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Rh households the philosopher, generally a Greek, played the part of a director of consciences. The influence of these doctrines is shown in the humane provisions of the civil law as elaborated in the Antonine period, which did much to mitigate the lot of the slave and to smooth the process by which freedom might be attained. Above all, a religious movement which drew its motive power not from Greek philosophy, but from Oriental mysticism, carried the human race far from its old moorings, and culminated in the triumph of Christianity. All the Eastern cults—whether of Cybele, of Isis, of the Syrian Baalim or of the Persian Mithras—had this in common, that they promised to their adherents redemption from the curse of the flesh and a glorious immortality after death; and this fact gave them an irresistible attraction for the disillusioned and overburdened subjects of the emperors. The religion of Mithras, whose doctrines were specially suited to the military temperament, made its way wherever the armies of the empire were stationed, and seemed likely at one moment to become universal; but it was forced to yield to Christianity, which refused to tolerate any rival, faced the empire with a claim to absolute dominion in the spiritual sphere, and at length made that claim good (see ; ; ).

Marcus Aurelius died in 180, and the reign of his worthless son, Commodus ( 180-93), was followed by a century of war

and disorder, during which nothing but the stern rule of soldier emperors saved the empire from dissolution. The first and ablest of these was Septimius Severus (193-211), whose claims were disputed by Clodius Albinus in the West, and by Pescennius Niger in the East; in these struggles rival Roman forces, for the first time since the accession of Vespasian, exhausted each other in civil war. Severus emphasized strongly the military character of the Principate; he abstained from seeking confirmation for his authority from the senate, and deprived that body of most of the share in the government which it still retained; he assumed the title of proconsul in Rome itself, made the prefect of the guard the vicegerent of his authority, and heaped privileges upon the army, which, although they secured its entire devotion to his family, impaired its efficiency as a fighting force and thus weakened Rome in face of the barbarian invader. He succeeded in founding a short-lived dynasty, which ended with the attempt of the virtuous but weak Alexander (222-35) to restore the independence of the senate. This led to a military reaction, and the elevation of the brutal Maximinus, a Thracian peasant, to the throne. The disintegration of the empire was the natural result; for the various provincial armies put forward their commanders as claimants to the purple. A hundred ties bound them closely to the districts in which they were stationed; their permanent camps had grown into towns, they had families and farms; the unarmed provincials looked to them as their natural protectors, and were attached to them by bonds of intermarriage and by long intercourse. Now that they found themselves left to repel by their own efforts the invaders from without, they reasonably enough claimed the right to ignore the central authority which was powerless to aid them, and to choose for themselves imperatores whom they knew and trusted. These “tyrants,” as they were called when unsuccessful, sprang up in ever-increasing numbers, and weakened Rome's power of resistance to the new enemies who were threatening her frontiers—the Alamanni and Franks, who broke through the German limes in 236; the Goths, who crossed the Danube in 247, raided the Balkan provinces, and defeated and slew the emperor, Decius, in 251, and the restored Persian kingdom of

the Sassanidae (see ), whose rulers laid claim to all the Asiatic possessions of Rome and in 260 captured Antioch and made the emperor, Valerian, a prisoner. During the reign of Gallienus, the son of Valerian (260-68), the evil

reached its height. The central authority was paralysed; the Romanized districts beyond the Rhine were irrevocably lost; the Persians were threatening to overrun the Eastern provinces; the Goths had formed a fleet of 500 sail which harried Asia Minor and even Greece itself, where Athens, Corinth, Sparta and Argos were sacked; and the legions on the frontiers were left to repel the enemies of Rome as best they could. A provincial empire was established by M. Cassianius Latinius Postumus in Gaul and maintained by his successors, M. Piavonius Victorinus and C. Pius Esuvius Tetricus. Their authority was acknowledged, not only in Gaul and by the troops on the Rhine, but by the legions of Britain and Spain; and under Postumus at any rate (259-69) the existence of the Gallic Empire was justified by the repulse of the barbarians and by the restoration of peace and security to the provinces of Gaul. On the Danube, in Greece and in Asia Minor none of the “pretenders” enjoyed more than a passing success. In the Far East, the Syrian , prince of Palmyra (q.v.), though officially only

the governor of the East (dux Orientis) under Gallienus, drove the Persians out of Asia Minor and Syria, recovered Mesopotamia, and ruled Syria, Arabia, Armenia, Cappadocia and Cilicia with all the independence of a sovereign. Odaenathus was murdered in 266. His young son Vaballathus (Wahab-allath) succeeded him in his titles, but the real power was vested in his widow Zenobia, under whom not only the greater part of Asia Minor but even the province of Egypt was forcibly added to the dominions governed by the Palmyrene prince, who ceased to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome.

Gallienus was murdered at Milan in 268, and after the brief reign of Claudius II. ( 268-70), who checked the advance of the Goths, Aurelian (270-75) restored unity to

the distracted empire. Palmyra was destroyed and Zenobia led a prisoner to Rome (in 273) and in the next year the Gallic empire came to an end by the surrender of Tetricus. Aurelian, it is true, abandoned the province of Dacia, but the defences of the Danube were strengthened, and in 276 Probus repulsed the Franks and Alamanni, who had been pressing on the Rhine frontier for some forty years. Finally, Carus (282) recovered Armenia and Mesopotamia from the Persians and restored the frontier fixed by Septimius Severus.

Although any serious loss of territory had been avoided, the storms of the 3rd century had told with fatal effect upon the

general condition of the empire. The “Roman peace” had vanished; not only the frontier territories, but the central districts of Greece, Asia Minor, and even Italy itself, had suffered from the ravages of war, and the fortification of Rome by Aurelian was a significant testimony to the altered condition of affairs. War, plague and famine had thinned the population and crippled the resources of the provinces. On all sides land was running waste, cities and towns were decaying, and commerce was paralysed. Only with the greatest difficulty were sufficient funds squeezed from the exhausted taxpayers to meet the increasing cost of the defence of the frontiers. The old established culture and civilization of the Mediterranean world rapidly declined, and the mixture of barbaric rudeness with Oriental pomp and luxury which marked the court, even of the better emperors, such as Aurelian, was typical of the general deterioration, which was accelerated by the growing practice of settling barbarians on lands within the empire, and of admitting them freely to service in the Roman army.