Consensus on Numerian's cause of death?

[Onasander]

Decius was the first Roman Emperor to die in battle against a foreign enemy.

[12]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decius

 

Not so sure.

 

I'm wondering if the Cyprian Plague was dragged around by fleeing Christians and pursuing Pogroms?

 

It seems to of erupted in North Africa at the same time as the edicts to persecute arrived.

 

It's odd this territory converted to Christianity so early (usually said Armenia converted to Christianity first).

 

You had northeast-southwest trade routes militarized, and to the south trader kingdoms militarised. Romans started losing funding, pulled troops from German and Gothic fronts for Iraq. Empire started puttering, barbarians moved in.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Onasander

[Onasander]

His Cenotaph is very neat Palmyra.

 

I don't actually know where the battle that they launched against Shapur I is in relation during his booty laiden retreat from Antioch (likely with a concussion, if not cracked skull).

Edited February 13, 2015 by Onasander

[Onasander]

I'm wrong, his ashes were brought to Rome. It's a common practice during the divination of a emperor to cremate him. A wax effigy would be prepared at Rome.

 

Furthermore, it was after this that Shapur took Antioch...

 

What I find interesting is this is where everything source wise starts going everywhere.... Both in Africa and Iraq. May suggest factionalism in the rather autonomous chronographers.

 

This can be good for us.

 

Oh.... Shapur's army broke into three, only one arm hit Antioch. I don't know who commanded it.

[Tom Servo]

I think I have it figured out.  It boils down to this:  Numerian appears to be the only emperor Malalas knows of from the second half of the 3rd Century, so he makes Numerian the cause of everything.

 

Malalas makes these claims about Babylas:

• he barred an emperor from attending church service
• he was executed by an emperor
• an emperor went to war with Shapur and was captured at Carrhae

If we go by those facts, he's talking about at least three different emperors, all of whom predate Numerian by quite some time.  Carus was born in 224, so it's likely Numerian wasn't born until 242 at the earliest.  According to Eusebius, Babylas died in 253.  Numerian would have been a young boy at that point.

 

The emperor who attended church service would have probably been Philip, who ruled from 244-249.  Decius (249-251) led persecutions against Christians beginning in 250.  Babylas was imprisoned at that point, but if his date of death is correct, he would have died during the reign of Gallus (251-253).

 

The emperor who was captured at Carrhae is easy.  It's Valerian, another big persecutor of Christians.  He led a campaign against Shapur in 260, fared badly and was captured either in Edessa or Carrhae. 

[Onasander]

Perhaps.

 

The emperor list is larger than this.

 

Found a few guys who declared themselves emperors actually, that aren't on the official emperor list, one actually was from Antioch and defected to Shapur before the second war, the second was a priest of some kind.

 

 

And I want to narrow down just who is his source. When I see stuff get jumbled up, I want to figure out the pattern.

 

This will involve a map and timeline on my end before I really get what is going on. Dura-Europa.

 

I'm just surprised the Romans held Egypt, literally everything around Egypt went to hell.

 

Also the fact the Romans had to keep pulling troops from Europe for this war.... Yet one it looks like had the common sense not to.

 

The competition between sources really have me tingling. I read one guy had crossed the mountains snowshoeing.

 

I'm wondering if the reason the saint's lives is so jumbled up from how we currently read them is du to a pagan chronographer trying to make sense of them? The one Eusebius was blasting.

[Onasander]

I took the weekend off from this.

 

I wrote out the basic chronology of the emperor list, and filled it in with known emperors.

 

Caracalla us technically a third century emperor too, but in a sense your right.

 

Gordian III reign is closer to Valerians supposed reign of six years.

 

The pattern you noted, his ignorance of 3rd century emperors, nitpicked at me, as I'm searching for a source John Malalas would use.

 

Best guess is Lactantius "On The Persecution of the Christians".

 

He was also a philosopher, which I didn't know, and a major expounder of the modern concept of the end times, and a heretic to boot.

 

His list I saw for the emperor list DOES NOT INCLUDE the names of the missing emperors either, according to the list I just scanned from a questionable artical.

 

So.... It's might be a crucial source.

[Tom Servo]

There's a paper here in which the author researched varying sources for the account of Carinus' (Numerian's brother) death.

 

Honestly, I only ever learned the bare bones of eastern Roman history after the 4th century.  This endeavor has shown me just how sloppy ecclesiastical historians were in later years.

[Onasander]

I don't think it's sloppy, just didn't develop in the direction we currently hold as the standard. Many important works already decayed by this point. Libraries were dying off, be it Pagan or Christian, or even philosophical. I researched the library of Alexandria issues a while back, my best conclusion was the lost of Alexandria.... Be it under Caesar, Christians or Muslims didn't much matter.... The idea of a central repository did exist, but branch libraries never really took off, and far too often books and visiting scholars petitioning access to said books had to go through someone landed and rich enough to afford them, and apparently just saw them as ornaments.

 

So, here, we are dealing with John Malalas a limited library. The idea of a universal history is a good one, but he had to deal with just what was available. I remember reading he was a monastic.... I know Greek Orthodox monastics, they are not encouraged to go shopping or even head out on strolls willy nilly. He likely had a limited selection, and made the best use of it.... Much like modern historians.... Just we have a larger pool....

 

What excites me about Malalas is he doesn't screw around in presenting facts, it's a composite.... Of other works. This makes him precious in allowing us to trace his ideas. If we can say This and That part of his text comes from so and so, everything else comes from someone else, giving us a much better chance to figure out just who. I don't detect much opinion or emotion in him.

 

But yeah, I wouldn't use him as the primary source for writing a history book. Eusebius of Caesaria proved to be remarkably accurate in Phonecian mythography, I was able to find sharp parallels in early Zhou creation myths, Mencius even echoes portions. Stuff you wouldn't expect, but it's there plain as day. Ctesias was always lambasted over Sardanapullas, but it closely matches to a very, very high degree King Zhou of Shang.... He gathered it from studying the Persian Archives.

 

We forget though they differ, they did have strengths as historians as well. Many practiced honestly in their own eyes, a big effort on my part is to find that perspective. We can appropriate the disenfranchised facts if they prove valid. I just don't chop everything off due to a small difficulty. It becomes a reason to peer into the crux of the matter.

[Onasander]

Wow... I just downloaded a kindle sample of that particular work by Lactantius, and saw a billion chapters, and became discouraged.... But started reading it, and our scene pops up right at the beginning after Nero.

 

I strongly suggest looking it over, it says he was stuffed and put on display in their "temple to the gods".

 

I don't think Zoroastrians would do this however. But if I recalled, Caesar's dam was built outside of Susa, and if I recall, not too long ago I read the Babylonians and then the Persians preserved the Susan culture and religion in parallel to their states (outside the occasional sack of the city and submission of their Gods, outside of that they were pretty tolerant in regards to their beliefs).

[Onasander]

Wow... I just downloaded a kindle sample of that particular work by Lactantius, and saw a billion chapters, and became discouraged.... But started reading it, and our scene pops up right at the beginning after Nero.

 

I strongly suggest looking it over, it says he was stuffed and put on display in their "temple to the gods".

 

I don't think Zoroastrians would do this however. But if I recalled, Caesar's dam was built outside of Susa, and if I recall, not too long ago I read the Babylonians and then the Persians preserved the Susan culture and religion in parallel to their states (outside the occasional sack of the city and submission of their Gods, outside of that they were pretty tolerant in regards to their beliefs).

[Onasander]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian

 

In chapter 4 of said work, he presumed Aurelian was his son. It's not the case:

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallienus_usurpers

[Onasander]

Someone earlier in this thread claimed there was a lack of sources from the third century.

 

We don't suffer from a lack of sources, but a plague. I have never seen some of these names before, and my hand hurts from just listing them.

[Onasander]

I own this book, just never finished it, got distracted. He has character traits in the description, but comes long, long after John Malalas. I'm putting this here in case anyone investigates the problem of physical descriptions:

 

Zonaras (12.22, pp. 591-592), records that Valerian: "commander of the forces beyond the Alps, when he had learned about Aemilianus, himself also became a usurper. After he had concentrated the forces under him, he hastened toward Rome. Then, in fact, those who served with Aemilianus, when they had recognized that they were no match in battle for the army of Valerian, judging that it was not pious that Romans destroy and be destroyed by one another, that wars be joined between men of the same race, and otherwise reckoning, too, that Aemilianus was unworthy of the realm both as ignoble and groveling, and, to be sure, considering that [592] Valerian was better suited for the rule because he would, for certain, assume affairs in a more authoritative fashion, killed Aemilianus, who had not yet reigned four months and was forty years of age. They submitted themselves to Valerian and entrusted the empire of the Romans to him without a fight."

http://www.luc.edu/roman-emperors/aemaem.htm

 

This URL appears to be the basis of his wiki.

 

I don't know if he technically thought of himself as a bonafide Roman Emperor. But as I've pointed out in the past on the forum, didn't matter what titles or positions the senate offered, if was all fluff, a emperor, especially one with an Army, could very well do what he wants, dictators don't trip over constitutional or legal clauses.

Edited February 17, 2015 by Onasander

[caldrail]

Pardon me? Those 'emperors' (a word derived from military power only) that thought so often found out the hard way they could not do as they pleased without upsetting people, and even those that did behave in that way struggled to achieve their desires because the real world wasn't quite so amenable.

 

As for positions/titles/offices granted by the Senate - what on Earth do you imagine the Senate wewre doing by offering them? IF there was no point, the system would not have existed. Truth is the Senate was still the traditional government of the Roman world, the Imperial Hopusehold an alternative support for the 'First Citizens' of Rome who acted as patrons to the Roman client state, and any idea that the 'emperors' were monarchs in any constitutional; sense is as wrong a concept as it is possible to get. That was why there was never any constitutional acknowledgement of the role of 'Emperor' and no system for allotting a new one. I concede they gradually became more monarchiual, given the chaotic state of power politics in the Roman world, but at no time until the late empire were 'emperors' the sort of alkl powerful monarch you imply. Only Julius Caesar ever had that power. The others had to balance their actions against the support they could muster and many got it wrong.

[Tom Servo]

I don't know if he technically thought of himself as a bonafide Roman Emperor. But as I've pointed out in the past on the forum, didn't matter what titles or positions the senate offered, if was all fluff, a emperor, especially one with an Army, could very well do what he wants, dictators don't trip over constitutional or legal clauses.

 

It's hard to tell with Aemilian,  The army seems to have pushed him into that role since they deemed him more capable of Gallus in dealing with the Goths.  Zonaras seems to be the main source for him.  If you still have the book handy, does he mention whether Aemilian was actually confirmed by the Senate?

 

As far as usurpers go, there was no shortage of those in the 3rd century.  Gallienus seems to be the winner on that front.  There's a list here, and Gibbon claims there were 19.

Edited February 17, 2015 by Tom Servo