supply the army. To meet its demand for ready money, the Roman government
debased the currency, increasing the proportion of inferior metals to silver. While
helpful in the short term, this policy produced severe inflation. Strapped for cash, the
state increased taxes and used its power to requisition goods and services. To clothe
the troops it confiscated uniforms; to arm them it set up weapons factories staffed by
artisans who were required to produce a regular quota for the state. Food for the
army had to be produced and delivered; here too the state depended on the labor of
growers, bakers, and haulers. New taxes assessed on both land and individual
“heads” were collected. The wealth and labor of the Empire moved inexorably
toward the provinces, to the hot spots where armies were clashing.
The whole empire, organized for war, became militarized. In about the middle of
the third century, Emperor Gallienus (r.253–268) forbade the senatorial aristocracy—
the old Roman elite—to lead the army; tougher men from the ranks were promoted
to command positions instead. It was no wonder that those men also became the
emperors. They brought new provincial tastes and sensibilities to the very heart of
the Empire, as we shall see.
Diocletian, a provincial from Dalmatia (today Croatia), brought the crisis under
control, and Constantine (r.306–337), from Moesia (today Serbia and Bulgaria),
brought it to an end. For administrative purposes, Diocletian divided the Empire into
four parts, later reduced to two. Although the emperors who ruled these divisions
were supposed to confer on all matters, the administrative division was a harbinger of
things to come, when the eastern and western halves of the Empire would go their
separate ways. Meanwhile, the wars over imperial succession ceased with the
establishment of Constantine’s dynasty, and political stability put an end to the border
wars.
A NEW RELIGION
The empire of Constantine was meant to be the Roman Empire restored. Yet nothing
could have been more different from the old Roman Empire. Constantine’s rule
marks the beginning of what historians call “Late Antiquity,” a period transformed by
the culture and religion of the provinces.
The province of Palestine—to the Romans of Italy a most dismal backwater—
had been in fact a hotbed of creative religious and social ideas around the beginning
of what we now call the first millennium. Chafing under Roman domination,
experimenting with new notions of morality and new ethical lifestyles, the Jews of
