What High Roman Empire was Like and Why It Ultimately Fell

 

I wrote about actual post Crisis of 3rd Century collapse of Rome before, there that period is covered in more detail. Here I will also write about golden age of empire as well as broader context of evolution of society.

High Roman Empire

I left previous article on how Ceasar and Augustus managed to capture institutions of Roman Republic and turn it into a de facto dictatorship/empire. Here I will write what was it like to live in that "Empire" in its golden age. Reality of it was far from universal idyllic age of enlightenment and civility as traditional historians like to portray it. However, to all its flaws it was a much better age to be a typical Roman plebian citizen compared to what was before and what came after. That would explain why public was on board with Ceasar and Augustus way of doing things. As to why it ultimately collapsed, then I will cover it in due time. After that you would not ask why it collapsed, but rather how that managed to last for the nearly 500 years.

Remember an (in)famous phrase "bread and circuses" that sometimes used to describe politics. This phrase and these methods originated precisely by Ceasar and Augustus. To keep public content with their autocratic rule these two and all Emperors after them up until Crisis of the 3rd Century used bread and circuses. 

How that worked exactly, simple. An Emperor would lead his army against yet another Gallic village, defeat and enslave its inhabitants, loot its wealth and annex its territory into empire. Then wealth from the whole process would be used to provide common Roman citizens in City Rome only with free food and entertainment. Captured wealth will pay for all that. 

Captured Gauls can be used as both working slaves as well as gladiators in the arena. The gladiators would fulfil the circuses' part. They even build a gigantic arena that stands to this day for the sole purpose of holding battles to death between captured slaves to keep public of Rome entertained. The arena is Coliseum of course.

As per Roman tradition an Army and General that returned with victory are entitled to a special celebration. Ceasar and his successors cleverly used this tradition to endear public to their cause to the point where public would care for a victorious general next return and the following feasts and games more than for anything else. Because of that they were much more concerned with losing these festivities than with losing the Republic when Senate decided to curtail Ceasar's glory and ambition.

There was one other thing that helped Emperors to hold tight grip on power: Plebians in Rome always resented the special privileges the Senatorial class had. Emperor rule managed to win some popular sympathy through abusing these renown citizens. Emperor who would exterminate an entire family of one renown Senator and use the money taken from them to hold feasts and games for all would be applauded by the crowd. 

This fact only further solidified Emperor's grip on power. Any senator that displeased Emperor could now be exterminated to the ovation of the mob. Very convenient for an emperor, but nightmarishly horrible for Senators. Emperor could easily remove anyone who plots against him or even someone who just displeased him in the slightest. In contrast senator could lose his life over some accident beyond his control. 

To make matters worse, as empire's times continued, Emperors increasingly used this method to supplement dwindling income from looting Gaullish settlements. 

Ever since Roman Republic was captured by a line of successive emperors. Public voted in candidates nominated by them into every elected office, making this capture complete and unshakable even by the death of the puppet master.

Politics became stagnant. Senate was reduced to a rubberstamping body. Senators stopped conserving themselves with politics and only cared for avoiding angering Emperor or his clients to avoid being purged.

Rome stopped evolving and reached its next stable state, that of the autocratic empire. Emperors would change, but methods through which they rule will not. In that regard it was a static era with unchanging (informal) rules and principles.

Thus, senators lived in fear of Emperors In contrast, plebeians slumbered in sweet borderline lethargy from which they did not want to wake up from. However eventually came the day when they were rudely awakened from it. 

Crisis of the 3rd Century and Beginning of the End

As with many other collapses, economy was the reason. Empire run out or Gauls to defeat, loot, capture and turn into slaves. There was no one else to loot or enslave either. Despite that public still expected their bread and circuses and soldiers and officers their pay for their hard work. 

Eventually unpaid soldiers had enough of promises and killed the emperor and declared their commanding officer a new emperor. With that a century of civil war has begun.

Newly installed emperor lacked any sense legitimacy. What was more important however is that he lacked both understanding the bread and circuses system that was carefully managed by his predecessors, as well as capacity to payroll it. 

Despite that he expected to be obeyed and honored as his predecessors. Not because he could pay for the election complain of his loyalists like his predecessors, but merely because he killed his predecessor and think it is all that it takes. That did rouse some eyebrows in Roman elites.

However, it was regular plebeian Roman citizens that spelled new Emperor's end. Without their regular bread and circuses, Roman crowds soon became restless and begun rioting. Eventually they killed the emperor and drove his legions out of Rome. Was it over.

Loyalty of army was one of the keys to keeping power in Imperial captured state system. Without money to pay them they will have no reason to stay loyal. Angry mob of plebeian crowds was another, without their support one cannot rule Rome. The two pillars that held system together fell and there was no way to keep them up. Because of that system fell like the house of cards. The new system was needed.

System could not continue however no one wanted it to end. A paradox or a contradiction of sorts. Crowds still wanted their bread and circuses; military generals wanted their emperorship laurels. What happens then. A futile attempt to somehow patch up and reboot the system.

Emperors temporarily stayed out of Rome until they could find enough money to afford usual spoils, Roman citizens got accustomed to. However, nothing more permanent that temporary, so successive emperors kept all their tenue in such temporary arrangement. They were called Barracks Emperors.

Murder of the last emperor produced legitimacy crisis. Suddenly just stubbing your superior makes you a new head honcho. Other military leaders with some loyalty among their legions all refused to acknowledge new emperor and instead declared themselves emperors. A civil war between them were supposed to settle it, but it did not. 

Even if one such warlord could defeat all his opponents and become the only emperor, such occurrence would last only for so long. Eventually he will either die or be killed by his lieutenants and new round of civil war will be on.

System was no longer returning to how it was. Just like when Rome became and Empire. It was not like some hiccups of the past, like Caligula's assassination, where things returned to how it was under new emperor. Rome begun a transformation that, despite best efforts from all sides, could not be stopped, cancelled or altered.

Collapsing Rome

However, collapse of Rome did not happen overnight. It was a long a painstaking process of trying everything one can think of to save the dying state. Unlike transformation from a city state republic that was at first enthusiastically embraced, this one was universally opposed. Because of that everyone worked to make it work somehow.

Constant civil war was solved by creating tetrarchy, where there will be 4 co-emperors, each ruling a section of the empire. It did not completely eliminate infighting but at least reduced and localized it somewhat. As pretenders would typically only overthrow emperor of their section of the empire and will not continue to other parts of the country.

Lack of volunteers to serve in the army that could not pay them as much as before was solved by hiring German and Spanish mercenaries to do this job instead. Recruiting from the conquered people who can be paid less was also practiced. Without Gauls to fight and pillage there was not that much need for new legions anyway.

Lack of fresh Gauls to kill each other for crowd entertainment was solved by using a marginalized religious sect of Roman society, called Christians. At first Christians posed a great problem for the organizers as they refused to fight and preached their faith instead. Christian unwavering believe that their God will save them or send them to heaven as martyrs was a problem here. That often caused their human opponents to refuse fighting them or even convert to their religion. However eventually they worked this out by putting Christians against wild beasts. Christians were still unwilling to fight so show was not as good as it was back then, but that was at least something.

There would be shpw executions of Christians and other criminals by nailing them to cross. Romans always thought crucifixion was a good form of punishment. They thought that publicly displaying dying agony of criminals would deter crime because people would not want to end up like that for stealing some bread. After Spartacus rebellion they even covered both sides of the intercity road with crucified bodies, Hitler and Pol Pot got nothing on these guys when it comes to cruelty.

Eventually Constantine would decide that Christian lack of fear of death would make them useful as soldiers to prop up undermanned legions so he will make Christianity an official religion of Rome.

Finally discontent plebeian crowds of Rome could be solved by building a new Rome, with Blackjack and Hookers. Even several new Romes, as other emperors of tetrarchy needed their own new Rome. Thus Constantinople, Mediolanum, Ravenna and others became new administrative capitals of different parts of the empire. New emperors found themselves in a situation where they no longer just exploit new regions for resources, but actually build something there.

All that created semi-balance of solution, but ultimately did not solve anything. If anything, the solution only speeds up the dissolution of Rome.

Emperors and generals, who created themselves new administrative capitals felt that there was no need for Rome at all. Turned out that all comforts and conveniences of Roman life could simply be moved to provinces. Locals can be taught to fight good enough to replace actual Roman recruits.

With all that together now every general stationed anywhere in the empire can simply declare himself a king or emperor and just rule his area. They did just that. In the end of the day most other emperors had neither strength, nor money, nor desire to stop them.

The closest thing to that was collapse of Spanish colonial empire, that was like Rome 2.0 in many regards. Suddenly every Roman province is now an independent nation, just like captainships and viceroyalties of Spain in early 19th century. The only difference is that no one laments collapse of Spanish Empire as tragically shattering earth-shaking event that destroyed culture and progress. Despite the fact that Spain improved lives of the colonized people much more than Rome and exploited them much less.

Byzantine Rome became somewhat of a spiritual successor to the original Rome. Until final the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and even some time after the rest of the Christian Europe acknowledged them as such. However, that was only a terminology question. In the same logic they also acknowledged Pope in Rome as spiritual leader, a successor to the Empire of sorts.

Finally, city of Rome itself and other Italian city states refuted all emperors and just hired the same German mercenaries to guard them, bypassing the middleman emperors. 

If it were modern days city of Rome and Byzantine Empire would have held long litigations on who has rights on the name Rome itself, but back then there were no international courts. Both two of them and many others ended up using this name as their own, like baby Standards.

Rome did not need emperors; emperors did not need Rome. Everyone moved on into a new era that is now known as Dark Ages. I will cover it in the next article.