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HearLore has narrated stories on Crisis of the Third Century, each linked to related entries. Start with any one and follow the connections to your next listen.

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Yes. Every Crisis of the Third Century story on HearLore is narrated. The story is free to read, and listening is a membership that starts with 7 days free.

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Curated playlist

Crisis of the Third Century

Gordian I8 minGordian I held power over the Roman Empire for exactly 22 days. That figure alone sets the stage for one of the strangest episodes in Roman history, a year so chaotic that six men would claim the title of emperor before it ended. The man…
Balbinus5 minBalbinus ruled the Roman Empire for just three months in 238 AD, a year so chaotic it earned the name the Year of the Six Emperors. He was already in his early sixties when the Senate elevated him, alongside a colleague named Pupienus, to…
Battle of Naissus8 minThe Battle of Naissus was fought in either 268 or 269. A Roman army met a huge coalition of Gothic and allied tribes near the town of Naissus, known today as Niš. Ancient writers cannot even agree on who commanded the winning side. Some…
Claudius Gothicus15 minMarcus Aurelius Claudius, remembered today as Claudius Gothicus, once knocked out a horse's teeth with a single punch, or so an ancient legend claims. That brute strength carried him from the ranks of the Roman army to the imperial throne…
Gordian II5 minGordian II held the Roman imperial throne for about 22 days in the spring of 238 AD. That figure alone sets him apart from every other emperor in Roman history: no recorded reign was shorter. Yet within those three weeks, he fought a…
Diocletian15 minDiocletian retired from the most powerful office in the world and went home to grow cabbages. When rivals begged him to return to the throne in 308, he wrote back: "If you could see the cabbages I have planted here with my own hands, you…
Maximinus Thrax9 minMaximinus Thrax became Roman emperor in 235 without ever having sat in the Senate, without ever having governed a province, and without any of the social credentials Rome's ruling class considered essential. He rose from what ancient…
Aurelian13 minAurelian earned a title that no Roman emperor had ever held before: Restitutor Orbis, Restorer of the World. He was born around 214, the son of a tenant farmer in the borderlands of Moesia Superior, and he died in 275 with an empire…
Gallic Empire8 minIn 260, a Roman general named Postumus besieged his own emperor's son inside the city of Colonia Agrippina, had the boy and his guardian put to death, and declared himself the ruler of a new order. Not a rebel trying to take Rome. Not a…
Palmyrene Empire9 minThe Palmyrene Empire lasted only three years, yet in that time a single queen conquered Egypt, swept through much of Asia Minor, and forced the most powerful military force in the ancient world to fight on two fronts. Her name was Zenobia.…
Plague of Cyprian8 minThe Plague of Cyprian killed five thousand people a day in Rome at its peak. That figure, staggering even by modern standards, comes from observers who lived through it. They left behind not dry administrative records but sermons, letters,…
Crisis of the Third Century12 minThe Crisis of the Third Century brought the Roman Empire to the edge of extinction. In the year 235, a group of Roman soldiers murdered their own emperor, Severus Alexander, and handed the throne to a military commander named Maximinus…
Zenobia13 minZenobia was a third-century queen who built an empire stretching from central Anatolia to Upper Egypt, and she did it in less than two years. She was born around 240 in Palmyra, a city that sat at the crossroads of Rome, Persia, and the…
Historia Augusta13 minThe Historia Augusta is a collection of biographies of Roman emperors written in Latin, covering a span of rulers from 117 to 284. On the surface, it presents itself as the work of six different authors writing during the reigns of…
Tetrarchy9 minThe Tetrarchy was Diocletian's answer to a Roman Empire that had spent decades tearing itself apart. In place of one emperor struggling to hold three thousand miles of frontier, Diocletian built a college of four rulers, binding them…
Gordian III6 minGordian III became Roman emperor at the age of thirteen, making him the second-youngest sole ruler the unified empire had ever seen. The year was 238 AD, and Rome had already burned through a bewildering succession of rulers in a single…
Severus Alexander10 minSeverus Alexander was born on the 1st of October 208 in Arca Caesarea, Phoenicia, and by the age of thirteen he was ruling the Roman Empire alone. His predecessor, the emperor Elagabalus, had been killed by his own guards, and the bodies…