Crisis of The Third Century
Despite a number of crises, the Roman Empire had stood firm since its inception under Augustus. But after Emperor Alexander Severus was murdered by soldiers in 235, Roman legions were defeated in a campaign against Sassanid Persia, and the Empire fell apart. General after general squabbled over control of the Empire, the frontiers were neglected and subjected to frequent raids by Carpians, Goths, Vandals and Alamanni, and outright attacks from aggressive Sassanids in the east.
Finally, by 258, the attacks were coming from within, when the Empire broke up in to three separate competing states. The Roman provinces of Gaul, Britain and Hispania broke off to form the Gallic Empire.
Since Rome was unable to protect the eastern provinces against the Sassanids, then-governor Septimius Odaenathus decided to use the substantial legions he had at his disposal - among them the famed Legio XII Fulminata - to defend his provinces, rather than intervene in the struggles for Rome.
Read more about this topic: Palmyrene Empire
Famous quotes containing the words crisis of, crisis and/or century:
“The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm’s length.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
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