The Decline of the Roman Empire
Chapter 7- [189-223 CE*]
Reigns of Marcus Aelius, Cornelia Faustina, and Gaius Aelius Faustinus
When Rome was founded in 753 BCE, few could have expected the tiny collection of confederated hilltop villages to become the centre of an empire that stretched the whole of Europe, from Britain to North Africa, from Iberia to Syria. However, by the late 2nd Century, Rome was in trouble. Many scholars suggest that Rome's troubles began in the early 2nd Century, with the death of Hadrian in 137. Childless, Hadrian instead selects his adoptive younger brother, Trajan's only child, as his successor. At the time, few thought anything of it, as Lucius had proven himself as a skilled politician as a senator in his own right. Furthermore, in defending the Dacian frontier while Hadrian instituted large building projects throughout the Empire, including a restoration of Rome's defences, the construction of Hadrian's Wall in Britannia, and the expansion of the port facilities in both Alexandria and Ostia to better manage the flow of food between the capital and the empire's breadbasket along the Nile.
As Lucius was on the throne, the supposed curse on imperial children was lifted. Lucius had a number of children, including at least two sons. Of them, his middle son, Marcus Aelius, was decided to be the most fit to rule in his father's stead. As Lucius' age began to catch up with him, Marcus was groomed for the throne and, in his early thirties, became emperor in 174. Almost from the start, Rome was up in arms with this succession, with whispers in the senate about how they were returning to the monarchy. While many Romans recognised the Emperor for what he was from the modern perspective – an emperor, they still saw him as less a king, and more an omnipotent First Citizen, the senator beyond reproach and who had the final say in almost all matters. For too many of these men, they saw Lucius' command for Marcus Aelius to succeed him as dangerous. However, due to Marcus' own political skill, he was able to successfully silence many of his critics through sound statecraft.
When Emperor Marcus Aelius disbanded the Praetorian Guard and replaced it with the Protectores Domestici, it was seen even by the most ardent opponents of the emperor as a smart move. For as long as there had been a Roman Empire, the Praetorian Guard had been the king makers in Rome. It was the Praetorian Guard that allowed a man to be emperor, and decided that an emperor had exceeded his usefulness to the state or army. For the most part, emperors of the past had accepted the Praetorians as a fact of life, a thing to be watched closely and manipulated as just another political tool, a thing to be bribed to keep on the emperor's side and to be used as a weapon against political enemies. By the time of Marcus Aelius, the prices to bribe the emperors – had become quite ridiculous. Soldiers were asking for five or ten times their annual salaries in order to intervene in defence of the emperors. Marcus Aelius even needed to pay nearly nine thousand sesterces to each and every soldier in the Praetorian Guard, totalling nearly forty-five million coins between the five thousand men sworn to protect the emperor. Once gaining their loyalty though, and having ascended to the throne, Marcus Aelius disbanded the Praetorians, seeing them as corrupt and far too fickle and easily swayed by greed to be a credible protection force.
In their place, the new emperor created a demi-legion of four-thousand men, comprised of five eight-hundred men cohorts. This new unit, known as the Protectores Domestici, was an elite unit drawn from men in the first cohorts of every legion of the Empire. All five of these cohorts were stationed in Italy, with three cohorts in Rome – one at the Marcus Aelius' palace, another in a garrison constructed near the Curia, and a third just outside the gates along the northern approaches to the city. Two further garrisons were assigned in northern Italy, guarding the mountain passes to check rogue generals that might try and revolt against Rome, claiming the title of Emperor for themselves. Along this northern frontier, the demi-legion would be put to the test countless times over the years, and they would gain for themselves quite a reputation.
It wouldn't be long, though before the emperor would die. Though slain by court politics, he died with the knowledge that his household guard had not betrayed him. Instead, he was poisoned after a sumptuous dinner party by his wife after retiring for the night. Cornelia Faustina, an ambitious young woman and wife to the emperor, proclaimed herself as empress, lacking a suitable heir and completely distrustful of the generals and others close to the Imperial Court.
To many Romans, the usurping of the Imperial Throne by this woman was an absolute travesty, and upon Cornelia Faustina's ascension the Empire all but collapsed. Gaius Pescennius Niger, the venerable commander of Legio II Traiana Fortis (Second Legion, Trajan's Valiants) took up arms against her. Several other generals, including Septimus Severus and Didius Julianus, all stand against Rome, going east and besieging Antioch as another rogue general, Clodius Albinus, proclaims himself protector and governor of Britannia. Attempts by Cornelia Faustina's loyal general Pertinax to relieve the garrison lead by Quintus Aemilius Laetus failed when Ananias II refused to present the aid requested by Empress Cornelia Faustina, namely soldiers to bolster Pertinax's army near Antioch.
The fall of Antioch struck a blow to Rome that it never would truly recover from, and marked the founding of the Antiochan Empire, which would last for quite some time sandwiched between an ever-weakening Rome, the Persians, and a relatively stable, if fluid, Jewish kingdom. Aside from cutting a chunk of land out of the Roman lands in the east, the Antiochan Empire's founding also severed the grain land route from Egypt so carefully and protectively entreated with the Judeans during their foundation.
Though far less damaging the slightly earlier loss of Britannia in 191, a land which would also never re-enter the Roman fold, set a dangerous precedent that would only get worse.
Despite these issues, both at home and abroad, Cornelia Faustina's reign was curiously long, nearly fifty years, before she died in 220 at , and after having produced an heir in 189 with her murdered husband. Gaius Aelius Faustinus took to the throne at the age of 31 that same year.
Almost as soon as Gaius Aelius took to the throne, he was universally acclaimed and liked by the people, who looked for any way to get out from under his mother's rule.
Though he began promisingly as a pragmatic emperor, willing to trade the vanity of territory for security for the Roman state, emperor Gaius very quickly found himself overwhelmed, and it became clear that his mother had done a very poor job preparing Gaius for the role of Emperor. In an attempt to make himself a credible ruler, he decreed that he was of divine blood, even in life. Though it was customary to deify many emperors upon their death, Gaius decreed that though deification has been retroactive to that point, he remarked that the deeds leading to deification could not be done by “mere” mortals, and thus they must have been godlike in some fashion even before the decrees. With it being well established that gods can pass on their elevated status through breeding with mortals, or adoption, he traces his lineage to the great Trajan, stating that his distant relative Hadrian was made divine through his adoption by Trajan, even before their respective posthumous deifications. Through the years, the divine blood thus transferred from father to son, and through marriage from husband to wife between Marcus Aelius and Cornelia Faustina. That Cornelia was capable of claiming the throne in her own right was proof in his mind that Emperor Marcus's divinity rubbed off on her, for all intents and purposes, upon their marriage. And with Gaius' birth to two divine beings, he was made wholly divine. Taking on the names of both sources of his divinity, Gaius Aelius Faustinus saw himself as Jupiter-incarnate, and Trajan reborn.
Without the possibility of a Roman land route into Asia Minor with the succession of Antioch, in 246 Judea saw no reason to maintain its adherence to the treaty regarding Maritime Palestine signed all the way back during the reign of Caligula when Judea was re-established, and so the Judean king Mahol sent soldiers all along the Levant, conquering the skeleton garrisons of Roman forces at the numerous port cities along the Mediterranean, many of whom were pulled back from the region into Egypt to secure the vital grain supply for Rome.
Increasingly through his reign, and especially after Gaius' loss of Maritime Palestine, his behaviour became erratic, as he launched numerous aborted and ill-fated attempts to retake Britannia. These attempts did little to dislodge the Romano-British separatists in the British Isles, and actually served only to unify the Romano-British and Romano-Irish states with the local tribes, using their mutual distrust, even hatred, of Rome as the basis of the union in the early 250s.
Despite Gaius Aelius Faustinus' incompetence, the Aelian reforms which restructured the Praetorian Guard into the Protectores Domestici ensured that he remained in power in part because of the loyalty of his men, which no longer was to the man, but to the position. Though the Protectores Domestici knew that there were more capable men, surely, for the position of Imperator, they fervently sought out and ended numerous plots against the Emperor, bringing numerous conspirators before Emperor Gaius. Returning from his third abortive invasion in twelve years, in 256, a storm in the English Channel drowned the Emperor and broke many of the ships in his fleet.
Six weeks later, his son, Rufus Aelius, the mad emperor's thirteen year old son, was installed with the legate of the household guard as his regent when the remnants of the emperor's army staggered back, beaten, into Rome without the emperor's body, lost somewhere on the channel's sea floor.
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* - Another, ITL, date is listed here, however, as I have yet to decide on exactly what the timescale will be (when year 0 is, etc), I'm slipping in the OTL date for the time being.