17.4. THE REIGN OF PHILIP THE ARAB. THE MILITARY AND THE ROMAN ELITE.
For the Dutch scholar Lukas de Blois, the second great failure of Philip’s reign, or rather double failure, was his failure to deal properly with the army and its inability to reform how the posts in the Roman administration and military were filled. Both problems would have been closely linked, and it’s difficult to analyze one without the other.
After his initial issues of
antoniniani to pay the donative to the troops who had raised him to the purple, Philip minted practically no more issues with military legends, not even during the overabundant issues minted in 248 CE for the millennium of Rome. Instead, he spent most of his time in Rome (except for his Danubian campaign) and cultivated his ties with the Senate, which became very amiable, fostering an image of himself as a civilian
princeps in the tradition of the Antonines, and sidestepping the army. The study of the careers of equestrians and senators who occupied high administrative and military posts under Philip shows that he maintained (perhaps even more strictly than previous emperors) the traditional
cursus honorum for both orders, which combined administrative, legal and military posts. This system ensured that these two orders controlled all the key posts of the Roman state, whatever their nature.
Since the middle II century, there had been a growing tendency towards specialization, which was pronounced among the equestrians than among the senators, who thus experienced great advances within the Roman government under the Antonines and Severans. But still, some things did not change: most legions were led by senatorial legates, and most equestrians who led auxiliary units (or legions, like in Egypt and Mesopotamia) were only part-time soldiers. In this sense, the “experienced general” Timesitheus is a good example. Before his accession to the Praetorian Prefecture, his only military experience was the command of a 500-men auxiliary cohort in the military backwater that was Hispania Tarraconensis. And he was then expected to command an elite force of 10,000 men and a whole Roman army in the eastern campaign.
This had been the normal state of things all along Roman history (let’s just recall for example the amateurism of Crassus at Carrhae, and how many Roman military disasters were cased by poor leadership). But according to De Blois’ thesis, after the empowerment of the army by Septimius Severus and Caracalla, the troops began to grow ever more hostile to this situation. They began to trust only men who had either risen from the rank and file, or who came from military families (usually centurions) established in the border provinces and who maintained close ties with the army. The Roman army was a parallel society, strictly divided from the civilian milieu by physical (everywhere where there were permanent barracks, the troops were billeted in closed precincts either physically separated from the civilian city (like at Carnuntum or Alba) or in walled citadels that became true “cities within the city”, like at Rome or Dura Europos. The military had their own amphitheaters, baths and basilicas, special laws were applied to them, and even followed particular religious cults that were rare among the civilian population (in the III century, Mithras and Jupiter Dolichenus).
Bronze statuette of Iupiter Dolichenus, a divinity of Syrian origin venerated especially by Roman soldiers.
The brutal behavior of the troops towards civilians was an old story, but it’s clear that from the reign of Septimius Severus onwards this situation worsened at least in legal terms (with things like Caracalla’s authorization to the soldiers to collect the
annona themselves). In the first half of the III century and only in Rome there were several brutal clashes between the Roman plebs and the Praetorian Guard, with the Praetorians setting fire to large parts of the Urbs, and the Roman plebs (helped by gladiators, the
Urbaniciani and other assorted groups of people) besieging the
Castra Praetoria, cutting the aqueduct that carried water to it and forcing the Praetorians to surrender. The continued pay raises enjoyed by the army were also (correctly) perceived by the civilian population as further plundering by the soldiers, and the raising of the fiscal pressure by the Roman state to cope with its financial obligations with the troops was seen with increasing hatred and bitterness by the civilians.
Plaster model with an hypothetical reconstruction of the Castra Praetoria. Museo della civiltà romana, Rome.
De Blois’ vison implies that the Senate and the equestrians that filled the highest ranks in the government were mostly opposed to these developments and wished fervently to return to the good old days when the troops were treated with due
severitas and
disciplina, to force them to bow to their betters and keep to their station. This vision is summarized better than anywhere else in Cassius Dio’s historical work, whose last book is marked by his bitter and life-threatening confrontations with the soldiery. The soldiers and career officers to the rank of
primus pilus, (from tribune upwards the officers were either of senatorial or equestrian rank except in rare cases where the system allowed talented men to raise higher, like in the case of Maximinus Thrax) despised especially senatorial commanders, whom they saw increasingly as effeminate dilettantes who dwelled in luxury in Rome and knew nothing about the office of the arms. This is what Dio bemoaned as the loss of discipline among the troops: their increasing reluctance to be led by commanders who were not career soldiers whom they perceived as close to their realities; the
viri militares who were so despised by the senatorial historiography. Maximinus Thrax was their earlier example, and he fell because, as it was to be expected, he was completely inept in political and administrative matters. But after Gallienus, they would seize the control of the Roman state.
This approach to the problem though is somewhat outdated today (De Blois’s paper is thirty-something years old), and it’s redolent of the thesis of the Russian-born scholar Michael Rostovzeff, who following his experiences during the Russian Revolution, descibed the crisis of the Roman empire in social terms, under a clear influence of Marxist ideas of class struggle (although Rostovzeff was no Marxist). The main support for this approach is of course the work of Cassius Dio and his bitter portrait about the “indiscipline” and “insolence” of “the soldiers”.
But later scholars have pointed to the fact that despite this supposed antagonism between the privileged classes and the army, almost all usurpers until the reign of Gallienus were senators, who were acclaimed as
augustus by the troops under their command, so that there was little (if anything) about class struggle and subversion of the social order amongst the soldiers and lower officers (rather the contrary, because as shown by the example of the Illyrian emperors, they were often more conservatively Roman than the Romans themselves).
The problem of the army meddling into politics was nothing new in the Roman world as I wrote in a previous post, and the great problem of the III century was that, after the reigns of Septimius Severus and Caracalla the army had become used to exploiting its political power in order to obtain legal and financial benefits … and that unscrupulous senators and equestrians showed little remorse in taking advantage of this situation. Some scholars have described the usurpations of the III century as the soldiers forcing their will over their commander and proclaiming him
augustus against his will; once a general had been hailed as
augustus, there was no way back, because the only open path for the ruling emperor in Rome was to punish the rebels and execute their leaders. Perhaps there were a few situations like this one, but given the propensity showed by ambitious members of the elite in previous times of Roman history towards rebellion, this can’t have been too generalized.
Another factor that ironically contributed to the growing carousel of usurpations was, as pointed by Potter, the very success of imperial propaganda during the first centuries of the empire. Most common people, including the soldiers, had come to see the emperor as an almost omnipotent being, and his presence in a threatened border as an almost assured guarantee of victory. The soldiers wanted their
augustus close to them and leading them personally, as Caracalla or Maximinus Thrax had done, and not in far away Rome or elsewhere in the empire. But as the ruling emperor could not be everywhere at once, this aura of omnipotence of the imperial figure propelled the armies in menaced areas to proclaim their own
augustus.
Tommaso Gnoli also made an interesting consideration about the situation of Roman politics after 238 CE. As I wrote in a previous post, for Gnoli, the period between the victory of the Senate over Maximinus Thrax in 238 CE and the chaos that followed the capture of Valerian were times of undisputed senatorial supremacy, when the senatorial aristocracy finally achieved victory in its long struggle against the rising equestrian bureaucracy that had risen steadily under the Antonines and the Severans. In these twenty-something years, despite the chaos and usurpations, almost all emperors and usurpers were senators (Philip was the only exception), there were no purges amongst the senators, and the surviving legislation shows a clear pro-senatorial bias. But according to Gnoli the Senate paid a price for its victory. The membership of the Senate had been restricted to 600 senators under Augustus, and it was precisely the fact that it was a tightly-knotted group (almost like a Victorian gentlemen’s club) that allowed the Senate to function and to become one of the main pillars (if not the main pillar) of the Principate. This coherence was at first reinforced by the fact that most senators were Italians, but during the I century, an increasing number of Gaulish and Hispanic senators began to appear, and the II century it was the turn for Africans and easterners. This began to diffuse the unity of interests and intent that had characterized the Senate and allowed it to function, but still, its small size allowed most senators to know personally their colleagues and kept the spirit of a closed club.
Gnoli points out that this changed after 238 CE, as epigraphy shows an increased number of senators who had been adlected into the Senate from the equestrian order. The Roman state simply could not work without the specialized skills of equestrians like Timesitheus, and the Senate began increasing its ranks by allowing ever more equestrians to join their ranks. On one side, this diffused the barriers between the two elite groups, but at the same time it killed precisely what had kept the Senate a viable institution. With its enlarged membership, the Senate became ever more divided into interest groups that represented the interests of different imperial bureaucracies or different territories within the empire, while it became impossible for a single senator to get to know personally a significant part of his colleagues, because with so many new senators who were increasingly dispersed across the empire (filling posts that had been until then occupied only by equestrians), the small group who resided in Rome and assisted to the meetings of the Senate grew ever more irrelevant. The Senate became a dysfunctional institution, and this time there was no new Augustus to reform it again. If Gnoli’s hint (because it’s scarcely more than that) is right, then the crisis of the Roman state was double: a crisis of the imperial office and a crisis of the Senate, with one feeding the other. This would also help to explain the frequency of usurpations by senators, which would not have been only initiatives by the soldiers, but also conspirations by their senatorial commanders and their groups of supporters within the enlarged senatorial ranks. And this would also explain why, in the deepest point of the crisis the emperor Gallienus (himself of old Italian senatorial stock) decided to liquidate the
cursus honorum and cut senators off from military posts altogether, a step which ended the functions of the Senate as a governing body and was perhaps the most radical reform in Roman history until the adoption of Christianity by Constantine.
Also, the insistence in scholarly works about the infighting between senators and equestrians needs to be explained according to the rules and organization of Roman society, not according to modern or medieval analogies. One of the main pillars of Roman society was the institution of patronage, as the French scholar Paul Veyne has described masterfully. Without a patron more powerful than himself, a Roman individual was nobody and at mercy of every kind of crime and abuse, as the only “criminal justice” that was enacted and financed by the Roman state was in cases of “crimes against the state”. In cases like murder, rape, robbery, etc. it was up to the offended part to physically bring the offender to the court, which would then rule the case according to law, and then applying the sentence was left again in the hands of the offended part. As can be easily summoned, in such a system one needed to be part of a network of patronage if one hoped to survive and prosper. In case of suffering an offence, one had to seek help from one’s immediate
patronus, which would then evaluate the situation, and if he deemed it necessary, he would then in turn call for his own more powerful
patronus’ help, etc.
The most powerful
patronus was the emperor himself, but immediately under him, it was the 600 members of the Senate who were the leaders of all these clientele networks. And they were essential for them if they wanted to maintain their status; being a senator meant enjoying legal privileges and exemptions and also having access to very well remunerated posts, in which senators also engaged regularly in corruption (in one of Cicero’s letters, he wrote about the corruption and greed of Verres as governor of Sicily, compared with his own virtuous behavior as governor of Cilicia, where he only embezzled with moderation and only left the province (after a single year term as governor) two million sesterces richer. This kind of behavior was publicly acknowleged and it arose no scandal (only when the embezzlement became too much, as in Verres’ case, or when one wanted to attack a political adversary and then every single penny mattered).
Recontructed view of the Roman Forum; the building to the left is the Curia, where Senate meetings were held.
As a senator’s
cursus honorum was long (it began at the age of eighteen, and a senator was only eligible for the highest post in the
cursus, that of consul, if he was at least forty years old) and covered posts in the army, in the courts of justice and in the administration, senators had the ability to start building their own clientele networks from a young age and extend them upon all three branches of the Roman
res publica (and of course, they also inherited them from their deceased predecessors, like a Sicilian Don). Thus, a middle-aged senator would be no only a rich and privileged individual, but also a man with lots of important connections within the army, the administration and the courts of justice, from which he could pull favors and reclaim unpaid debts at any time.
By the III century, most senators were not Italian anymore, although by law they were forced to own land in Italy and reside in the peninsula for long periods of time. Also, if they wanted to play a political role, they needed to spend long stretches of time in Rome. Cassius Dio for example was a Greek-speaking senator born in Nicomedia, who also owned estates in Italy and Sicily. When he was not in his native Nicomedia, he spent his time either in his urban villa in Rome or in the villas he owned in Syracuse or across Italy. Of course, senatorial dynasties were tied to their birthplace, because it was usually there where their clientele networks were the strongest. But as time went by, due to intermarriage between senatorial families, most of them came to own vast estates distributed all across the empire. And a senator during his career would visit many different provinces, which would allow him to win clients in several places and in different branches of the Roman state’s structure.
For a city or a province, having a powerful senator in Rome linked to it was extremely important if they wanted to further their interests in front of the ruling emperor. For example, after defeating Clodius Albinus, Septimius Severus took steps to punish all who had helped him. The senatorial legate rich province of Baetica had sided with Albinus, and apparently most of the rich landowners of the province (many of them senators) had done the same. Apart from executing the governor and ordering punishments for the most important supporters of Albinus, Severus also took a very serious reprisal against the province of Baetica as a whole. Until then, the imperial dole of olive oil to the Roman plebs had been purchased by the emperors from Baetican landowners. Severus cut these commercial ties, and instead contracted the supply of olive oil for the Roman Annona with African landowners and merchants. This province of Africa benefited spectacularly from this measure, and the first 40 years of the III century were a time of growth and abundance for the province; one of the most benefitted cities was Leptis Magna, which was specialized in the production and export of olive oil, and which saw its business grow exponentially thanks to Severus’ decision. And naturally, Severus was born in Leptis in a senatorial family which descended from the old Punic oligarchy of the city.
Aerial view of Leptis Magna after all the embellishments bestowed on the city by Septimius Severus. Drawing by the French archaeologist Jean Claude Golvin.
Syria as a whole also benefitted from the rule of the Severan emperors because, despite the initial reprisals by Severus against the main cities of the province for their support of Pescennius Niger, his wife’s family was Syrian. The women of the Severan family and probably its emperors probably contributed funds to grand public works in the province like the large temple complex of Iupiter Heliopolitanus.
Macrinus' failing in liquidating the women of the Severan family, allowing them to return to their power base of Emesa, was a catastrophic mistake for him, because from there they began managing the many long threads of their networks of clients which were particularly strong in Syria and managed to turn part of the army stationed in Syria against Macrinus (which also means that yet another great mistake by Macrinus was to keep the army gathered for too long in a province with such strong ties to the Severan dynasty). This is an example unusually well known and attested because we have Cassius Dio’s and Herodian’s chronicles of the events.
There’s reason to believe that the murder of Severus Alexander and the end of the Severan dynasty was met with dismay by the “African lobby” in Rome, and that this played a part in the African uprising of 238 CE. Also, the clientele ties that linked the late Severus Alexander with some eastern units in the army that had moved to the West with him were behind the two plots against Maximinus Thrax that developed immediately after his usurpation: the first of them was led by a senator, but it was organized and was to be carried on by the auxiliar force of Osrhoenian archers in the army and its leader, a certain Macedon.
Aerial view of Roman Carthage, capital of the province of Africa and one of the largest cities in the Roman empire where the two Gordiani rebelled against Maximinus Thrax in 238 CE. Drawing by the French archaeologist Jean Claude Golvin.
It’s probable that the senatorial clique who carried out the 238 CE successful coup was led by African and Italian senators: the Gordianii, although of Anatolian origin, resided in Italy by then, Pupienus and Balbinus were Italian, Rutilius Crispinus was also Italian, and Publius Licinus Valerian (the future emperor) is quoted by some chroniclers as having been involved in the revolt too, and he belonged also to an old family from Etruria). This would explain their lack of care for the events in the East, and some scholars have suggested a direct link between the uprising of the senatorial proconsul Sabinianus against Gordian III in 240 CE and the fall of this faction. This revolt would have fractured the until then leading faction of Italian and African senators and would have allowed the “eastern faction” of senators with interests in the east to grasp the reigns of power and consolidate the new situation with the marriage of Timesitheus’ daughter (Timesitheus was an easterner with links to the old Severan elite, and so a man with ties to the new clique in power) with the young Gordian III. The debacle of Gordian III in Mesopotamia did not cause the fall of this group from power; probably just sacrificed Gordian to the soldiers’ wrath and then put Philip in charge as the new figurehead of their regime, and then it was business as usual. It’s probable that the rest of the Senate in Rome with their ties in the Danube army resented this, and that Philip’s lack of popularity with said army was not only due to his eastern origins, but that it was fostered by a certain lobby or lobbies within the Roman governing elite which were not happy with how things were being done.
This is what made senators so dangerous if an emperor alienated the Senate; because they, as a whole, were the ones who were in control of all the state’s institutions and the Roman plebs thanks to their clientele networks. And the emperors knew this and let things as they were because until Macrinus all of them were of senatorial extraction and came from the same
milieu and had followed the same methods. Bear also in mind that even between the reigns of Macrinus and Gallienus, only Maximinus Thrax and Philip the Arab were not senators.
Partly a way to circumvent this state of things and partly as because the small senatorial elite was plainly insufficient in numbers to cover all the posts in the expanding imperial bureaucracy, from the I century CE onwards, the emperors began appointing ever more equestrian officials, which was seen with increasing displeasure by the Senate. The reason was quite simple: high ranking equestrian officials with direct and regular access to the emperor (especially the two Praetorian prefects, but also the prefect of the
annona) rivalled the clientele networks possessed by the members of the Senate, and senators did not like this in the slightest.
Aerial view of Hierapolis in Phrygia (modern Pamukkale, in southwestern Turkey), which saw its golden era between 200 and 250 CE; the city was especially linked to the emperors of the Severan dynasty and to Severus Alexander in particular. Drawing by the French archaeologist Jean Claude Golvin.
If Gnoli’s hint is right, the year 238 CE marked the victory of the Senate over this tendency of the emperors (from Augustus to Maximinus Thrax) to use the equestrian order as a counterweight against the Senate, and as a way to centralize more power in their own hands. As the position of an equestrian was less coddled by legal privileges and inheritance rights than that of a senator, equestrians were always more indebted to their own
patronus, the emperor, and much less likely to start pursuing their own goals instead of those of his master, emperors correctly saw equestrians as more trustworthy in power positions than the group of 600 rich, powerful and ambitious men who sat in the Senate. By the III century though, powerful equestrians had reached a point where they’d also begun to behave like senators; Septimius Severus executed his praetorian prefect Plautianus under charges of plotting to murder him to seize the throne for himself, and another praetorian prefect Macrinus, murdered Caracalla and seized the purple for himself. Ilkka Syvänne has tried to rebuild the plot led by Macrinus, which according to him included most of the high equestrian hierarchy of the empire: both praetorian prefects, the prefect of the fleet at Misenum, etc.
In this sense, and following Gnoli’s line of thought I’d go further and ask if the short reigns and weakness of third century emperors after Caracalla, and especially after 238 CE, were not due to the fact that the Senate was not willing to repeat the experience of another Caracalla, and if the political infighting within the ranks of the Senate that had destroyed the Roman republic had not been reignited again with the successful “senatorial coup” of 238 CE. And thanks to the actions of Septimius Severus and Caracalla in relation to the army, it was very easy now for ambitious senators to use the army as a tool in a bid for power, which meant a
de facto return to the conditions of permanent civil war that had prevailed before Augustus’ seizure of power. The senatorial hierarchy became increasingly large by the adlection of equestrians into the
ordo senatorius, and it became too unwieldy and fractured into different interest lobbies to be able to act as a ruling organ for the empire. Instead, it only added to the growing chaos with its infighting.
