It looked, indeed, as though the Roman Empire were past praying for and its destruction certain.[1] The armies were in wide-spread revolt. Rebel usurpers succeeded one another so fast that the period came to be known as that of the Thirty Tyrants, many of whom were elected, worshipped, and murdered by their soldiers within the space of a few weeks or months. “You little know, my friends,” said Saturninus, one of the more candid of these phantom monarchs, when his troops a few years later insisted that he should pit himself against Aurelian, “you little know what a poor thing it is to be an Emperor. Swords hang over our necks; on every side is the menace of spear and dart. We go in fear of our guards, in terror of our household troops. We cannot eat what we like, fight when we would, or take up arms for our pleasure. Moreover, whatever an Emperor’s age, it is never what it should be. Is he a grey beard? Then he is past his prime. Is he young? He has the mad recklessness of youth. You insist on making me Emperor; you are dragging me to inevitable death. But I have at least this consolation in dying, that I shall not be able to die alone.”[2] In that celebrated speech, vibrating with bitter irony, we have the middle of the third century in epitome. ----- Footnote 1: _Jam desperatis rebus et deleto pæne imperio Romano_ (Eutropius, iv., c. 9). Footnote 2: _Nescitis, amici, quid mali sit imperare_ (Vopiscus, Saturninus, c. 10). ----- But then the usual miracle of good fortune intervened to save Rome from herself. The Empire fell into the strong hands of Claudius, who in two years smote the Goths by land and sea, and of Aurelian, who recovered Britain and Gaul, restored the northern frontiers, and threw to the ground the kingdom over which Zenobia ruled from Palmyra. The Empire was thus restored once more by the genius of two Pannonian peasants, who had found in the army a career open to talent. The murder of Aurelian, in 275, was followed by an interregnum of seven months, during which the army seemed to repent of having slain its general and paid to the Senate a deference which effectually turned the head—never strong—of that assembly. Vopiscus quotes a letter written by one senator to another at this period, begging him to return to Rome and tear himself away from the amusements of Baiæ and Puteoli. “The Senate,” he says,[3] “has returned to its ancient status. It is we who make Emperors; it is our order which has the distribution of offices. Come back to the city and the Senate House. Rome is flourishing; the whole State is flourishing. We give Emperors; we make Princes; and we who have begun to create, can also restrain.” The pleasant delusion was soon dispelled. The legions speedily re-assumed the rôle of king-makers. Tacitus, the senatorial nominee, ruled only for a year, and another series of soldier Emperors succeeded. Probus, in six years of incessant fighting, repeated the