Aurelian and the Third Century [Paperback]

Watson has taken as his subject a poorly documented period of Roman history and written a book that, with humour and academic rigour, lays out the historical context of a Roman emperor who made a real difference to the longevity of the empire, rebuilding a single political unit from three large breakaway empires. Watson's deep knowledge of the sources has enabled him to build a cohesive picture of a period that is difficult to gain a firm understanding of. I'd heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the later Roman empire.

Watson's appraisal kicks off with a short introductory chapter on the third century 'crisis'; he notes that this term is hardly appropriate to describe what seemed to be very much the normal state of affairs over several decades. The fundamental changes which occurred both within and without the Empire during this period are discussed and the effects they had.

The first half of the book is a narrative of Aurelian's reign, the reconquest of the East and the victory over the breakaway 'Gallic' Empire. Although Watson extols Aurelian's generalship, it almost sounds like Zenobia's gains evaporated very quickly after a single defeat inflicted by the Roman forces; likewise the reconquest of the West was very much a pushover.

The second half of the book is an analysis of Aurelian's policies. First the economic reforms are discussed. Though Watson might regard Aurelian as a saviour of the economy, I can't really see how increasing the amount of silver in the coinage from a little over three percent to a whopping, er, five percent could really have reinvigorated the currency.

Secondly the public works and administration are covered. Slighly oddly, in speaking about the walls of Rome commissioned by Aurelian, Watson notes that they held off the Goths in 408 and 409 but not in 410. As any fule kno, the walls held in 410 too; it was only because some of the occupants of the city regarded surrender as better than slow starvation that they opened the gates to Alaric's army.

Third up is consideration of Aurelian's relationship with the senate and army. Watson presents a valuable reanalysis suggesting that Aurelian had a very good relationship with the senate; many commentators have regarded this period when many officers and emperors, including Aurelian himself, began to come from outside the senatorial class, professional soldiers working their way up through the ranks, as one of conflict between senators and emperors. Incidentally, the potrayal of Aurelian as extremely cruel and a disciplinarian comes in for a bit of a hammering; his treatment of the defeated Palmyrans and 'Gallic' Empire seem relatively speaking to have been quite enlightened for the age.

Finally Watson ponders 'the Emperor and the divine'. I was hoping to discover something more about precisely when certain practices came in, such as wearing the diadem and prostration, as I have seen a number of conflicting claims on this. Watson is unfortunately no help here. He does regard the transition from 'Principate' to 'Dominate' as a gradual transition, making it impossible to cleanly divide two contrasting eras as historians have tended to.

Whilst Watson is clearly a great admirer of Aurelian and his achievements, unfortunately he has failed to convince me of quite the same belief. A decent, if not particularly outstanding work covering this short but important period of Roman history.

This book contains everything that is known about Aurelian. It isn't all that much. Aurelian's reign is only documented in brief summaries of the entire empire or an inaccurate Life. Archaeology adds some information about the times he lived in, but apart from numismatics and the occasional inscription it isn't particularly helpful in dating any of his actions or campaigns. For this reason this book has a great deal of background information and textural analysis. This should not discourage anyone interested from reading it, but it does mean that the book isn't a biography in the traditional sense. For a rather less accurate but slightly more readable account of his reign see Restorer of the World.

This book begins on rather a sour note. I dislike the modern tendency to downplay the term 'crisis' in the third century. Yes many of the changes had shown up under the Antonines or sooner, and yes many of these tendencies represent the direction in which the Roman state had been going for years, but that does not lessen the significance of the changes nor does it mean that the 'crisis' had no effect on them. Certainly the crisis accelerated the policies already present at a dramatic rate. A lot of these complaints strike me as being part of the nit-picking which historians like to perform to show that they know better than their peers/predecessors. There are a significant number of scholars who argue that feudalism, for example, never existed because there was always a significant amount of cash payments and exemptions from service in kind. This is like arguing that democracy doesn't exist because there are people who don't vote. Society never fits a model exactly, but a general theory can be applied with only minor exemptions. I view this as a version of the reductio ad ridiculum argument and not the reductio ad absurdum one. Define something you wish to disprove so precisely that the reality cannot possibly match it, then disprove it. I don't know of any scholars alive today who define the 'crisis' in the narrow terms that he so dislikes. If the 'crisis' has often been overstated that doesn't mean it wasn't real. I can accept the term as lasting fifty years of civil war, barbarian invasions, and inflation. If you cannot then please provide an alternate term and defend it rather than just aimlessly tearing it down.

Aside from that, which is (at most) a minor annoyance in the introduction, this book is an excellent read. It details Aurelian's career with great skill and insight. Since pretty much nothing is known on Aurelian before he began his reign it begins with the state of the empire under Gallienus, which is a good place to start anyway since that period saw the empire at its lowest ebb. The first half of the book is a straight narrative of Aurelian's career while the second half goes into various issues. This is really the best way to write a book like this since ones that discuss only the issues are incomprehensible to the beginner and those that only offer a detailed narrative provide nothing for the student. The narrative hear is clear and mostly uncontroversial. It does spend a good deal of time justifying the order and progression of various campaigns, which just shows what little evidence the author is working on. It is helped by some rather good maps detailing the approximate course of Aurelian's campaigns. Overall I was very impressed with what he managed to squeeze out of these bare sources.

The use of numismatics in this book is really exceptional. It emphasizes how important this study is to the field. He is able to make arguments about when cities were conquered based on the output of coins from their mints. He uses this to disprove or at least clarify certain theories. Given this it is extremely disappointing that his pictures of coins are so small, so selective, and printed on such poor paper. I admit that I'm not always so impressed with his use of the sources. While I don't think I disagreed with any of his conclusions with regards to Aurelian, his justification for certain conclusions is rather thin. For example he justifies dismissing the account in the Historia Augusta which said that Aurelian was preparing for a Persian campaign at his death by stating that this seems to have been invented to compare Aurelian to the author's hero Julian and his Persian campaign. This is highly questionable for two reasons:
1. The author stopped his lives well before Julian and was pretending to be writing before Julian anyway. So any interpretation of that man as his hero is just speculation.
2. Aurelian isn't exactly the most unambiguously great of his emperors. He described him as an emperor who was necessary rather than good, and counted him among neither the good nor the bad emperors. As such any comparison with Julian would not be uniformly favorable.
Now I don't doubt that his conclusion that Aurelian was mounting a different campaign altogether is correct, but I don't buy his reasoning. He didn't even need to provide such a reason since he (rightly) dismisses much of the HA throughout the book.

But those are minor complaints. The book as a whole is extremely solid. Well-recommended for anyone with any interest in the period.