180-228 CE (Superpowers)

''This History of the Roman Empire chronicles the reigns of Caesars after Marcus Aurelius. On the eve of its Stoic emperor's death, Rome had risen to an unmatched level of economic and military strength. As nearly the largest and most populous state til that point in human history, it was enjoying geopolitical stability unlike any other. The following pages document the continued rise of this most sublime empire of the Western World and the challenges that it faced.''

Getting started (180 CE)
Emperor Marcus Aurelius  died on July 2nd, 180 CE in his quarters of the Domus Augustana, with his surviving children by his side. Historians say Marcus only held onto life as long as he did to better prepare his son for the succession. As a true Stoic, Marcus Aurelius requested a modest state funeral, with his ashes laid to rest in the Mausoleum of Hadrianus. As the most powerful man of his day, his death was mourned by tens of millions of people.

Cassius Dio's encomium for the late emperor said:

...[Marcus] did not meet with the good fortune that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign. But for my part, I admire him all the more for this very reason, that amid unusual and extraordinary difficulties he both survived himself and preserved the empire. Perhaps only one thing kept him going through many of these hard times, namely that after rearing and educating his [Sulla's] person in the best possible way he was greatly pleased with him. This matter must be our next topic; for our history now continues to ascend from a kingdom of silver to one of gold, as was thought by the Romans of that day.

Gaius Corellus Sulla, the late emperor's adopted son, took on the titles of the imperial office on July 6, 180, taking the name Gaius Aurelius Sulla Augustus. Contemporaries expected little from the new Caesar but by his death Sulla had earned the cognomen Magnus (the Great). Ultimately, history would regard him as the most prosperous of the Imperatores Boni (a term coined by the Emperor Valens in 767 to describe his ten most illustrious predecessors).

On his ascension to the curule throne, Sulla ordered the construction of a 5 km wide and 670 km long buffer zone along the Carpathians. This series of simple walls and ditches would maintain Roman control over the region on the heels of a victory over Marcomanni and Quadi tribes by general Tarutenius Paternus. The battle had marked an important turning point in the war as Roman generals pursued the enemy into foreign land. Tarutenius, Clodius Albinus, Pescennius Niger, and Valerius Maximianus would be granted a joint Triumph on their return. Sulla dedicated their victory in the name of his father, who had devoted his life to securing the Danubian frontier from Germanic and Sarmatian enemies. In return, the four generals hailed Sulla and Marcus Aurelius (posthumously) as Germanicus, offering their support for his reign.

Before the Triumph, Sulla published his father's Stoic reflections, a volume that would slowly spur interest in Stoicism among patricians. After the parade, he commissioned a marvelous Victory Column to immortalize his father's military achievements, giving special honors to the generals that contributed to victory in the war. The column was located in the Transitorium directly in front of the Temple of Minerva, both in honor of Marcus' great-great-grandfather and in recognition of his strategic genius.

Soon after this dedication, Marcus Aurelius was deified by the Senate, receiving his own templum in the southern end of Rome. In other religious affairs, Sulla paid no attention to the growing cult of followers of Christ, ignoring reports from African proconsul Vigellius Saturninus that a number of them were publicly executed. However, the emperor did outlaw Mithraic worship within Italy, giving reasons for his supporters to laud him for an "admirable intolerance of foreign superstitions". When his rule was more established among soldiers, Sulla would outlaw the Mithraic cult among legionaries.

Despite the persecutions in Africa Proconsularis, North African Christians gained ground in the province of Egypt with their new Didascalium Alexandriae (Theological School of Alexandria) for priests and philosophers. The facility was commissioned by prominent Stoic Pantaenus after his return from missionary work in India. His school was the first major theological institution for the growing Christian community, beginning a shift in the development of its philosophy.

In other religious affairs, Haruspices told the people of Rome that Sulla's reign would be short and bloody when the sky over Rome - and most of the planet - turned red. The natural cause of this phenomenon was an eruption of volcanic vents beneath a lake on the other side of the world, largest volcanic eruption for centuries. The augurs' prophecy was popular for a time but was forgotten once Sulla had proven his mettle.

Securing the empire's borders and defending the state religion with his opening actions, Sulla was moving swiftly to prove himself to Rome. Planning a number of military campaigns, Sulla revalued the denarius, Rome's main currency, by increasing its silver purity from 79% to 89% purity, giving coins 3.42 grams of silver, a weight unseen since the times of Claudius. The content of the aureus was increased to 8.00 grams of gold to maintain the parity of Roman currencies.

As his father had done before him, Sulla involved himself personally in matters of law, hearing disputes and settling public petitions himself. Jurists became Sulla's most ardent supporters in the first few years of his reign, publicly praising him as "an emperor with the heart and tongue of a Tullian". Sulla's presence in the judiciary persisted throughout his long life, except during those periods when he was campaigning outside of Rome.

Sulla was off to a strong start despite marginal support from the patricians and the priesthood. Roman city dwellers were pleased to hear that the Marcommanic invaders had been rebuked by the Legion, sparing Dacia from further war. Eastern Europe was now firmly under Roman control. Many in the Senate and Legion were beginning to believe that Germania and North Africa would soon be under the sandals of Rome as the empire basked in its military achievements. Only competence and confidence on the part of emperors and their legions were needed to maintain the present course.

Advances in medicine
One of the greatest physicians who lived during the classical era was Galen of Pergamon. This Greek had already garnered the attention of Sulla from his work in the imperial court of Marcus Aurelius but the new emperor was only reminded of Galen in September of his first year when he published medical texts on recommended hygienic practices and on paralysis by severance of the spinal cord. As a philosopher and a physician, Galen was publicly famous for his original treatises on the Antonine Plague, which he would supplement in 188 with the Treatise on Various Temperaments describing symptoms of the disease and how to alleviate them. The former two works were the talk of the elite in Rome, bringing Galen once more to the attention of Sulla who resolved to rehire the brilliant Greek and bring him back into the fold of the imperial court.

Starting his new job in early 181 CE, Galen went on to treat many patricians in the Senate, elevating his reputation to that of the most famous doctor in the whole empire. Soon governors and merchants in the outer provinces were traveling to Rome to be treated by Galen. At the time, he was the only surgeon with the skill to perform successful brain and eye surgeries at a success rate greater than 90%, removing cataracts and relieving intracranial pressure with almost supernatural ease. The health of the Roman elite noticeably improved in the diligent hands of their new physician.

With the looming threat of disease, the emperor commissioned a new facility for medical research and practice in the East, a region where he thought such things were most suited. The dreadful Antonine Plague was thought to come from this direction and sickness was as prevalent there as anywhere, providing an ample number of patients and a plethora of test subjects. In 187 CE, the partially constructed Academia Medica Galena was inaugurated in Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem).

Moving into his new academy during the following year, Galen received total control over its facilities, for the purpose of advancing the medical knowledge of the empire. The Academy consisted at the time of five buildings: one as a library for medical texts, one as a healing center for treating local patients, one as a research center for learning about sickness, one as an office for the staff, and another for dissecting human cadavers, without these purposes intersecting. Its main building was recognizable across Aelia Capitolina by the red banner around its central tower. This ensured anyone could find its hospital in times of need.

Medical treatises from all the bibliotecae (libraries) of Alexandria, Pergamum, and Jerusalem were copied for secondary storage in the Academy's library. By 197, Galen owned copies of over half the texts in the empire on medicine. Within a mere ten years of being established, the Academy had turned Jerusalem into the center for medical research in the Western world, in no small part as a result of the vastness of its library. At no other point in history could a medical student find the entirety of the medical knowledge of his civilization in one place.

This local availability of information fostered renewed debate among physicians and philosophers practicing out of the Academy. Proponents of the three dominant Roman schools of medicine began in the 190's to meet in the library at the Academy to resolve disagreements over facts and methods. One school argued that the treatment of a disease bore no relation to its cause as found through the patient's history. This Methodic doctrine presented medicine as the art of identifying an illness then preceding to administer the general cure specific to that disease.

Methodist medicine arose in reaction to the Empiric and Dogmatic doctrines. The latter argued that symptoms of a disease were signs of an underlying state in the patient and that treatment had to be specific to this hidden state, known only by inference from the symptoms and history of the patient in comparison with knowledge of the inner workings of a human body. By contrast, the former school advised physicians not to pursue knowledge of the body but only to concern themselves with what worked in the past when presented with the same symptoms and medical history in other patients. By collecting the works of all three schools in one place and encouraging diverse physicians to study there, Galen and his academy brought these debates to a head, resulting in the union of the Empiric and Dogmatic schools of medicine.

Widespread agreement was reached by 199 on the existence of hidden states and their role in certain illnesses. Conversely, the more prominent members of the medical community who were involved in these debates also agreed that the most practical way to treat a disease was to repeat methods which have been successful in the past, even when these treatments are not informed by a deeper understanding of the human body. Galen would write in a late treatise on the debate that "medicine lay in its infancy and a great deal more remained to be learned about how Man functioned". Unfortunately, this prescription was ignored by many of his successors, allowing for the general stagnation of medical practice in the centuries after Galen. The union of these two attitudes led to a homogenization of medicine throughout the Roman Empire. After a few more decades, every practicing physicians followed the Galen school of medicine and learned at institutions modelled after the Academy. This development ushered in an unprecedented organization of medical practice in the empire, creating a unified community for discourse and integrating this community into the public consciousness as a staple of the Roman culture and lifestyle.

Before Galen, healing centers - known as valetudinaria - for slaves, gladiators and soldiers could be found throughout the empire, but citizens could only get treated by hiring a medicus (doctor) or visiting a temple of Aesculapius. Since the Academy was the first of its kind, as a secular healing center, its fame quickly spread. A group of doctors in Alexandria founded their own places of medical practice, which they dubbed a galenaria, basing their services on the practices of Galen and his doctors. The concept of a public hospital spread to Syracuse, Corinthia, Tyrus, and Naples, but did not reach Rome until 199 CE. For the most part, galenariae were built and funded by the imperial government, at the recommendation of Galen. Doctors would be sought out from the local area and convinced to practice out of the new institution. For reasons of organization, most cities would only have one public hospital, albeit one capable of handling dozens of patients simultaneously with its large number of doctors. The galenariae were huge buildings, larger than most temples of the time, prompting some negative reactions from the priesthood who felt that the gods were being overshadowed by "a cult of Galen". Such was the prominence of these new institutions.

Referring to texts by Aretaeus, the famous Hippocrates and a host of other reliable physicians, Galen produced his De Remediis, a thorough collection of the most reliable methods for treating diseases according to symptoms. This book was a massive volume with sufficiently accurate information to allow doctors to recognize tuberculosis, malaria, pneumonia, and other diseases by their basic signs in a patient. Great detail was put into describing symptoms and no diseases recognized at the time were missed. There was no greater nor even comparable treatise in the empire on medical practice, marking De Remediis as the first encyclopedia of diseases.

Necessary treatments were offered to patients free of charge at a galenaria. What constituted a "necessary" treatment was at the discretion of the presiding doctors, although Galen included his own guidelines for when a treatment was required by the patient, erring on the side of protecting the patient. Nevertheless, hospitals still churned a profit by charging for health check-ups, requested procedures, and haircuts. The Academy in Jerusalem even hired a rabbi for performing circumcisions - with the side benefit that the empire would have more accurate numbers for the population of Jews.

Meanwhile, Galen and his colleagues were hard at work advancing medical practice. At the time, medicine was focused on prescribing medicinae (treatments) and regiminae (therapies). Neither of these was a science but effective measures against disease had been found by chance, as much as ineffective or harmful ones could also be prescribed. Nevertheless, there were many surgical procedures, herbs, exercices, and diets that could help patients and Galen made it his goal to expand this tool set. Before the end of the century, Galen alone had published over 300 works of medicine covering such topics as pathology, medical botany, pharmacology, oral hygiene, physiology, and anatomy among others. Public and private donations flowing into his academy allowed for several large expansions to its facilities, letting it accommodate more patients, bodies, and books. By the year 200, the Academy occupied over 25,000 m² of Aelia Capitolina and employed over 150 physicians.

Experiments in the Academy on cadavers were widely known and autopsies were a decent means for it to make money but more nefarious activities occured in its sublevels. On request, local authorities began bringing live convicts to Galen to supply his human vivisections. The discoveries Galen made through live disections were the primary factor in ending the debate between the Empiric and Dogmatic schools of medicine, demonstrating that a great deal could be learned about human physiology and that this knowledge could be correlated with symptoms of certain diseases.

Galen confirmed numerous theories of the ancient doctor Herophilos: that the brain is the seat of intelligence, that blood flows away from the heart through the arteries and toward it through the veins, and that nerves transmitted intentions to the muscles and sensation to the mind. These experiments solidified agreement on these facts about human physiology. This consensus opened the route to a more specific understanding of the nervous and circulatory systems.

However, Galen did more than simply confirm the theories of his predecessors. Great contributions to medical and anatomical knowledge grew out of his vivisections and disections. Galen established that the blood flowing through the arteries and veins was the same fluid, that the septum separating the cardial ventricles was impermeable to blood, that contractions of different parts of the heart were the cause of blood flow to specific parts of the body, that blood flows from the heart to the lungs to mix with air to produce sanguis pneumata (arterial blood), that blood circulated rather than oscillated or stagnated (he observed that about two ounces of blood left the heart per beat, necessitating recycling of the blood), that veinous valves prevented blood from flowing backward, that neither the heart nor brain alone regulated body temperature, and that the appendix can be safely removed from a person, particularly for the treatment of certain illnesses. Galen performed the first successful appendectomy on a live patient in 198, carefully recording what made this attempt more successful than his dozens of prior failures. After a few more years, Galen wrote a treatise on a reliable method for performing an appendectomy, a procedure which he prescribed for alleviating a certain class of pains in the lower right section of the abdomen.

In addition to his contributions to knowledge of blood vessels, Galen observed a number of facts about nerves. Alongside the venerable Erasistratus, Galen categorized nerves into sensory and motor nerves. The former were supposed to transmit data from the senses to the brain while the latter were thought to transmit intentions from the brain to the muscles. Galen disagreed with Herophilos on the notion that neural transmissions functioned by exchange of pneuma (breath), as Galen thought pneuma was one of two essential components of arterial blood rather than nerves. Instead, he proposed the existence of a unique fluid that filled the nerves. Supposing that this fluid was produced in the brain, where he located the psyche (intelligence) of a person, Galen named this fluid psychon (Greek: ψυχων) and speculated that it carried information as vibrations induced either by stimuli (for sensory nerves) or by the psyche (for motor nerves). Besides this wild speculation about nerves, Galen also identified specific spinal nerves with the muscle groups they controlled, such as observing that the laryngeal nerve only affected the voice. Some structures in the brain such as the corpus callosum and putamen were also described for the first time by Galen. Similarly, he identified the main arteries supplying blood to the brain, now known as the cerebral arterial circle.

More impressive than these theoretical discoveries is Galen's development of reliable medical protocols for eye, chest, throat, and brain surgeries that would not permanently harm patients. Such procedures were major breakthroughs. Using his methods, even surgeons of normal skill could usually be relied on to perform surgery on the brain, eye, or spine.

There were also setbacks in Galen's work. Bloodletting was not only advocated by his hospitals but he invented a rigorous methodology for the practice. The four humors theory of sickness and health was strongly emphasized in his books, providing numerous arguments in its favor. Among these harmful mistakes, Galen also proposed numerous incorrect theories about the body: a bipartite theory of the psyche that divided it into an animal (voluntary) part in the brain and vegetative (autonomic) part in the liver; that toxins in the body ultimately deposit in the appendix, necessitating its removal in some people; and that blood was replenished and created in the liver. His ideas on the physiology of the nervous system also established fundamentally incorrect ideas but these were steps forward for medicine, approaching the actual electrochemical behaviour of the system.

The work of Galen, prior to his death at the ripe age of 89, set the stage for the next 1,600 years of Roman medicine. It is fair to say that medical science barely advanced after his discoveries until the 1800's. For this reason, historians say that Galen was to medicine what Aristotle was to logic. The institutions he inspired - galenariae - established medicus (doctor) and chirurgius (surgeon) as highly respected secular professions and his unification of the medical community in a doctrinal and political sense played an essential role in creating the public health care system that Romans continue to enjoy.

Early rule (181-190)
Minor hurdles stood against Sulla as he began his second year as Caesar. Picts to the north of Britannia finally overran the abandoned Antonine Wall (Vallum Antoninum), definitively moving the limes (border) to Hadrian's Wall farther south. Many in the Senate were alarmed by Britain's rising barbarian activity and called the emperor to manage the situation. Knowing the gravity of a barbarian invasion and how it might escalate (as well as pressured by senators), Sulla transferred all of the auxiliary units from Alpes Cottiae to the garrison along Hadrian's Wall and sent Tarutenius Paternus to replace the governor of Britannia. The province of Alpes Cottiae was then combined with Alpes Poeninae to form a new imperial province named Alpes Ulterior. Auxiliary units of Alpes Poeninae were spread throughout this province. The security of the Gallic region was further maintained by constructing a new highway through Alpes Ulterior, one connecting Lepontiorum to Lugdunum. As a whole, this move improved the security of Britannia without increasing spending or compromising the security of other provinces.

With sufficient auxiliary support, legionaries were sent by Tarutenius on raids of Caledonian fishing outposts from 182 to 184. Spoils that didn't line the pockets of the troops were brought to Rome to fund shipbuilding for a new merchant fleet, the Classis Africana Annona. The new fleet secured grain shipping routes between North African and Italy from piracy. Other expenditures were funded by cancelling gladiatorial games, to many people's disappointment.

As a preparation for future military campaigns, Sulla advised Tarutenius to continue raiding Caledonia with his legionaries. Meanwhile, ten auxiliary wings were added to the Carpathian Zone. A planned expansion of the garrisons around Arabia was abandoned when word arrived from Tarutenius in 185 that a number of legionaries in the south of his province, who were not enjoying the plunder of their brothers in the north, were discussing rebellion. Wage increases were given to soldiers in the south to match those of soldiers along and beyond the wall.

A Gallic uprising against taxes in 186 was crushed by the local legion but not without the death of general Clodius Albinus by a stray arrow. A distinguished military leader, having quelled numerous uprisings, Clodius' passing was mourned by the country and a state funeral was held in his honor. Another general, Publius Helvius Pertinax, defeated an organized force of Chatti tribes a year later when, under a deficiency of legionaries, he made decisive use of archers. His maneuvers made an impression on the government and military elite of his day, bringing archery new respect within the Legion.

These military conflicts coincided with rising inflation of the denarius in Egypt. In other words, the price of goods in Egypt was gradually rising for unknown reasons. Not many responses could curb inflation in a pre-industrial economy but the Caesar put great effort into restoring the market price of Egyptian goods by revalueing the denarius in the region. Although there was no theory to inform Sulla's strategy, his attempts to increase imports to Egypt managed to lower the local money supply enough after a decade or two to bring the currency in line with the rest of the empire.

One of the most historically significant changes that Sulla made to the Roman Empire was his organization of the provinces into larger territories known as Foederatae. During his first seven years on the curulian throne, Sulla began to doubt the long-term continuation of Roman civilization. He thought of the Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Carthaginians all as great cultures or empires that were mighty in their days yet had by now all fallen to internal or external forces. Sulla believed that Rome faced different challenges than these great civilizations failed to overcome. Two threats that he had seen incite uprisings within the Imperium Romanum were (1) lack of control over the provinces by the central government, such that locals could organize militarily or that generals could gather allies, and (2) belief among regional peoples that a foreign culture was being imposed upon their traditional lifestyles. As a means of mitigating both threats, Sulla abolished the outdated office of Consul, seen by the many non-Italian members of the Senate as unfair to their interests, in the year 188 and used its name for the new positions of governors of a new political division of the empire. Patricians of a regional ethnic group or with a history of governing provinces in a particular region could be selected as Consul of that region's federation of provinces (foederata).

Not only did the new offices provide a way to keep more ambitious senators occupied than was possible under the biconsulate system but they allowed Sulla to reward his most loyal allies in the Senate. Pertinax, for example, was named Gallic Consul when the position was created in 190 CE. Sulla's brother-in-law, Lucius Antistius Brutus, became the first African Consul that same year. As part of this new political layer, the foederatae of the Imperium were: Lesser Germany, Mauretania, Africa, Arabia, Anatolia, Greece, Dacia, Gallia, Illyria, Iberia, and Italy, names giving some indication of incorporated provinces.

These federations had no representation in or influence over the Senate. They constituted an entirely independent mechanism for the dominion of Rome over its coloniae. While the Senate ostensibly enacted legislation for the empire and elected emperors, the new consulares were selected by the Caesar, enforced Roman Law within their federation of provinces, and decided on the allocation of resources for cultural festivities and construction projects. This shift in financial power from the Senate to a decentralized network of magistrates would seem to weaken the power of Rome itself but in practice the system allowed an emperor to more easily spend money in the provinces, since the consulares answered directly to him. By extending the reach of the imperial purse, the influence of the central government was also extended.

Sulla's more federal political system simultaneously increased oversight of the provinces by the central government and garnered greater public support for the central regime in Rome. Such a political maneuver had incomparable effects on national stability, approaching the problem of dissent from the top-down and the bottom-up. The latter aspect of its effects was the result of people feeling as though they were governing themselves, since the Consul of a Foederata must have local origins and his government was more in tune than the central government with the interests of the locals.

In the midst of the successes of its new emperor, tragedy befell the Eternal City in 191 CE when part of Rome burned to the ground. Sulla was forced to divert extensive funds into rebuilding the damaged parts of the city. At extra cost to the government, he demanded greater quality houses from the curatores he commissioned, leaving fewer apartment blocks in Rome than before the fire. The Senate was also persuaded to found a fire department separate from the vigiles. This force would be solely dedicated to subduing urban infernos. The force largely consisted of volunteered slaves that were sent by slave owners living in the protected district. To supply these fire fighters, more water towers were built over houses and apartments, reducing the risk of a water shortage in the middle of a disaster. For now, only Rome benefited from such protection.

Scientific progress
While medical science grew like an oak under the care of Galen, other sciences were not left to rot. Knowledge of commerce and money advanced as money lenders and priests in Egypt sought to understand the recent actions of Sulla on the Egyptian economy and their effects on inflation in their province. For his part, the emperor had only unintentionally shrunk the supply of denarius in Egypt. He simply wanted Roman currency to become more scarce as a way of making it more valuable. Money lenders watching market prices formulated what they noticed into a primitive quantity theory of money, merely noting that the amount of coin in a region was somehow proportional to prices in that region, over the timespan of decades. One money lender speculated that "a doubling of the wealth of Egypt would come with something like a doubling of the cost of food and clothes". This primitive understanding of money supply was a small step forward for economic theory.

The astronomer Cleomedes, famous for spreading the discoveries of Posidonius of Rhodes, was making his own discoveries. Cleomedes is recorded teaching at his schools in Greece in 186 that the atmosphere deviates the straight path of light, in 190 that the Moon is not a source of light but reflects light from the Sun, and in 196 that the Earth's shadow during an eclipse shows its sphericity as clearly as any other evidence. His work was also the first classical treatise to expound the procedure of Eratosthenes for measuring the circumference of the Earth as 252,000 stadia (39,690 km). Cleomedes preached the perfect accuracy of this measurement but it is actually 2% lower than the true value.

Cleomedes had discovered essential features of the universe, as understood by Romans. Only three decades earlier, Ptolemy had created accurate tables for predicting the positions of the planets based on a geocentric model of the universe. While this geocentrism was already the dominant position in astronomy, Ptolemy's mathematics raised its status to the level of dogma. According to the Ptolemaic model, Cleomedes had made discoveries about the very center of the universe: measuring its exact dimensions, describing its interaction with light, and disseminating this knowledge to the rich public. Although the geocentric model would be falsified centuries later, these discoveries were celebrated in their time.

From the point of view of the emperor, these changes in philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy were of little concern. As a Stoic like his father, Sulla was most concerned with practical matters, such as maintaining a healthy populace, unlike the more abstract pursuit of expanding our knowledge about nature. For this reason, the other science to which Sulla devoted public funds was that of geography. In the hopes of improving shipping routes, he commissioned four dozen sailing ships in 214 to map the entire Mediterranean from West to East. Three decades of work went into the production of an accurate representation of the empire's private lake, resulting in the unmatched Carta Mediterranea. No body of land smaller than a trireme was missed by this expedition. A new science of tablographia (cartography) was born from the publication of this detailed map as future merchants and sailors continued creating, modifying, and selling maps based on its representation of the Mediterranean Sea. The original map itself consisted of over 80 pages, with one continental map drawn according to the more detailed regional maps.

Since unskilled or even downright fraudulent doctors were not uncommon, Sulla issued laws in 193 which forced every practicing medicus or chirurgius to obtain a license by passing federal examinations. This license had to be openly displayed in any practitioner's room and anyone practicing medicine without one would face serious penalties, as severe as death. After 269 CE, doctors and surgeons were required by law to affiliate themselves with an official galenaria to maintain the legitimacy of their practice. This meant the end of private medical practice but guaranteed a degree of quality for Roman health care.

In Greece, the philosophical and mathematical schools were going about business as usual. Recent discoveries by Greek mathematicians generally spread no farther than the academies of that little peninsula, never reaching the ear of an emperor. Only a few ideas spread to the libraries of Alexandria and even fewer to the grammatici (schools) of Rome itself. Notable developments during the last century include the detailed arithmetic and number theory of Nicomachus of Gerasa, covering the known perfect and prime numbers through the lens of a Platonic-Empiricist mathematical philosophy, and the book Sphaerica by Menelaus of Alexandria, pioneering the field of spherical trigonometry as well as establishing a primitive concept of geodesics ("straight" lines on spheres). Similar works on cylindrical and conic geometry were written in the last century by Serenus of Antinoopolis while a beautiful summary of surveying was written by the great Hero of Alexandria.

Hero was perhaps the greatest inventor and mathematician of his century. He left behind a number of inventions and discoveries, some relegated to mere curiosities. His aeolipile was the first steam engine and his wind-wheel was the first device to directly harness wind power. Some of his devices which came into general use were: a displacement pump with applications as a fire engine, pulley systems for theatrical performances, a syringe, and a fountain powered by stored hydrostatic energy. These inventions found occasional fame in their use by the government in Rome: Sulla commissioned a fountain using hydrostatic principles and the new fire department was given dozens of stationary pump-operated fire engines which could be brought to the scene of a fire. These inventions saw widespread use in the city of Rome, becoming nearly as much a part of recognized technology as aqueducts. Anyone familiar with modern philosophy at the time knew of these mechanical devices and instruction in their construction was encouraged in schools, in the hope that greater dissemination of such expertise would lead to more inventions.

Jewish migration
As a way of defusing tensions with Jews in his empire, Sulla repealled Hadrian's edict outlawing circumcised men (Jewish males) from the city of Aelia Capitolina by his own edict in 184 CE. He believed that his predecessor had made a mistake in listening to his advisors and not rebuilding the city for the Jews. Roman temples were not taken away and the name was kept but the older parts of the city became the focus of public funding for the tens of thousands of returning Jews. Sulla made a grand event of their return, including a speech saying this was an olive branch to the Jewish community and not to be taken lightly. He warned that they could either demonstrate cooperation with Rome or face a repeat of their earlier defeat.

With the restoration of their great city, an enormous number of Jews returned to Syria Palestina from across the empire. Almost without delay, they reformed exclusively Jewish communities within their holy city. A small number of money changers and lenders would handle the conversion from profane currencies to proper religious currencies for locals and pilgrims. These Jewish merchants would soon shift to secure venues for their practice but they initially operated from their usual benches.

In 193, Sulla repealed the fiscus judaicus (tax on Jews), strengthening the position of his Jewish supporters and drowning out those voices who remained skeptical of his treatment.

Military victories (191-200)
Rebellious generals were always a problem for Caesars, as evidenced by such events as the bellum civile of 68-69. To avoid the possibility of a single man holding more sway than himself over legions, Sulla delocalized the payment of legionaries through procuratores in the home province of a legion. This edict of 192 CE removed a major incentive by which a general could goad soldiers to support him. However, the surefire method for keeping the trust of the Legion was still military victory so in December of 191, the emperor assembled a force of six legions for training in Belgica. April of the following year, Sulla greeted the army, proclaiming his intent to launch a series of raids against the primitive tribes of Magna Germania (Greater Germany).

Over the next three years, the legions captured 2 million denarii worth of gold, jewels, and equipment alongside over 11.9 million denarii in German slaves. Besides the thousands of people taken as slaves, an estimated 9,000 were slaughtered in their villages and 26,000 killed in battle. The empire's superior tactics, training, and equipment permitted only 168 deaths among legionaries and a few hundred among auxiliaries. One German tactic, however, that caught the eye of the emperor was their use of bows which, while largely ineffective against the scutum and lorica of legionaries, were devastating against lightly armored foes.

In the context of the growing respect for archery in the Legion, these displays of the prowess of archers led to the formation of the first professional archery unit for the Legion, given to Legio Gemina X in 199. This unit was not the last. By 200 CE, nine other cohortes milliaria sagittariorum (archery regiments), that were 1,000 strong, got added to legions. Each sagittariorum was combined with one legion to provide support for its troops during conflict on open terrain. An archer in such a regiment was called a sagittarius and his weapons were the arcus (bow) and sagittae (arrows). Romans normally employed a carefully crafted composite bow with a short body for effective use on horseback. By contrast, the new sagittariorum were infantry units. For this reason, the decision was made to equip them with arcus ligneis that had a longer body, providing less mobility for longer range and power. This was a good fit for the comparatively heavy infantry units of a legion.

Sulla hoped to enjoy a brief peace when he returned to Rome for his first Triumph. Sadly, his peace was broken by an invasion of Mesopotamia by the Persian Shah, Vologases V, in 195. Seeking to retake lands lost to Marcus Aurelius, the Parthian Persians were resolute. Nevertheless, despite the regret of the emperor for not expanding the armies in the East, he managed to arrive with four legions of veterans from Germania, beating back the Persian threat. Babylon and the Parthian capital city of Ctesiphon were sacked by Rome while the mighty fortress of Atra, supposedly impossible to take, was - true to its reputation - not taken by Rome but instead burned to the ground.

Vologases himself was captured in the 197 CE sacking of the capital. His ransom back to Parthia for 60 million denarii effectively doubled the size of the Roman treasury. Adding the magnificent plunder from sacking Persian cities, the Aerarium (public treasury) and fiscus (imperial purse) were filled to unprecedented levels. Moreover, the Limes Arabicus, eastern frontier of the empire, was expanded deeper into Parthia in an advance of the border. This conflict and its resolution would provide continued reasons for animosity between Rome and Parthia for the foreseeable future (despite periods of peace and commerce).

While Sulla would spend the newfound wealth judiciously over his reign, this did not stop him from extending a congiarium of 200 denarii to each Roman citizen when he returned for his second Triumph. After reopening trade with Parthia in 198, factors began compounding into an economic boom throughout Syria Palestina and the surrounding provinces.

The few Jewish money lenders and changers in Aelia Capitolina had grown enough in wealth to afford the construction of large buildings dedicated to their business, especially for storing the money of their clients. Roman citizens in the adjacent colony had taken up the hobby of mistreating and robbing their Jewish neighbors so the community pooled resources behind its wealthiest money lenders to create the first secure financial institution. These facilities were referred to as bancae after the benches that it replaced. At first, banks only existed in the city of Aelia Capitolina but the entire Jewish community there used their services, along with a number of Roman citizens.

With the turn of the 3rd century (no one noticed since the Anno Domini calendar didn't exist), the world population had reached 260 million. For its part, the Roman Empire was 60 million strong, only matched by an unstable China whose population was in decline. From within, the limites (borders) of the empire were regarded as the physical limits of human civilization, with the rest of the world a mere sea of tyranny or barbarism. Rome itself was a city of 800,000 citizens and 500,000 slaves, 22,000 of which were owned by the emperor alone. Slavery contributed to a high standard of living in the Eternal City, providing clean streets and simple comforts. The star of Rome was rising like the sun but this was only the beginning.

Pyrrhonism
While Stoicism was strongly favored by the emperor and was gaining popularity in Rome, other Greek schools of thought were independently growing. One such group was the revived school of Pyrrhonism or Skepticism founded by Aenesidemus two centuries earlier. Pyrrhonian Skepticism relied on the principle of epoché (suspended judgement) which concedes that a contrary proposition can be opposed to any nonevident proposition. Since there is no principled way of deciding between two mutually exclusive, nonevident propositions, the Skeptic advises himself to continue the search for knowledge without reaching any firm conclusions about the nature of reality or the nature of good and bad. As a benefit to himself, the Skeptic achieves a lasting peace of mind by avoiding firm commitment to specific theories.

Support for Pyrrhonism grew after the physician Sextus Empiricus completed his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, a perspicuous presentation of the pros of Pyrrhonism and a meticulous exposition of its methods. Sextus presents the ten modes or arguments for a withholding judgement, drawing on the diversity of animals, mankind, senses, circumstances, and customs in the world. The treatise includes a thorough contrast of Skepticism with the Heracleitian, Cyrenaic, Democritean, Protagorean, and Platonic schools of thought. This is accompanied by a brief comparison with the Galenian school of medicine and how its marriage of the Empiric and Dogmatic schools of medicine has unfortunately overshadowed Sextus' own Methodic school.

Notable contributions that Sextus made to epistemology were his criticism of induction, especially as used by Aristotle, and his use of regressive arguments against positive assertions, requiring as they do proof ad infinitum. Later skeptics almost universally refer to his Outlines as an inspiration for their views, citing similar arguments for their own suspensions of judgement.

Expansion (201-210)
Despite losing an Edessan church in a flood, Mesopotamia became the first province to have Christianity as a de facto religion in 201. Growing more anxious from the continued growth of this cult, the Senate petitioned the emperor to ban its practices and to criminalize its propaganda. The relatively peaceful activities of these people, despite rumors of orgies and rape, inclined Sulla to tolerate these so-called Christians. He said that he would act should they begin to prove harmful to Rome.

Since his arguments were not pleasing to most senators, he sought to restore and renovate the Pantheon in Rome, lavishly decorating it in gold reliefs of the gods. Rome's polytheistic majority was pleased enough that senators could only nod in approval at their leader's piety, despite his continued refusal to persecute a group that was posing no more than a spiritual threat. Of course, Sulla was not showing love and tolerance to everyone. 201 was the year Sulla assembled five legions of his veterans of Germania and Parthia for an expedition in Britannia. His target: Caledonia (Scotland).

Sulla was determined to curb the growing pressure from Picts outside Hadrian's Wall and was convinced that the only permanent solution was annexation. Nearly 26,000 legionaries, 70,000 auxilia, 4,000 sagittarii, and the famous general Pescennius Niger, veteran of the Parthian War, made up Sulla's forces. Their strategy was as ruthless as it was effective: exterminate the natives "with discretion". A common means of extermination was to identify a relatively isolated village with scouts then encircle it with troops slowly closing in on the village center and killing everyone along the way. Not a soul would be permitted to escape villages subject to this extreme, borderline genocidal extermination of the local population.

Scorched earth tactics were slackened once the legions passed the Antonine Wall in 204; most Pictish warriors had been annihilated by this point. The rest of the isle was conquered by 206. Accounts vary of the devastation but the most reliable ones state a halving of Caledonia's native population. Those villages that were selected for preservation rather than destruction were fed lies about barbarous actions being committed by Pictish armies as they fled the Legion. This fiction remained the official story after annexation, being entered into the history books. By the end of the next century, no one doubted that the Romans had liberated Caledonia from dangerous Picts and had stayed to rebuild the area under a prosperous Roman authority.

Despite this impression, several thousand natives were taken as slaves during the conquest of Caledonia. As with other slaves, these people retained certain rights under Roman masters. They could complain in court of mistreatment by their masters and killing a slave was as much homicide as killing any non-citizen. Most of the new slaves that he captured got sold to patricians, who as a whole now owned over half of all slaves in the empire.

For continued service to the Caesar, Gaius Fulvius Plautianus was named Praetorian Prefect in 203. Under his leadership, insurrection was intolerable and the Praetorian Guard went from a powerful military force in the empire's capital to a force dedicated to protecting the emperor. A short crisis resulted from guards protesting an announcement in 207 that donatives should not be expected by Sulla's successors but they were repelled from the palace by more loyal guards. Under the emperor's urging, Plautianus split the position of Praetorian Prefect into three offices of equal rank, balancing the authority of the leader of the palace guards. It was nearly inconceivable that all three prefects would ever conspire against future emperors, since there was no precedent for sharing the curulian throne, meaning three men of equal position could never reach an agreement on how to usurp the power of an emperor. This would forever remove the threat the Praetorian Guard posed to emperors of Rome.

While reforming the Praetorian Guard secured Rome from the bloodshed suffered by past emperors, the fire of the last decade revealed a structural flaw. Most domae and insulae were made of flimsy wood, brick or rubble - vulnerable to catching fire and crumbling when they do. Buildings constructed after the fire were made to much higher standards of solidity and inflammability but much of the city was poorly built. From 203 onwards, the Senate filled yearly quotas for subsidies or loans to any citizen of Rome who requested renovation of his home. 19,000 insulae were brought to better safety standards over the remainder of the emperor's reign, supplementing the improved quality of houses rebuilt after the fire.

Sitting on combined treasuries of 96 million denarii, Sulla revalued the three primary currencies again in 209. The denarius was lifted to 3.57 grams of silver in a larger 3.95 grams coin, a silver purity of 90.4%. Rome's money was stronger than ever, reinforced even further by a law in 207 that outlawed the construction or use of imperial mints outside Rome itself. While precious metallic coins were only minted in Rome anyway, bronze asses and other minor currencies could be struck elsewhere and counterfeited denarii or sestertii could be made in these mints. Now they were all shut down for replacement by larger mints on Tiber Island. This gave Rome absolute control over the dissemination of the imperial currency.

Bearing the responsibility of minting bronze coinage was bothersome to the Roman Senate since it was accustomed to only minting its own currency when engaged in public spending or paying soldiers' wages. Still, the centralization of money supply was a warm comfort to the emperor and people of Rome and thus tolerated by the Senate despite reservations that the situation was logistically untenable. Their fears never came to fruition.

Stoicism
Popularity of the Reflections of Marcus Aurelius, as the public had come to call his memoirs, reached an early zenith while the emperor was campaigning in Caledonia. Many in the Senate had read the book by this time. It had gained a substantial following among patricians, some seeking closer ties with their Stoic emperor and others genuinely professing Stoicism. The spread of the Reflections was aided by a Latin translation by Lucius Septimius Severus in 201 CE which was widely read in Italy by both patricians and equestrians.

Sulla personally had no time to waste contemplating the cosmos or the nature of virtue. His Stoicism was entirely handed down from his adopted father and as far as he was concerned, was in no need of improvement. However, he respected the efforts of Stoic academics and wanted other Romans to follow Stoic doctrine, likely out of a genuine belief that it would help the people deal with life's hardships as opposed to an attempt to render the populace more passive to imperial rule. To this end, Sulla paid for the construction of the magnificent Stoa Erudimena near the Tiber in Rome. The collected works of Stoics from Zeno to Epictetus were copied for the new academy's libraries and dozens of the most educated Stoics were brought from the original Stoa in Athens to teach and converse here in Rome. The academy featured a wide porch, overlooking a stunning garden, from which lectures on Stoic metaphysics and ethics were given almost weekly to the public.

There were mixed receptions to the intricacies of Stoicism. Patricians with even a modicum of capacity for reason noticed a dissonance between the Stoic belief in an immanent, single divinity and Roman polytheism. For a time, many were assuaged by the interpretation of this God as Nature, a product of the true gods. Nevertheless, the incompatibility of Stoicism with polytheism would be an ideological ticking time-bomb, going off in slow waves for the next century and moving the elite of Rome in short leaps toward a growing monotheistic cult coming out of Judaea. The spread of Stoicism among patricians was a turning point in the history of Christianity, producing a very different demographic shift for religion than without the prevalence of this philosophy.

Furthermore, Stoicism continued to influence Roman attitudes toward slavery. Stoic morals considered all humans equal and although it did not advocate abolition of slavery, as a deeply-rooted institution of the empire, Stoics supported improving the treatment of slaves. This belief would influence the laws that would be passed by Sulla.

Stoicism would enjoy academic dominance over Italy and eventually Hispania and Gaul for the next two centuries before being supplanted by Aristotelianism during the rebirth of Greek culture in the fifth century. In Greece itself, the Stoics were even with the Aristotelians and Atomists as the only philosophies with central schools. Atomism enjoyed a brief height in popularity from the Latin writings of Lucretius, but its decline has been consistent since the death of Virgil, its last great proponent.

Roman agriculture
Since the time of Augustus, there had been an agricultural shift from landholding peasants to landed estates owned by nobles. Gradually, the latifundium (landed estate) had grown into the dominant form of agriculture in the empire, with most agrarian land held by a relatively small number of people. In the first century, half of Africa Proconsularis was owned by only six patricians and this situation only became more extreme with time.

Sulla was not bothered by this situation in the provinces but the decline of lower class farming in Italy meant a growing urban poor that relied on the grain dole in Rome. For now, the empire was strong enough to support these squatters but Sulla did not expect the situation to improve. With the echo of Pliny's old warnings in his ear, Sulla emphasized the necessity of restoring the place of the farmer in Italian society. Starting this program after his second Triumph, Sulla would spend tens of millions of denarii on buying latifundia in Italy to give to members of the plebeian order on contract. In effect, urban residents would enter into a deal with the emperor wherein they would work a plot of ager publicus (public land) while keeping a large fraction of its produce for themselves and paying the rest to the state. Not only were these contracts a good source of public grain for Rome but they shrunk the number of poor urban citizens depending on that same grain.

Emphasizing the importance of the hardworking peasant to his adopted son, Sulla would ensure that his successors continued the practice of buying latifundia to lease to peasants in this manner. This strategy had a large advantage over merely selling the land to peasants since they would inevitably sell the land to enterprising patricians. By keeping the land public, this decision would remain in the hands of emperors and the Senate who could better recognize the importance of the peasantry. However, much of this public land would be sold to patricians in the early part of the 5th century by less competent emperors.

Until that time, emperors starting with Sulla would enforce strict crop rotation with two fields for all plebs taking part in these sharecropping programs. During a major food shortage in the 4th century, the reigning emperor would purchase a large number of mechanical reapers for those sharecroppers who had not bought their own.

Consolidating the empire (211-220)
Sulla passed numerous laws in 212 relating to citizenship that are remembered as the Constitutio Sulla (Edict of Sulla). One section extended citizenship to all free men in Greece and to a long list of specific non-Jewish residents of Syria Palestina. Another raised the Tributum (poll tax) on non-citizens by 12% but also granted free, non-citizens some of the exclusive property rights (ius commercii) accorded only to citizens. Women were also granted the right to marry Roman citizens, procuring citizenship for their children, under the condition that they forfeit all family ties with non-citizens.

Another section of the Edict made the Latin Right obsolete so that citizenship could only be afforded directly; no longer was there an intermediate between peregrinus (free non-citizen) and civis (citizen). Manumission, the freeing of a slave, would no longer be a means of acquiring citizenship. Instead a libertinus (freedman) would receive only receive breaks from taxes and the descendants of freedmen would only be peregrini. Those people who still held the Latin Right were all granted citizenship. However, all other means of becoming a citizen that did not include offer by the Senate or emperor became obsolete. The result was a stable base of cives Romani and slightly greater equality between citizen and non-citizen.

As another effect of the Edict of Sulla on slavery, a permanent tax on manumission equal to the price of the slave was instituted, both to keep a more consistent number of slaves and to hurt the influence that patricians had through their libertini (freedmen), who were often their most ardent supporters, by ensuring that any given noble could afford less freedmen. The minimum age at which a slave could be freed was also raised from 30 to 40 years. While slaves were now less likely to receive their freedom, other aspects of the edict enforced higher minimum standards for slave accomodations, extended the free health care that was afforded to citizens to also cover the slaves of citizens, and restricted the trading of slaves between citizens. Any slave that was to be sold or offered as a gift had to be approved by a magistrate with political imperium.

Traditional marriage laws, legislated under Augustus, were reinforced over the 210's. Bachelorship was discouraged for citizens by raising taxes on their lifestyles, and privileges such as lowered taxes or house subsidies were instituted for couples. In Rome alone, a grant of 60 sestertius (HS) per year could be accepted for a period of ten years after the birth of every Roman child. At the same time, patricians were banned from marrying plebes, equites, servi, and peregrini, stabilizing the upper class. Protests were made that the new laws were too draconian but Sulla justified them on the grounds that they mimicked those of the Divine Augustus and guarded traditional values of the Roman household.

Meanwhile, the institution of a banca had spread from Jerusalem to Antioch, Petra, and several minor colonies. Sulla heard how popular these facilities were wherever they were founded and he invited several of the most noted Jewish bancani - as bankers were calling themselves - to his palace to discuss arrangements for bringing them west. They accepted the invitation cautiously, emperors having a history of killing rich people for their money and property, and plans were made to create the first Roman bank on Tiber Island. These soon outcompeted private depositories, temples, and merchants who used to perform the same function in a less specialized manner. No other institution could match the specialization and security offered by a banca.

The Senate, for its part, ordered construction of the Banca Romae (Bank of Rome) on a spot beside the Temple of Concordia on July 219. This magnificent structure was even longer than the Basilica Julia but gave a small facade to the Forum. It was put under the charge of a new office, Praefectus Argentarius, and equipped to oversee and document all financial transactions taking place in the city as well as store over 1 billion denarii for citizens and the state. Under Sulla's orders, the interest rates of this bank had to be the same for all its clients and would set the maximum interest rates for all banks in Italy. This bank would be a separate entity to the treasury (aerarium) in the nearby Temple of Saturn.

At this time, banks were effectively a better version of a money lender's bench, with the advantages of size, visual prominence, and security. The Bank of Rome would be a highly respectable institution, encouraging many people to begin borrowing. Money lenders had always been regarded as shady characters but a bank had the appearance of a temple and was explictly supported by the Caesar and the Senate, who guaranteed the legitimacy of its practices as they did other public institutions.

During Rome's banking reform, Sulla took a renewed interest in his domain of Albion. Now that he had united the whole island, he found it easier to issue propaganda, playing on the idea of a united Roman Britain. This meant creating, if you'll excuse the pun, a romanticized portrayal of Britannia as a beautiful figure modeled after Minerva, wearing a centurion's helmet. Britannia had been seen before under more subjugational circumstances but was now being portrayed as a strong and free woman, accompanied by a wolf (Rome). Statues of this personification of the island were built across Britain, often inside major temples used by the native populace. This propaganda initiative would prove highly effective over the next few centuries.

Londinium was at the center of renovations to Britain's infrastructure. Its forum was relocated outside the old city to a location barely west of the Tamesis (Thames). A provincial villa, temple to divine Claudius, and several patrician villas popped up around the new forum, likely funded by the patricians who were offered homes there. While the rest of the city shifted to the new spot over the next sixty years, the Banca Britannica was constructed by the Senate on the forum in 219, five years after the forum was relocated. This bank served a similar function to the Bank of Rome, leading interest rates for the whole island. Across the province, galenariae, bancae, and temples were established, with encouragement by the emperor, in major cities.

Up north, the Antonine Wall was cannibalized to renovate Hadrian's Wall, the official border between Britannia and the recently annexed province of Caledonia, legislated as an imperial province in 208. Trade with the latter was facilitated by constructing a 541 km road from Londinium to Eboracum then farther north to the wall. Overall, Britain's provinces saw civil and structural growth unlike any prior time in its history. The entire region was enriched by the development of its infrastructure and increasing rate of integration into the rest of the empire.

In foreign affairs, Goths - barbarians from the northeast - were gathering for raids on Pannonia and Dacia in 220. Achieving initial successes, they were still repulsed within two years of coming to Rome's attention. The Senate had one wall constructed from Lauriacum to Aquincum and another along the Limes Alutanus near the city of Napoca. The new defenses totaled 960 km of heavy stone and mortar. As usual, this was funded by the remaining spoils from the Parthian War.

From the Far East, an Indian delegation arrived in Egypt asking to meet the emperor of the Hellenic world. News of them reached Sulla, who wished to reaffirm direct trade with the subcontinent and circumvent Persia. The delegation entered Rome to a fanfare by the Senate and upper class. No one had ever met anyone from that far east and everyone was fervently interested in the visitors, said to be from the kingdom of Andhra. Meanwhile, Sulla sent legionaries to locate citizens who had dealt with Indians in the past. The man they turned up was a gnostic Christian, Bardaisan, who - despite his religious beliefs - was suitable for the emperor's intentions.

Sulla sent the Indians home with lucrative trade agreements and Bardaisan as official legatus indicus, first of many Roman ambassadors to India. Rome's influence in the Andhra Kingdom was minor, but together with a trade mission to Wei China starting in 225, over 1 million denarii was flowing yearly out of the empire.

Later rule & death (221-228)
In follow-up to the visit from the Far East, Sulla sent soldiers - disguised as merchants - to explore farther out of his empire. Their primary goal was the discovery, and possible theft, of the source of Asian silk. Some of the men actually began trade relations with the Wei Kingdom but the rest managed to steal several thousand pounds of living silkworms, the sericultural source they had sought. Chinese workers who were kidnapped were forced to instruct their captors on how to care for the silkworms and extract the silk. In this way, China's monopoly on the international silk trade was broken once again, this time by Westerners. Roman silk production was limited to a handful of facilities in Egypt, for climatic and commercial reasons.

Meanwhile, with the Goths settled far outside the limites of the empire, smaller kingdoms like the Regnum Bospori, were in danger of eradication. In anticipation, the Senate gradually ceased trading with the kingdom until the last ship returned to Byzantium from Bosporia in 227. It was hoped that a steady decline in trade would be less harmful to the Anatolian economy than the sudden halt that was sure to come. Gothic warfare ultimately reduced the region from a kingdom to a loose collection of fishing villages and ports by 267.

Instability was the common theme it seemed for the rest of the world: Han China collapsed a decade prior to the cessation of relations with Bosporia and the Parthians were losing control of Persia to the Sassanids that emerged in 208 CE. From their fortress of Ardashir-Khwarrah, the Sassanids slowly tore apart Parthia from the inside until the dying nation fell in 224 and Sassanid rule was established over Persia.

Unlike the Parthian nobility, the Senate of Rome was pleased to see their four centuries long rival collapse. The notion that mighty Persia was gone while Rome stayed strong was a delicious concept to Romans. Games were even held by the aging emperor to celebrate the occasion. Shahanshah Ardashir I, for his part, had no thoughts of challenging the colossus that was the Roman Empire. He politely opened trade relations in Syria and met in 226 with Sulla in Petra for a peaceful discussion. The Shah wisely professed submissiveness to Rome and asked only that "[their] two kingdoms persist in peace". Sulla laughed at the insinuation that Rome was a "mere kingdom", assuring the Persian King that "[Rome] is something else entirely" but that Persia would be allowed to exist under the Sassanid dynasty by his grace. A parade through the streets of Aelia Capitolina as a gift for the Shah emphasized his point through the torrent of the footfalls of tens of thousands of legionaries.

One minor event shook the Roman Empire prior to this meeting. An unauthorized history of the Punic Wars was circulated throughout the Hispanic province of Tarraconensis, describing how the Carthaginians defended the city of Saguntum from a Roman surprise attack and how Rome started the Second Punic War by this instigation. This caused a minor rebellion in that same city in 221 under delusions of an independent Phoenician Hispania. The Legion crushed the revolt but unrest persisted in the area for another half-century, spoiling an otherwise peaceful era.

Over the final years of Sulla's reign, Rome entered a period of near-absolute external and internal peace. No other country could challenge the empire in Europe, Africa, or Asia Minor. After returning to Rome from Petra in 226, Sulla made an enormous fuss about declaring a new Pax Romana like that of Augustus. This indeed marked the start of an actual golden age - the empire's economy booming, currency stabilizing, trade expanding, cities growing, and arts and philosophy prospering like never before. Rome's combined treasuries measured a steady total of 82 million denarii and the population was rising at 72 million, growing especially quickly in Italy and Egypt.

This was a time for civil reform. In 222 and 225 respectively, the provinces of Alpes Ulterior and Aquitania were converted into proconsular provinces, as was Lycia in 227. The shift allowed relocation of multiple legions in the direction of more treacherous borders and signaled to the people of Rome that their empire was stabilizing. There was growing sentiment that Rome had settled into her territory.

Out in the imperial province of Caledonia, Sulla founded a colonia on a confluence of the River Clyde. Presiding personally over a ceremony, Sulla named the settlement Corellia, after his biological family. As with any Roman colony, citizens came from Italy to populate the new settlement, this time encouraged by the cheap availability of public land as well as low taxes. Corellia would grow rapidly over the next century. As in most provincial capitals at the time, a major state bank was set up and the usual galenariae, temples, and statues were built, most of the latter honoring Sulla, Marcus Aurelius, and Hadrian.

At last, on January 1, 228, Caesar Sulla - who received the cognomen Magnus in 225 - collapsed during a speech in the Senate. The stroke he was suffering, despite his good health, was incurable even by Rome's best medici and ultimately, the leader of the civilized world passed away late that evening.

A grand state funeral was held on January 4th, in stark contrast to Marcus Aurelius' modest private one, to coincide with the public mourning of tens of millions of people - the entire Western world - and to lay the emperor to rest with his ancestors in the Mausoleum Augustum. On January 5th, the adopted Marcus Antoninus Sulla was formally recognized as Caesar of Rome.

Statistics for the Roman Empire of 228 AD
Population: 69 million people (26.0% of global population), including ~8 million slaves

Area: 5,840,000 km2

GDP: 5.4 billion denarii (~$113.4 billion US)

Treasury: 79 million denarii (~$2.08 billion US)

Government revenue: 378 million denarii (~$7.94 billion US), 7% of GDP

Military spending: 242 million denarii (64% of revenue or 4.5% of GDP)

Military size: 156,000 legionaries (30 legions), 227,000 auxiliaries, and 10,000 praetorian guards

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