appeared.


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[Assistant] In the battles that followed though, there is one clear fact that the ancient sources point out again and again.


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[Assistant] Postimus was beaten by Aureolus, but that, for whatever reason, Aureolus did not press his advantage, capture his enemy, or crush his enemy's army.


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[Assistant] Though there could have been any number of good reasons for his failure to deal a killing stroke. Like that maybe his victories were not as complete as we have been led to believe.


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[Assistant] The consensus among the Romans was that Orioles had made a secret pact with Posthumus.


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[Assistant] In this telling, Oriolus was already planning to eventually revolt against his master, and was looking for Posthumus's support when it came time to make his bid.


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[Assistant] If there was a deal, it wasn't a very good one for Oriolis.


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[Assistant] When in 267, he finally did make his bid for the throne, his calls to posthumous went unanswered. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.


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[Assistant] Gallienus probably would have kept right on going despite these missed opportunities had he not been shot with an arrow and forced to withdraw to seek medical attention.


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[Assistant] This brought on what Gallienus thought would be only a temporary halt to his campaign, but in fact, it would bring an end to his attempts to reconquer the West.


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[Assistant] As I just mentioned, some scholars think there were two invasions. The first ending with Aureolus' failure to capture Posthumus, and the second ending with Gallienus' injury.


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[Assistant] But most seem to think that it was all wrapped up in a single short war.


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[Assistant] The campaign was not a total failure though. When Gallienus temporarily ceased hostilities, he had won back firm control of the Gallic territory abutting the Alps.


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[Assistant] Meaning that the emperor controlled both ends of the key mountain passes in and out of Italy.


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[Assistant] Just as Gallienus would never recapture the West, Posthumous would never again have access to the Alps.


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[Assistant] This is the map that both men would bequeath to their successors. And eventually,


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[Assistant] Be the map from which Aurelion launched his own successful campaign to reunify the Empire in 274.


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[Assistant] While Gallienus had lost control of the east and the west, he was still in control of the middle of the empire, and was not so consumed with foreign wars and internal squabbles that he failed to make his mark on the development of Rome.


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[Assistant] Well, actually, maybe it was because of all the foreign wars and internal squabbles that Gallienus wound up leaving his mark on Rome.


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[Assistant] The ancient sources uniformly dismiss Galienus' reign as the absolute low point of the Empire's history.


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[Assistant] He is often portrayed as indifferent to the fact that two thirds of the empire had slipped away from him, and that he was far more interested in pursuing the perks and pleasures that came with being emperor than he was with fighting for what was Rome's.


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[Assistant] Highlighting the general content with Galienus' rule is the myth of the so-called Thirty Tyrants.


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[Assistant] That is, the long list of men who rose up in revolt against Gallienus during his reign.


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[Assistant] Odinothus and Posthumus and Macrianus and Regalianus are all on the list.


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[Assistant] And the commander of the garrison at Byzantium, who revolted around the same time.


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[Assistant] Even Gibbon is quick to point out that the Thirty Tyrants is a transparent piece of rhetoric, referencing the old Thirty Tyrants of Athens, the post-war government installed by Sparta at the end of the Peloponnesian War.


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[Assistant] And the list of usurpers offered by the Historia Augusta has been thoroughly debunked, with most of the men listed having never assumed imperial dignity or having never existed at all.


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[Assistant] Despite the exaggerations, though, there is no doubt that the sheer number of men challenging Gallienus' rule during the 260s, however many there actually were,


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[Assistant] As we've mentioned elsewhere, the histories relied upon to establish narrative continuity for all our archaeological evidence were written by men of senatorial rank, for men of senatorial rank.


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[Assistant] And the biases of that class dominate the portrayals of the various emperors.


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[Assistant] The Senate had no love whatsoever for Gallienus, as he famously delivered a major blow to their power and prestige.


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[Assistant] During the reign of Gallienus, the Senate was once and for all excluded from having anything to do with military affairs.


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[Assistant] Now, it is interesting to note two things about this development.


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[Assistant] One, despite claims to the contrary, it does not seem that Galenis issued some dramatic decree banning senators from serving the army.


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[Assistant] And two, that nothing he did was in any way a radical departure from the policies followed by Marcus Aurelius during the Marcomannic Wars.


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[Assistant] Galienos' problem, as had been Marcus' problem.


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[Assistant] It was that the situation was so critical that there was very little margin for error.


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[Assistant] Bringing in some rich, inexperienced aristocrat to run a legion in the middle of a war zone simply because that was the way things had always been done was a really good way to get that legion wiped out.


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[Assistant] Marcus had responded by elevating capable, experienced soldiers like Pertinax, Pompeianus, Paschinius Niger, and Maximianus, none of whom were of senatorial rank, rather than turning to self-entitled senators.


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[Assistant] Gallienus too followed this policy and the men he turned to to lead his armies were all career military men who would in time go on to return the empire to something resembling its former glory.


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[Assistant] Including Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, and a young Probus.


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[Assistant] None of these men were of senatorial rank or aristocrats in any sense of the word.


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[Assistant] But they knew soldiering and Gallienus trusted them, and that was all that mattered. And in the long run, it was probably better for Rome.


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[Assistant] As Gallienus shut out inexperienced senators from military postings, young ambitious aristocrats were unable to gain even basic military experience, creating a feedback loop which led Gallienus and his successors to completely ignore the senatorial class from now on when looking to fill out the officer corps.


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[Assistant] Gallien has also introduced a subtle shift in the way that provinces were governed that further calcified the division between civilian and military leadership.


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[Assistant] The rank of legate, that is, the leader of a single legion, was rebranded as the legatus equitis and now made unavailable as an office to a senator, reserved instead for career military men of equestrian rank.


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[Assistant] Senators were still duly appointed as governors of the provinces, but the legions of the provinces were put in the hands of men who knew what they were doing. In provinces where there was only a single legion,


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[Assistant] A situation that traditionally led the governor to double as that legion's legate.


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[Assistant] Well, those were transformed into equestrian prefectures, a model invented by Augustus when he was trying to figure out how to maintain personal control over Egypt without having to worry about senatorial interference.


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[Assistant] All of these offends to their dignity, whether they were justified or not, really rubbed the Senate the wrong way.


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[Assistant] And when the empire successfully emerged into the 4th century,


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[Assistant] The history of the third century began to be reworked by conservative members of the senatorial class into a series of morality plays that had a clear cast of heroes and villains.


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[Assistant] With emperors like Claudius, Tacitus, and even Emilianus, painted as paradigms of Republican virtue, while Gallus, Gallienus, and Aurelian.


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[Assistant] We're painted as cruel, lazy, or ineffectual, depending on the man.


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[Assistant] The Historia Augusta, for example, expends a great deal of ink praising Posthumus, who was, after all, nothing less than a traitor to Rome.


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[Assistant] In order to contrast him with the terrible no-good gallienist.


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[Assistant] Oden office, as I've already mentioned, received similar glowing treatment.


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[Assistant] This is not to take away from the accomplishments of Posthumus and Odinothus.


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[Assistant] But it is interesting to note how much praise is heaped on the two men who did the most to divide the empire because of the Senate's lingering hatred for Gallienus.


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[Assistant] Despite this friction with the upper classes, Gallienus did manage to stay in power for 15 years, so he had to be doing something right.


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[Assistant] After the tumultuous years following the capture of his father, one of the main lessons the Emperor took away was that if he was going to maintain his tenuous hold on the Middle Empire and perhaps one day win back the East and the West,


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[Assistant] He was going to have to do a better job making sure that the army still under his command remained loyal to him and did not jump to their local generals every time someone said boo.


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[Assistant] Now, it was not exactly a mystery how you kept soldiers in the third century loyal to you, and Gallienus was no dummy.


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[Assistant] Thus, one of his lasting legacies was the founding of multiple mints across the empire.


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[Assistant] Up until this point, besides the main mint in Rome, there were only a few major coining centers in the provinces.


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[Assistant] Making transporting soldier pay and promised bonuses both time consuming and dangerous.


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[Assistant] So Gallienus founded at least four new mints near all the major military headquarters in Northern Italy and along the Danube, which kept the soldiers paid in full and on time.


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[Assistant] And left them, as you can imagine, extremely well disposed towards their emperor.


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[Assistant] The downside of this increase in mints, though, was that it sped up a process that the Romans did not understand at all.


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[Assistant] But that we today are well acquainted with and very watchful of, inflation.


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[Assistant] Now, like most of you, I learned about inflation from the classic DuckTales episode, Doe Ray Me, when Huey, Dewey, and Louie got their hands on a duplicating ray and used it to duplicate some money so they could have enough to go buy a new bike.


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[Assistant] But of course, the duplicating ray had a glitch. Anything that gets duplicated will spontaneously duplicate itself after a brief period of time.


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[Assistant] Pretty soon, Duckberg was swimming in duplicated cash, lollipops cost a wheelbarrow full of coins, and the price of the new bike that had started all this had increased a hundredfold.


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[Assistant] Uncle Scrooge was of course wiped out as the coins he had so carefully hoarded in his money bin were now all worthless. Not a pretty sight.


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[Assistant] So, first of all, don't tell me that silly anthropomorphic cartoons have no educational value.


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[Assistant] And second, that this is exactly what happened to the Roman Empire as revenue failed to meet expenditures during the third century.


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[Assistant] The imperial reaction was to simply produce more money so that they could pay off all their debts, leading to spiraling prices, savings being wiped out, and a reversion, eventually, back to primitive barter and payments in kind.


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[Assistant] Adding to these economic woes that in the two sixties were still looming on the horizon.


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[Assistant] Was the fact that with the imperial mines running dry, and no new sources of silver and gold anywhere to be found,


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[Assistant] The emperors were forced to debase the coinage to keep up with the increased rate of production.


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[Assistant] Debasement was of course nothing new, but the process had thus far been pretty gradual, and the market had been given time to adjust.


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[Assistant] This was a silver ratio so low that the Denarius literally no longer resembled itself.


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[Assistant] The various emperors had done all this in secret of course, because while they may not have understood inflation, they certainly understood the dangerous ramifications of making their coins intrinsically less valuable. But it did not take long for people to catch on.


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[Assistant] Despite multiple imperial declarations stating that all coins should be accepted at face value.


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[Assistant] Savvy merchants of the third century began adjusting their prices by the weight of their customers' coins rather than simply counting the number of them.


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[Assistant] But as I just said, it took a little while for the effects of all these monetary shenanigans to be felt, and Gallienus mostly benefited from his printing of more money, despite the fact that it was bad money.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned a few times previously, coins in the Roman Empire were a primary vehicle of imperial propaganda.


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[Assistant] And with each new batch of coins flooding out into the provinces, the citizens of the empire became awash not just in cash


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[Assistant] But with the persistent drumbeat message that everything was fine, everyone was getting along, the empire was safe, the armies were happy, and the emperor was on the case.


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[Assistant] There were of course outward signs that all of this was perhaps not as true as the emperor would like it to be.


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[Assistant] But one rule of mass media is that if you repeat something enough times, a lot of people are going to start believing it. Gallienus repeated himself a lot.


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[Assistant] And with no opposing media outlets contradicting him, many citizens simply shrugged their shoulders and believed him.


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[Assistant] The 260s AD are often represented as the nadir of Roman fortunes.


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[Assistant] The empire was divided from itself, and men were rising up in revolt almost daily against an ineffectual emperor who seemed content to let it all burn.


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[Assistant] Gallienus, like the mission before him, has been absolutely vilified.


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[Assistant] But when we look back with a more sober eye on the period, we find that he was not at all ineffectual. That he vigorously and actively defended the empire from foreign invasion and attempted to put the broken pieces of Roman society back together. He did indeed preside over a divided empire.


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[Assistant] But with everything Rome was facing, the temporary division probably wound up profiting the empire in the end.


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[Assistant] What did not profit the empire was Gallienus' monetary policies, which came back to haunt Rome in a big way.


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[Assistant] But even in this, it's not like Gallien has invented debasement or the overcoining of money.


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[Assistant] The son of Valerian was certainly not the best emperor.


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[Assistant] Indeed, he was about to be shown by a Rallian what a really good Emperor can do when he puts his mind to something. But, he certainly wasn't one of the worst either.


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[Assistant] Next week, we will get to the fall of this not great, but not terrible emperor.


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[Assistant] Either by coincidence or fate, the death of Gallienus was matched almost simultaneously by the deaths of Posthumus in the west and Odinothus in the east.


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[Assistant] Within the span of a single year, the three men who had dominated the lives of Romans everywhere were dead, leaving power vacuums in all three corners of the empire.


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[Assistant] While the West would fall into the hands of unworthy successors, the East would be claimed by the wife of Odinothus, the Palmyrene Queen of Zenobia.


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[Assistant] It is very possible that she would have emerged as his better in every way.


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[Assistant] As the two sixties drew to a close, the political order of the Roman Empire had begun to settle a bit.


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[Assistant] Posthumous was in charge of the West, administering the provinces in Gaul and Hispania and Britain.


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[Assistant] While out in the East, Odinothus had carved out a sphere of influence for himself. They kept the citizens of Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor free from worries about another Sassanid invasion.


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[Assistant] Probably steaming about the loss of influence on the outer rims of his empire, Gallienus nonetheless, dedicated himself to the governance of the Middle Empire.


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[Assistant] And in addition to offending off the Goths, he tried to strengthen the internal economy and even promote some of the long neglected arts and sciences.


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[Assistant] After so much chaos and uncertainty and violence, a new equilibrium had been achieved. It was not a perfect equilibrium.


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[Assistant] After all, none of the external menaces to the Empire had been vanquished. They had just been temporarily stalled.


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[Assistant] And the empire itself, well, there were now three of them, weren't there? Not that it mattered. The new equilibrium is about to be shattered.


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[Assistant] Odinothus, like a latter-day Alexander Caesar, had come out of nowhere with a personality so strong and a skill set so superior to his contemporaries that it was almost like he was playing on a different level than everyone else.


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[Assistant] It is not hyperbole to say that following the capture of Valerian in 260, the Eastern Empire stood on the brink of permanent occupation.


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[Assistant] Maybe the still immense resources of the Roman Empire would have fended off this asonage.


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[Assistant] Sure, Macriana Symbolista had run a fairly successful guerrilla defense.


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[Assistant] But was there anything anyone could put in the field to actually beat Sharapur in battle?


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[Assistant] The answer, as it turned out, was yes. And the answer was Odinothus.


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[Assistant] Right when it seemed like the end was nigh, the Palmyrene prince had swept in, and not only delivered a decisive victory against the Sassanid army, but he held them at bay for the next seven years, just when moments before, it seemed that there was nothing that could even trip Sharpor up, let alone keep him home.


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[Assistant] Oedonothus was, during the 260s, the indispensable man in the Eastern Empire. Without him, all would be lost. But of course, you know what De Gaulle said about indispensable men.


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[Assistant] The backdrop for the final chapter of the life of Odinothus was the 267 invasion of the Roman Empire by the Goths.


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[Assistant] Odinathus had naturally focused his attention on the east, as the Cisonids were his main concern.


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[Assistant] But seaborne Goths were now harrying the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, and threatening the lands beyond the Taurus Mountains, which Odinoth is considered part of his mandate.


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[Assistant] So, for the first time, he began making preparations to leave the eastern front and head north to face the Goths. But he never would get to face them.


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[Assistant] The indispensable man of the east did not die in battle or succumb to plague or go out in a blaze of glory.


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[Assistant] Instead, it seems that he fell victim to an assassin who was inspired mostly by a personal humiliation.


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[Assistant] The story that's most commonly related is that while off on a hunt with his royal entourage, Odin office's nephew breached some bit of protocol.


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[Assistant] Maybe he took the first shot at something or maybe he refused to allow some prize target to be taken by his uncle.


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[Assistant] Whatever he did, he was subsequently either chastised in too harsh of terms publicly,


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[Assistant] Or possibly put in some kind of timeout when the party returned home.


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[Assistant] Whatever his offense and whatever his punishment, it all led the nephew to burn with resentment. And at a family celebration a short time later,


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[Assistant] The nephew, probably by way of poison, killed Oedonothus and his eldest son.


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[Assistant] The nephew's role in the sudden and shocking death of the Lord of Palmyra was soon discovered and he was put to death by Odinothus' now widow, Zenobia.


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[Assistant] A variation of the story has it that Zenobia herself was behind the murder so that her son, Vibolethus, would have a clear path to power.


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[Assistant] In this telling, the older son, who died along with Oedonothus, was from Oedonothus' previous marriage, and was thus standing between Vebalathus and the throne.


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[Assistant] Given the fact that this follows the familiar wicked stepmother trope that the Romans so love, modern historians typically discount this version.


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[Assistant] Another version has it that Gallien has instigated the murder because he feared the growing power of Palmyra.


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[Assistant] But this too is usually dismissed for a number of different reasons. The main one being that the death of the Protector of the East opened up Gallienus' flank to the Sassanids right at the moment when he was preparing to go fight a major campaign against the Goths.


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[Assistant] Maybe if the murder had occurred when there was less imminent danger to the empire, we could indulge in that particular conspiracy theory.


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[Assistant] But really, Galienis killing Odinothis at that moment would have been the height of falling.


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[Assistant] In the immediate aftermath of Oden office's death, there was a great deal of confusion about who was now in charge.


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[Assistant] Oden Office's authority had been a personally held grant from Gallienus.


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[Assistant] So, did power now devolve back to the Roman governors, or did Odinoth's son inherit his father's titles? With everyone just kind of looking at everyone else,


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[Assistant] Zenobia stepped forward and simply acted as if her husband's death meant that, of course, Vebalithus would inherit all the power ceded to the family by Gallienus. But of course, since Vebalithus was still a young child, Zenobia herself would have to act as regent, which means that unless you have a mind to stop me, I am now in charge around here.


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[Assistant] With shrewd political sensibilities and the backing of one of her husband's top generals, an experienced soldier named Zabdis,


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[Assistant] Zenobia was able to assume all the powers Odin office had claimed before any other rival could even muster a counterclaim.


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[Assistant] Gallienist couldn't spare the time or attention it would take to weigh in on the subject.


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[Assistant] He did send a trusted Lieutenant East to make sure that the Queen understood who was really in charge, but...


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[Assistant] Signaling who she thought was really in charge, the emissary was treated with less dignity than a man of his rank would have expected, and he soon packed up and left in an angry huff over Zenobia's calculated haughtiness.


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[Assistant] This snubbing of Gallienus' man would eventually reveal itself to be the first step in Zenobia's long-term plan to establish a hold on what was slowly turning from the Eastern Roman Empire into the new independent Palmyrene Empire. As I just mentioned though,


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[Assistant] Galleinus was too caught up with his own problems to deal with Zenobia's power play.


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[Assistant] Those problems were the same problems that Oedonothus had been gearing up to face when he died. The massive gothic invasion of 267.


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[Assistant] After watching some of their brothers achieve great success using a small fleet to pillage the Black Sea coast,


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[Assistant] A collection of gothic tribes decided that what had worked on a small scale would work even better on a large scale.


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[Assistant] So they built or commandeered some 500 ships, and in early 267, they set sail south from the estuary of the Neistar River, without much more of a plan than to see what came along and then take it.


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[Assistant] They made their way down the west coast of the Black Sea and decided that they hadn't quite had their fill yet, so they passed into the Bosphorus with an eye on taking Byzantium.


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[Assistant] When the city proved to be a tougher nut to crack than they had hoped, though according to some sources, they did indeed crack the nut eventually,


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[Assistant] They continued south through the Sea of Marmara, and then made an attempt on the city of Sazikas.


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[Assistant] Gallienus and the Romans were not sitting around idly as this gothic fleet sacked the coastal cities of the empire.


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[Assistant] And the Imperial Navy based in Ravenna was launched on a mission to sink the invading barbarians.


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[Assistant] The Roman Navy caught the Goths as they were occupied with Sezicus, and the Goths, not being the best sailors in the world, were scattered by the much more competent Roman sailors.


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[Assistant] Though the naval battle in the Sea of Marmara was a decisive Roman victory, a sizable collection of Gothic ships managed to escape through the Hellespont intact.


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[Assistant] So, despite their best efforts, the Romans still found themselves scrambling after a gothic army now loose in the Aegean Sea.


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[Assistant] As they sailed into the heart of Greece, the remaining Goths split into two groups, with one heading due south towards Crete and then Rhodes, while the other made for the mainland.


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[Assistant] It had been a good long time since the Greeks had had to deal with any kind of foreign threat. And the citizens of Athens and Sparta and the other old Greek city-states were shocked to find themselves suddenly scrambling to build walls around their cities in an attempt to fend off the Goths.


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[Assistant] The defense of Athens was led by a man named Dexippus, who in the tradition of Xenephan and Thucydides was a historian as well as a soldier and a statesman. Though only fragments of his work remain today,


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[Assistant] Back when they were all still whole, late antiquity scholars relied heavily on the Greek historian's writings.


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[Assistant] Which means that we owe him a debt of gratitude for helping shed at least some light on the convoluted third century.


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[Assistant] Helping some beleaguered future scholars was probably the last thing on Dexippus's mind.


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[Assistant] The gossip appeared so suddenly that there was very little the Athenians could do to prevent the barbarians from overrunning their city.


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[Assistant] And Dexippus' fame as a soldier was earned, not by preventing the Goths from sacking Athens.


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[Assistant] But instead, by managing to revive the spirits of his neighbors and lead them in a decisive counter-attack that finally drove the plundering Goths off.


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[Assistant] When they were done with Athens, the barbarians had headed south to the Peloponnese where they sacked, among others, the city of Sparta. But as they headed back north,


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[Assistant] They were met by an army of irregulars raised by Dexippus, who put the surprised Goths into a hasty flight.


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[Assistant] And drove them north, right into the waiting embrace of Gallienus' approaching army.


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[Assistant] When he returned home, Dexippus found Athens was now a smoldering ruin. But, according to the famous anecdote,


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[Assistant] He also found that the great library had been left untouched.


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[Assistant] One of the Gothic chiefs had seen his men preparing to burn it down and put a stop to their plan, telling them that it was better to leave the Greeks preoccupied with their books so that they did not resume their previous warlike ways.


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[Assistant] When the Imperial Navy had sailed off to confront the Gothic fleet, Gallienus organized an army comprised of his mobile cavalry, the Praetorian cohorts, and units from the Danube legions.


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[Assistant] While the Goths sacked Greece, Gallienus was speeding in from the west.


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[Assistant] He might not have been able to save the Greeks, but he could certainly smack down the marauding barbarians when they inevitably made their way back north to their homelands on the far side of the Danube.


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[Assistant] There's some confusion in the record about what happened next.


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[Assistant] The accepted version is that Gallienus intercepted the group who had been driven off by Dexippus and defeated them in a battle near the city of Nessus in Thrace.


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[Assistant] The problem is that Claudius Gothicus would win a very similar battle the next year, near the very similar sounding city of Nysos.


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[Assistant] Leading some to suppose that something might have gotten mixed up over the years.


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[Assistant] Maybe Claudius was given credit for Gallienus' victory, both because Constantine wanted to promote Claudius' memory, and because everyone else wanted to damn Gallienus'.


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[Assistant] Or maybe Claudius' victory was the real one, and someone transposed a year leading us to think that it occurred during Gallienus' reign.


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[Assistant] Or maybe there were two battles with Gallienus and Claudius, each winning a key victory.


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[Assistant] That's the version I'm going to go with because it poses the fewest problems in trying to reconcile all the disparate facts and theories about what really happened. So in the history of Rome, both emperors will get their cookie.


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[Assistant] Gallienus' victory was by no means a complete one, though, and the Goths were allowed to head home unmolested as long as they gave up what they had taken and promised to take no more on their way back north.


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[Assistant] The emperor would not have long to bask in the glow of his semi-victory though, nor would he have the chance to follow up with the other gothic hordes still loose within his empire.


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[Assistant] Unlike every other time Gallienus had marched out to battle, this time he did not follow the lead of his top general, Oriolus.


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[Assistant] Instead, he left Aureolus in charge of the garrison at Milan with instructions to keep an eye on both posthumous and the Alamani and make sure that neither took advantage of the emperor's absence. As soon as Gallienus left Italy, though, the only one who took advantage of his absence was Aureolus. For whatever reason,


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[Assistant] The emperor's favorite general decided that now was the perfect time to revolt.


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[Assistant] The motivations behind Orioles' revolt are not at all clear. But broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought.


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[Assistant] Either Oriolus had always been trying to throw in his lot with posthumous.


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[Assistant] See his suspicious failure to defeat the Gallic Emperor previously.


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[Assistant] Or, this was an entirely new idea. Brought on possibly by the fact that he had been relieved of his command as the captain of the Imperial cavalry.


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[Assistant] And left behind to mine the shop, while everyone else went off to fight the Goths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The man who took command of the cavalry, incidentally, was the man who was about to succeed Gallienus, Marcus Aurelius Valerius Claudius.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When word came in 268 that his former right-hand man was now in revolt, Gallienus was forced to stop what he was doing, peel off most of the troops he had just raised to fight the Goths, and head them back to Italy.