The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Gallienus was mortally wounded by an assassin and named as his successor Claudius, an army officer of obscure origins. Gibbon deems Claudius’s rise as a positive turning point with a “succession of heroes” (283). At Milan, Claudius defeated Aurelous, a rival for the imperial throne. He drove the Goths out of Macedonia. Gibbon presents Claudius as a good emperor, who, after receiving a complaint from an old woman about the fact that before he became emperor he had previously unjustly confiscated her property, was embarrassed and quickly restored her property to her (287).

After a reign of two years, Claudius died from a plague. Claudius was succeeded as emperor by his brother Quintilius, whom Gibbon notes was the ancestor of the future emperor Constantine I. Hearing that a rival named Aurelian had already raised an army he could not hope to defeat, Quintilius died by suicide after a reign of just 17 days (291).

Aurelian was the son of a peasant farmer in Sirmium (modern-day Serbia). After a reign of four years, he managed to defeat the Goths and the Alemanni. Furthermore, he defeated Tetricus, a rival emperor who controlled Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and Queen Zenobia, who ruled a breakaway territory from the empire in Syria.