Sometimes history is history, sometimes history is a harbinger
and sometimes history is current events. The story of Roman Emperor Aurelian is
all three…
Aurelian took power in 270 AD. The previous 35 years had been nothing short
of a disaster for the Empire on a variety of fronts.
The trouble began with the (well deserved) assassination of
Commodus in 192 AD. Always a force to be
reckoned with, from that point forward the army required ever increasing bribes
to remain loyal. Not surprisingly, the power of the army increased
accordingly.
At the same time, the treasury had been reducing
the amounts of silver and gold in Roman coins for centuries, creating a
ticking timebomb of inflation.
What is known as the Crisis of the
Third Century began in earnest in 235 AD with the assassination of Severus
Alexander. At that point the Roman map
was about what it had been when Augustus, died in 14 AD, basically everything
surrounding the Mediterranean. When Aurelian
took over in 270 the Crisis had hit its nadir and the Empire was a fractured
disaster.
By the time Aurelian became Emperor at the age of 55, he had
spent 35 years in the Legion. Born in
modern day Serbia, Roman citizen Aurelian would join the Army at the age of 20.
In short order he would prove his mettle as a brilliant calvary commander and
would over his career come to command increasing numbers of men, eventually
commanding the entire army under Emperor Claudius II.
This is the empire Aurelian found himself leading. He began his reign by expelling various
barbarian tribes from northern Italy. Next he went to the Balkans and crushed
the Goths. But, there is no rest for the weary.
Over in the formerly Roman aligned Palmyra, now the
Palmyrene Empire, Queen Zenobia (Acting as regent for her son, Vaballathus) was
seeking to convince the Romans to recognize Palmyrene independence. To
demonstrate her power she cut off the Egyptian grain supply in 272. The result was not the one she had hoped for. Aurelian made his way east and easily
defeated her. The next year he would take back Egypt and it was during that
period that the city of Alexandria was burned and along with it what is said to
have been the greatest library in history.
With the east in order Aurelian headed for the west to crush
the so called Gallic Empire and bring it back into the Roman fold. Unlike the
east however, Aurelian brought the west back with relatively little bloodshed.
He secretly negotiated with the “Gallic Emperor" Tetricus to defect to his
side and made him a Senator. Although a battle ensued, it was short lived as no
one involved was interested in fighting a battle when both leaders were on the
same side.
By 274 Aurelian had reunified the Empire and had implemented
policies to fix two of the most important domestic issues, the corruption at
the Mint of Rome
(and others) and the grain
dole system. Mike Duncan, the host
of the extraordinary History
of Rome podcast calls Aurelian the Sandy Kofax of the Roman Empire, not the
longest reigning emperor, but the most dominant while he was there. For the
five years Aurelian ruled, he was virtually unstoppable.
But as a man, he was stoppable. In one of the great ironies
in world history, Aurelian was assassinated in 275 by officers of his Pretorian
Guard. Despite the fact that the Guard’s raison d'être is to actually protect
the emperor, this murder wasn’t particularly
unusual, but in this case, it was the result of a lie. Aurelian was a strict disciplinarian and one
of his secretaries worried he’d be punished for telling a minor lie. He thus
forged a document claiming Aurelian was planning to execute a number of his officers.
Fearing for their lives these “accused” officers killed Aurelian. They soon
discovered they were victims of a ruse and killed the secretary, and very possibly
met similar fates themselves.
So, we have an empire that’s coming apart at the seams, where
government employees are corrupt and are demanding more and more money and
power be handed to them. We have an
empire where inflation is rampant and the citizens are addicted to government
giveaways. We have an empire whose
borders are being breached by countless invaders. Then a competent man steps in
to take control and try to fix the problems.
He begins to right the ship, and he’s killed by corrupt officials.
Much of this kind of sounds like America today. Many of the problems of the Crisis of the
Third Century in Rome mirror those in America today. Indeed, just as the Pretorian Guard was known
for
auctioning off the diadem and murdering emperors, we’ve seen the FBI and
the CIA conspire to destroy presidents, something they’ve been doing for at
least half a century and may have had
a hand in killing one president. Our
borders are being overrun, 30% of
the government’s spending is on welfare, we’re being spent into oblivion and
not enough Americans want to join the military so the
Pentagon is turning to immigrants.
The story of Aurelian is a story of hope. Not for him, obviously, but for America. He demonstrated that an empire in decline
doesn’t have to acquiesce to its own demise.
A crumbling nation can be rebuilt, a listing ship can be righted, a
disappearing culture can be resurrected.
What it takes is leadership, a man willing to challenge what might be
called “the new normal’, a man who reveres the culture and civilization that
made the nation great in the first place.
Donald Trump is just such a man. Aurelian
was feared by the corrupt officials because it was clear he revered the Empire
and everything he did was to bring it back to its former glory. Donald Trump is hated by the corrupt and power-hungry
Swamp because he loves America and most of the things he does are an attempt to
make her great again.
Because his reign lasted only five years, Aurelian rarely
finds his name in the pantheon of the greatest emperors. That’s unfortunate,
because he almost single handedly reversed the collapse of the Empire, which
would go on to survive for another two centuries after his assassination.
Donald Trump finds himself in a similar position, facing a nation in decline and in danger of collapse. Let’s hope that he can successfully and safely bring America back from the brink. If he does, then America may lead the world for the next two centuries as it did for the last two. That just might get him on Mount Rushmore.
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