The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Nonfiction | Book | Adult

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapters 13-14

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary

Gallienus was mortally wounded by an assassin and named as his successor Claudius, an army officer of obscure origins. Gibbon deems Claudius’s rise as a positive turning point with a “succession of heroes” (283). At Milan, Claudius defeated Aurelous, a rival for the imperial throne. He drove the Goths out of Macedonia. Gibbon presents Claudius as a good emperor, who, after receiving a complaint from an old woman about the fact that before he became emperor he had previously unjustly confiscated her property, was embarrassed and quickly restored her property to her (287).

After a reign of two years, Claudius died from a plague. Claudius was succeeded as emperor by his brother Quintilius, whom Gibbon notes was the ancestor of the future emperor Constantine I. Hearing that a rival named Aurelian had already raised an army he could not hope to defeat, Quintilius died by suicide after a reign of just 17 days (291).

Aurelian was the son of a peasant farmer in Sirmium (modern-day Serbia). After a reign of four years, he managed to defeat the Goths and the Alemanni. Furthermore, he defeated Tetricus, a rival emperor who controlled Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and Queen Zenobia, who ruled a breakaway territory from the empire in Syria. Gibbon attributes Aurelian’s victories to the fact that he succeeded in restoring military discipline.

In response to the problems of the era, Aurelian also held religious ceremonies and extended the fortifications around Rome. Aurelian celebrated a great triumph—a celebration reserved for victorious Roman generals. Still, he showed sympathy to his two biggest rivals: Zenobia was allowed to live the rest of her life at Tivoli in Italy, and Tetricus and his son relocated to Rome.

Chapter 12 Summary

Gibbon remarks that, in this period of Roman history, every emperor, no matter their good qualities or lack thereof, was eventually betrayed and murdered. However, Aurelian was so popular among the legions that the pattern changed somewhat: “The legions admired, lamented, and revenged their victorious chief” (317), holding a lavish funeral for Aurelian and killing the secretary who engineered his assassination. However, the Senate and the army clashed over who should be the next emperor.

During this time, there was an interregnum, meaning a period during which there was no emperor. Still, the army did not attack Rome, which Gibbon attributes to the fact that something of the discipline Aurelian imposed on the army remained. Eventually, the Senate named their own emperor, Tacitus, an elderly senator descended from the Roman historian of the same name. Tacitus tried to refuse the throne, but he faced the “affectionate obstinacy” (321) of the Senate.

Gibbon sees Tacitus as a reformer who tried to revive Augustus’s balance between republicanism and monarchy. He issued letters to the major cities of the empire, claiming the authority of the Senate had been restored. Through both diplomacy and war, Tacitus was also able to subdue a “barbarian” tribe, the Alani, who had set up a military alliance against the Persians with Aurelian but had settled around Asia Minor. However, either because of the harsh weather he was exposed to by joining the army, or because of the harsh treatment he got from the soldiers, Tacitus died after a reign of “only six months and about twenty days” (324).

Tacitus’s brother, Florianus, immediately declared himself emperor without the approval of the Senate. He was opposed and defeated by Probus, another army officer from Illyrian descent like Claudius and Aurelian (326). Probus was careful to appease the Senate, claiming that he only claimed the imperial office to get rid of the usurper Florianus and asking that they confirm him as emperor. While the Senate managed the administration of the empire, Probus dealt with various external threats and rebellions. He was especially focused on driving the Germans out of Gaul, including a new Germanic people who attacked the empire, the Lygians from modern-day Poland. To replenish the numbers of soldiers and agricultural laborers, Probus began a policy of allowing Germans to settle on Roman territory. However, many Germans reverted back to their former way of life. A tribe of Franks in the region of Pontus in Asia Minor hijacked a fleet and pirated various areas including Greece, Sicily, and North Africa (333-34).

Probus ordered the soldiers to establish vineyards in Gaul and Pannonia, do construction and river navigation for improvement projects in Egypt, and drain swamps. During one of these swamp-draining projects, the troops turned on Probus and killed him. Gibbon writes they then “lamented their fatal rashness, forgot the severity of the emperor whom they had massacred, and hastened to perpetuate, by an honourable monument, the memory of his virtues and victories” (337). They quickly named a new emperor: the praetorian prefect, Carus.

Gibbon sees Carus’s elevation as another turning point, since Carus did not even bother seeking the approval of the Senate (338). Carus also gave his sons, Carinus and Numerian, the title of “Caesar” and left Carinus to manage problems in the western empire while Carus launched a military campaign against the Persians. In one vivid scene recorded by Gibbon, Carus threatened the Persian ambassadors that he would render Persia as empty of trees as Carus’s own head was as empty of hair (340-41).

Carus won some major victories against the Persians, capturing the key cities of Ctesiphon and Seleucia, but he was either struck by lightning or died from illness while in the military camp. Rumors that the emperor had been killed by lightning caused the Romans to abandon the campaign against Persia due to fears of divine wrath. He was followed by both of his sons.

Gibbon describes Carinus as “soft, yet cruel; devoted to pleasure, but destitute of taste; and, though exquisitely susceptible of vanity, indifferent to the public esteem” (342). Carinus’s reign was most famous for the splendor of the public games he hosted. Meanwhile, Numerian also became sick while campaigning in Persia. A praetorian prefect, Arrius Aper, secretly kept the fact of Numerian’s death hidden and issued orders that he pretended came from the army. One of the officers in the army, Domitian, accused Arrius Aper of having Numerian killed. Domitian marched against Carinus, and Carinus’s forces almost won. However, Carinus was reputedly assassinated by the husband of a woman he had an affair with, leaving Domitian as emperor.

Chapters 11-12 Analysis

The almost darkly comical series of emperors rapidly facing violent ends in the Crisis of the Third Century receives more of Gibbon’s attention here. As Gibbon summarizes the trend of the era, “Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same […] almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder” (317). Gibbon presents the Crisis of the Third Century as a problem that could not be overcome by one person, however ambitious their reforms were. In Gibbon’s narrative, both Tacitus and Probus show an awareness of the internal problems facing the empire, but even they are ultimately powerless to overcome the forces fueling the chaos.

However, Gibbon adds that the exclusion of Rome’s senators from the military under Gallienus and the failure of the emperor Tacitus to reverse that policy further diluted the willingness of Italians to serve in the military. This was a tendency that had already been growing, with Italians preferring to serve as magistrates in the government over military careers. For Gibbon, the consequences of this worsened the Crisis of the Third Century. He writes, “nor, indeed, was it possible that the armies and the provinces should long obey the luxurious and unwarlike nobles of Rome” (323).

As a result, the Roman government would come to rely on not only recruits from the provinces, but on German tribes allowed to settle within the empire. Further, in Gibbon’s view of the “West” versus the “East” this was more than just a problem with military recruitment: It marked a fundamental decline with what Gibbon would describe as the innate qualities that led the Romans to establish an empire in the first place.

These chapters also show Gibbon’s use of sources as a historian. Throughout The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon utilizes ancient sources like the Histories of Ammianus Marcellinus, Zosimus, and the Historia Augusta. These can be seen in Gibbon’s many footnotes throughout the entire book. Gibbon also does primary source analysis, using epistles sent to a wide group of readers by the emperor Tacitus, along with a couple of private letters between senators (322-23). Like any modern historian, Gibbon uses such sources to try to understand the mindset and expectations of the people alive in the era he is describing.