I recently got around to reading Peter Heather’s Fall of the Roman Empire. It’s an excellent read for the layman, and he poses some interesting debates for the historian. One interesting theory he suggests is that the Huns had an indirect (and earlier than usually assumed) effect on Rome as their migrations forced the Goths to rush the borders and clash with the Empire.
But my area of study is the 3rd Century crisis, and that’s why I noticed an odd and unorthodox account of Numerian’s death.
Everyone remembers the famous emperor Numerian, right? He’s right up there with…well, don’t feel badly. They don’t teach much about the 3rd century in school because it was such a mess. Rome’s borders were crumbling under the weight of Germanic invasions, and the empire was in a state of nearly constant civil war. Dio (as in Cassius, not Ronnie James) remarked that Rome had descended “from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.” Continued...