Aurelian

• 1. Introduction

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  Aurelian 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 reunited under his hand. Between those two points lies one of the most extraordinary careers in Roman history. How did a man from the provincial margins of the empire reach its throne? What drove him to rebuild what others had let fall apart? And why did the soldiers who owed him everything ultimately kill him in a field in Thrace?

• 2. Soldier from the Margins

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  Aurelian likely joined the Roman army in 235, when he was around twenty years old. His father, described by the source known as Pseudo-Victor as a colonus or tenant farmer, worked the land of a senator named Aurelius. That family connection shaped more than Aurelian's name. His mother was reportedly a priestess of Sol, the sun god whose worship Aurelian would later elevate across the entire empire.

  His exact military origins are debated. Scholar Saunders proposed that Aurelian may have entered as an equestrian rather than a common legionary, which would have given him access to the tres militiae, the three steps of the equestrian military career. This path could have accelerated his rise without requiring him to begin at the very bottom of the ranks. Other academic authorities have not accepted this conjecture, but the rapid arc of his advancement suggests that something distinguished him early.

  A figure named Ulpius Crinitus, whose historical existence is itself disputed, reportedly took an interest in Aurelian's career. According to these accounts, when Goths invaded Illyria and Thrace and Crinitus fell ill, he ordered Aurelian to lead a force of two thousand five hundred auxiliaries alongside the armies of four Germanic chieftains against the invaders. After the victory, Crinitus formally adopted Aurelian as his heir at a ceremony in the baths of Byzantium, attended by the emperor Valerian himself. Whatever its exact historicity, the story captures how quickly Aurelian's military reputation was growing.

• 3. Cavalry Commander

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  By 268, Aurelian had risen to command the elite cavalry of the emperor Gallienus. That year, Gallienus marched into Italy to confront Aureolus, a former general who had turned against him, besieging him inside the city of Mediolanum. During the siege, Gallienus was assassinated. One source places Aurelian at the siege and suggests he backed Claudius for the throne, which proved to be the winning side.

  Under Claudius, Aurelian received command of the Dalmatian cavalry and was soon elevated to overall head of the army. When the Alamanni broke through the Rhaetian frontier and poured into northern Italy, Aurelian and Claudius marched north together. They defeated the Alamanni at the Battle of Lake Benacus in early 269.

  Far larger trouble followed from the Balkans, where the Heruli, Goths, Gepids, and Bastarnae launched massive attacks. Claudius dispatched Aurelian with his Dalmatian cavalry to slow the invasion. Aurelian intercepted a Gothic force besieging Thessalonica, killing as many as three thousand of the enemy in a series of skirmishes, and drove the survivors northward into Upper Moesia where Claudius had assembled the main army. The ensuing battle was inconclusive; Roman losses were heavy. Rather than risk another pitched engagement, Claudius laid an ambush that killed thousands more, though the majority of the Goths escaped.

  A devastating plague swept the Balkans during the spring and summer of 270, ravaging both armies. Claudius fell ill and returned to Sirmium, leaving Aurelian in command. Aurelian broke the remaining Goths into smaller groups with his cavalry, and by late summer the last survivors had been stripped of their animals and booty and absorbed into the Roman army or settled as farmers on the frontier. The news from Sirmium arrived in late August: Claudius was dead.

• 4. The Throne and Its Rivals

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  Claudius' brother Quintillus seized power with Senate backing after Claudius died. The army refused. In a pattern typical of the Crisis of the Third Century, the legions at Sirmium proclaimed their own man, Aurelian, emperor around August or September of 270. Quintillus was defeated and died shortly after.

  Aurelian entered a fractured world. In 260, the Sassanids had captured the emperor Valerian, a shock from which the empire never fully recovered. The eastern provinces had effectively seceded under the rulers of Palmyra in Syria, forming what historians call the Palmyrene Empire. The western provinces along the Rhine had formed yet another breakaway state, now called the Gallic Empire. Rome itself was governed by an emperor who scrambled to hold Italy and the Balkans while rivals challenged from within.

  Aurelian moved against the first threats immediately. Late in 270, he campaigned in northern Italy against the Vandals, Juthungi, and Sarmatians, expelling them from Roman territory and earning the title Germanicus Maximus. But in January 271, the Alamanni swept down through the Po plain, sacking villages and occupying Placentia. Aurelian, caught in Pannonia managing the Vandal withdrawal, raced back into Italy. His army was ambushed and defeated near Placentia. News of the defeat sent fear through Rome. Aurelian recovered, defeated the Alamanni at the Battle of Fano near the Metaurus River, forced them back across the Po, and finally routed them at Pavia. He received the title Germanicus Maximus a second time.

  The repeated barbarian breaches through Italy convinced Aurelian that Rome itself needed a permanent answer. He ordered the construction of a new circuit of walls around the city. These became known as the Aurelian Walls.

• 5. Zenobia and the East

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  In 272, Aurelian turned his attention to the Palmyrene Empire. Queen Zenobia ruled from the city of Palmyra in Syria, controlling Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and large parts of Asia Minor. Her territory cut off Rome's grain shipments from Egypt, and within weeks Roman bread supplies ran critically low.

  Asia Minor fell back to Aurelian easily. Every city surrendered with little resistance, except Byzantium and Tyana. Tyana's resistance prompted a legend. Aurelian had a reputation for destroying cities that defied him, but the night before attacking Tyana he reportedly saw a vision of Apollonius, the 1st-century philosopher from that very city, who said to him: "Aurelian, if you desire to rule, abstain from the blood of the innocent! Aurelian, if you will conquer, be merciful!" Aurelian spared the city. The consequence was practical as much as symbolic: many more cities surrendered upon seeing that mercy was possible.

  Within six months of crossing into Asia Minor, Aurelian's armies stood before Palmyra. Zenobia attempted to flee to the Sassanid Empire and was captured. Her son Vaballathus was captured alongside her. In Rome's triumph, Zenobia was paraded through the streets in golden chains. Aurelian's soldiers distributed free bread to Rome's citizens from the restored grain stores of Egypt.

  The Brucheion, the Royal Quarter of Alexandria, was burned to the ground during the recovery of Egypt. This section of the city had once housed the Library of Alexandria, though how much of the original library survived into Aurelian's time remains uncertain.

  Palmyra rebelled again in 273. This time Aurelian allowed his soldiers to sack the city, and it never recovered. Aurelian now held the titles Parthicus Maximus and Restitutor Orientis, Restorer of the East. He later assumed Restitutor Orbis, a title that Valerian and Gallienus had also carried, but whose frequency of use became Aurelian's own innovation.

• 6. The Gallic Campaign

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  Having reclaimed the east, Aurelian began preparations to retake the Gallic Empire in 273. In early 274, he marched into northern Gaul while Tetricus I, the Gallic emperor, led his forces southward from Augusta Treverorum.

  The two armies met in February or March 274 at the Battle of Chalons. Roman sources including Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, the Historia Augusta, and Orosius all claim that Tetricus had already secretly agreed to surrender, offering to betray his own troops in exchange for an honorable outcome and no punishment. They record that Tetricus quoted a line from Virgil's Aeneid: "pluck me out, O undefeated one, from these troubles." Some modern historians consider this account propaganda, and Alaric Watson has argued instead that the superior discipline of Aurelian's forces and Aurelian's greater military skill won the battle outright, with Gallic morale collapsing only after Tetricus was captured.

  Regardless of how it unfolded in the field, the political outcome is datable. The latest possible moment for Tetricus' surrender was March 274, when the Gallic mints stopped producing coins bearing the names of Tetricus I and Tetricus II and began minting coins of Aurelian. The empire was whole again for the first time in more than a decade.

• 7. Reforming the Empire

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  Aurelian's five-year reign did not end with the last battle. He turned the same energy that had won his wars toward the institutions that held the empire together.

  The revolt of Felicissimus, the mint's senior financial official, revealed how far corruption had penetrated the monetary system. Felicissimus and his workers had been systematically stealing silver from the coins and replacing it with inferior metal. When Aurelian moved against him, Felicissimus incited the mint workers into open revolt that spread into the streets. Felicissimus was killed, perhaps immediately executed. The battle against the rebelling mob was fought on the Caelian Hill; some sources give the figure of seven thousand casualties, though these numbers are considered probably exaggerated. Senators who had backed the revolt were put to death. The mint of Rome was shut, temporarily transferring monetary authority to other mints across the empire.

  Aurelian's new coin, the antoninianus, contained five percent silver. It bore the mark XXI, which some researchers interpret as meaning that twenty of the new coins would equal in silver content a single old silver denarius. That this represented an improvement over what had come before reveals the depth of the monetary decay Aurelian inherited.

  On the food supply, Aurelian changed or completed the change of Rome's grain dole into a bread dole. Rome had distributed grain to its poorest citizens since 123 BC and for free since 58 BC. Aurelian shifted the delivery form to baked bread and added olive oil, salt, and pork to the products distributed. He also increased the size of loaves without raising their price. The Roman prefect Titus Flavius Postumius Quietus was the last known official of Trajan's alimenta program, recorded in 271, suggesting that Aurelian terminated that older system in favor of his revised Cura Annonae.

  Religious reform ran alongside the economic work. Aurelian built a new temple to Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, in the Campus Agrippae in Rome. Financed by the spoils of the Palmyrene Empire, the temple was dedicated on the 25th of December 274. His aim was a single deity whom every subject of the empire could worship without abandoning their own local gods. On some of his coins he appears with the title deus et dominus natus, god and born ruler.

• 8. Murder and Memory

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  In 275, the deaths of the Sassanid kings Shapur I and Hormizd I in quick succession and the rise of the weaker Bahram I opened what seemed like an opportunity. Aurelian set out for another eastern campaign. On the way, he suppressed a revolt in Gaul and defeated barbarian raiders in Vindelicia.

  He never reached Persia. While waiting in Thrace to cross into Asia Minor, he was killed. A secretary named Eros, according to Zosimus, had told a minor lie and feared discovery. To protect himself, he forged a document that purported to list high officials whom Aurelian had marked for execution. He showed it to collaborators. The notarius Mucapor and other senior officers of the Praetorian Guard, believing their lives were in danger, murdered the emperor shortly after October 275. Tacitus, Aurelian's successor, began his reign in November or December.

  Aurelian's enemies in the Senate succeeded briefly in passing a damnatio memoriae, a condemnation of his memory. It was reversed before the year ended, and Aurelian was deified as Divus Aurelianus, joining his predecessor Claudius II in that honor.

  His wife Ulpia Severina, declared Augusta in 274, may have governed the empire in her own right during the interregnum between Aurelian's death and the election of Marcus Claudius Tacitus. The evidence is speculative, but some of her coins appear to have been minted after her husband was gone. The city of Orleans in France still carries his name: it was called Cenabum before Aurelian rebuilt it and renamed it Aurelianum, which over centuries evolved into the modern form.