Fracturing of the Roman Empire.

During the crisis of the 3rd century only 2 secessionist states emerged the Gallic empire and the Palmyrene empire. What if more ambitious people in the empire took advantage and risked everything to carve a state for themselves,

The map of the crisis
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Map of the diocese to act as a rough guidance for future borders.
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During the crisis of the 3rd century only 2 secessionist states emerged the Gallic empire and the Palmyrene empire. What if more ambitious people in the empire took advantage and risked everything to carve a state for themselves, ....

This is highly unlikely to happen. It was already a miracle, that Postumus did not march on Rome. Separatism was fully unroman and against the roman mindset. This situation was a very strange exception.
 
Technically, neither 'state' really considered themselves seperatists. They still considered themselves part of the empire, but every part focused more of its efforts on holding off foreign enemies than taking on the others. Until they could focus on the others.
 
Technically, neither 'state' really considered themselves seperatists. They still considered themselves part of the empire, but every part focused more of its efforts on holding off foreign enemies than taking on the others. Until they could focus on the others.
For all intents and purposes, Zenobia considered herself separate from the Roman Empire and was trying to carve our her own state. Posthumus on th eotherhand, did not consider himself a separatist as you said (neither, for that matter, did Odenathus).
 
During this period over 20 generals claimed to be emperor and were recognised by the senate, so let's say rather than independence these generals battled for the crown leading to a warring states period in roman history like the Chinese empire eventually no one finds a way to United the lands of the former empire thus leading to a situation were you have many roman successor states that are hostile to each other.
 
I alrady said, that the chance is pretty low, but let's speculate a bit.

If during Gallienus reign, the exercitus moesiae usurps, Gallienus' opportunities are very limited. The exercitus pannoniae is all, he could use against the usurper, because the central units in northern Italy had to guard the alps, to avoid, that Postumus is marching on Rome.

The moesian army is perhaps not strong enough to attack, busy with Goths or has to retreat after a first tied battle. The moesian army controls parts of Asia minor, which should be sufficient to supply it.

Now assume another even more unlikely event: the exercitus africae usurps as well. Way to weak, in order to march on Rome. But able to hold Africa against a weakened Gallienus. Well, there is a reason, why african armies did not usurp that often, and if, they often did it under weird circumstances. Most probably Gallienus is dead, if he cannot reconquer Africa immediately, in order to guarantee corn supply. And as described above, he can't.

So we got 5 roman empires and 4 of the 5 rulers call themself the one and only legitimate emperor. However, the next emperor with balls, in any of these sub-empires, will try to beat his neighbour. And the winner takes it all. As mentioned above, separate roman empires were a strong violation of the roman mindset. Nobody would understand, why not to goal for a united empire. There is always a very strong trend for reunification in the roman empire, which es extremely hard to butterfly away.
 
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