The concern of the Emperors for the provinces is a reflection of the new homogeneity of the Empire, not a sign of crisis. Disorders there were, Jewish
revolt under Hadrian, and plague under Marcus Aurelius, but these did not do serious damage to the inert and enormously stable fabric of Empire. The
imperial elites had the prosperity which comes from peace and an ever more sophisticated economy, and opportunities of upward social mobility to invest
their wealth in. In foreign affairs, too, despite the hardening of the frontiers with the great defence works of Domitian and Hadrian, the Empire was not
really more defensive in the second century than in the first.
The clashes were all in similar places, victories came no less easily, defeats were no more common. We see a repeating pattern of warfare, against Parthia
under Trajan, Verus, and Severus; on the Danube under Nero, Domitian, Trajan, and Marcus; on the margin of the Sahara under Tiberius, Claudius,
Domitian, and Pius. Of real extensions of Empire there was only the conquest of gold-rich and fertile Dacia beyond the Danube under Trajan. The
conquest of Parthia directly afterwards proved unassimilable-a significant fact. The task which Severus won for himself in 193 was no harder than that of
Vespasian. Severus died at York in 211. That his family was of African background only makes it typical of the homogeneous world of that age. His
power passed to men of Syrian connections, no more exotic than he, despite the colourful anecdotes attached to the name of Heliogabalus. If the emperor's
power during the succession of these individuals seems less effective and his position less secure, that is not the decadence of personalities or the
feebleness of characters. At last the Roman world was reaping the whirlwind which sprang from the never resolved impracticalities of the fortuitous
system by which it held together.