page_title: Late Roman army
section_title: 3rd-century crisis
hierarchical_section_title: Late Roman army / Evolution of the 4th-century army / 3rd-century crisis
caption_attribution_description: English: A bas relief sculpture at Naqsh-e Rostam, Iran, depicting the triumph of Shapur I over the Roman Emperor Valerian.فارسی: نقش برجسته دستگیری والرین به دست شاپور اول
context_page_description: In modern scholarship, the "late" period of the Roman army begins with the accession of the Emperor Diocletian in AD 284, and ends in 476 with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, being roughly coterminous with the Dominate. During the period 395–476, the army of the Roman Empire's western half progressively disintegrated, while its counterpart in the East, known as the East Roman army remained largely intact in size and structure until the reign of Justinian I.
  The Imperial Roman army of the Principate underwent a significant transformation as a result of the chaotic 3rd century. Unlike the army of the Principate, the army of the 4th century was heavily dependent on conscription and its soldiers were paid much less than in the 2nd century. Barbarians from outside the empire probably supplied a much larger proportion of the late army's recruits than in the army of the 1st and 2nd centuries, but there is little evidence that this adversely affected the army's combat performance.
  Scholarly estimates of the size of the 4th-century army diverge widely, ranging from ca. 400,000 to over one million effectives.
context_section_description: The mid-3rd century saw the empire plunged into a military and economic crisis which almost resulted in its disintegration. It consisted of a series of military catastrophes in 251–271 when Gaul, the Alpine regions and Italy, the Balkans and the East were overrun by Alamanni, Sarmatians, Goths and Persians. At the same time, the Roman army was struggling with the effects of a devastating pandemic, now thought to have been smallpox, the Plague of Cyprian which began in 251 and was still raging in 270, when it claimed the life of Emperor Claudius II Gothicus (268–70). The evidence for the earlier Antonine pandemic of the late 2nd century, probably also smallpox, indicates a mortality of 15–30% in the empire as a whole. Zosimus describes the Cyprianic outbreak as even worse. The armies and, by extension, the frontier provinces where they were based (and mainly recruited), would likely have suffered deaths at the top end of the range, due to their close concentration of individuals and frequent movements across the empire.
  The 3rd-century crisis started a chain-reaction of socio-economic effects that proved decisive for the development of the late army. The combination of barbarian devastation and reduced tax-base due to plague bankrupted the imperial government, which resorted to issuing ever more debased coin e.g. the antoninianus, the silver coin used to pay the troops in this period, lost 95% of its silver content between its launch in 215 and its demise in the 260s. Thus 20 times more money could be distributed with the same amount of precious metal. This led to rampant price inflation: for example, the price of wheat under Diocletian was 67 times the typical price under the Principate. The monetary economy collapsed and the army was obliged to rely on unpaid food levies to obtain supplies. Food levies were raised without regard to fairness, ruining the border provinces where the military was mainly based. Soldiers' salaries became worthless, which reduced the army's recruits to a subsistence-level existence. This in turn discouraged volunteers and forced the government to rely on conscription and large-scale recruitment of barbarians into the regular army because of the shortfalls caused by the plague. By the mid-4th century, barbarian-born men probably accounted for about a quarter of all recruits (and over a third in elite regiments), likely a far higher share than in the 1st and 2nd centuries.
caption: Roman emperor Valerian (left, kneeling) begs for his life after being captured by Persian Shah Shapur I (mounted) at the Battle of Edessa (259), the most humiliating of the military disasters suffered by the empire in the late 3rd century. Rock relief at Naqsh-e Rostam near Shiraz, Iran
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