The Third-Century Crisis

CHAPTER 8 · 235–284 · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

Look at the map: the empire has shattered into three, and two of them are hatched red-and-cream — Roman in everything but obedience. How it happened is the fastest unraveling in this atlas. From 235 to 284 Rome has about 26 emperors, nearly all made and unmade by their armies, almost none dying naturally; the average reign is under two years, and civil war becomes the empire’s largest single military activity. Into the vacuum come the shocks the lean Antonine machine was never designed to take simultaneously. On the Danube, the new Gothic confederations raid deep into the Balkans — in 251 they

The turn: Edessa, 260 — an emperor in chains.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.