With the death of Marcus Aurelius the series of Philhellenic Emperors ended, and the Roman civil wars in the last decade of the second century occupied the attention of the Empire. Without taking an active part in the struggle, Greece submitted to the authority of Pescennius Niger, one of the unsuccessful candidates, and this temporary error of judgment may have induced the Emperor Septimius Severus to inflict a punishment upon Athens, the cause of which is usually ascribed to a slight which he suffered during his student days there. His successor, Caracalla, by extending the Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire, gave the Greeks an opportunity, of which they were not slow to avail themselves. From that moment the doors of the Roman administration were thrown open to all the races of the Roman dominions, and the nimble-witted Greeks so obtained a predominance in that department such as they acquired much later under Turkish rule. From that moment, too, they considered themselves as “Romans,” and the name stuck to them long after the Roman Empire had passed away. But Caracalla, while he thus made them the equals of the Romans in the eyes of the law, increased the taxes which it had long been the privilege of Roman citizens to pay, while he continued to exact those which the provincials had paid previous to their admission to the citizenship. The reductions made by his successors, Macrinus and Alexander Severus, were to a large extent neutralised by the great depreciation of the currency, which began under Caracalla and continued for the next half century. The Government paid its creditors in depreciated money, but took good care that the taxes were paid in good gold pieces. The worst results followed: officials were tempted, like the modern Turkish Pashas, to recoup themselves by extortion for the diminution in their salaries; trade with foreign countries became uncertain, even the specially thriving Greek industries of marble and purple dye must have been affected, and possessors of good coin buried it in the ground. Amid this dismal scene of decay, Athens continued to preserve her reputation as a University town. Though no longer patronised by cultured Emperors, she still attracted numbers of pupils to her lecture rooms; and the name of Longinus, author of the celebrated treatise, _On the Sublime_, adorns the scanty Athenian annals of this period. That the drama was not neglected is clear from the inscription which records the restoration of the theatre of Dionysos by the Archon Phaidros during this period. But the philosophers and playgoers of Athens were soon to be roused by the alarm of an invasion such as their city had not experienced for many a generation.