Birthday Greetings # 58

Happy birthday to Claudius II Gothicus, Roman emperor.  Claudius was called Gothicus because he beat up the Goths although to be fair he was pretty catholic about who he beat up starting with his predecessor in the top job.  Said predecessor's name was Gallienus and a history of his reign is simply a list of sub headings all beginning with "The Revolt of..."  The most recent revolter was actually being besieged in the city of Milan when somebody murdered Gallienus.  Who was it?  Nobody is entirely sure although the suspect list would including pretty much everyone within fifty miles of the imperial presence at the time.  What is known is that our boy Claudius was the one who wound up as emperor so if he didn't commit the murder then whoever did is entitled to feel a little hard done by.

Back in Rome the Senate was responding to the death of the Gallienus by making plans to murder the bereaved family.  Claudius sent them instructions to stop and also deify the deceased emperor which with varying degrees of reluctance they did.  Deifying a predecessor was pretty standard practice by these times.  It was also a public statement of one's piety, respect for the deceased and an attempt to imply non-involvement in said deceased's murder without having to go so far as explicitly say so on the record.  As such it can be taken with about as much seriousness as one treats most public political statements.

With his predecessor safely among the gods Claudius could start to deal with the issues worrying the empire.  The principal issue worrying the empire was the fact that the empire was in bits.  Three bits to be precise, a western bit (ruled by a usurper), an eastern bit (ruled by the son of a usurper ably assisted by his mother) and a bit in the middle (ruled by Claudius who, it need not be said, was thoroughly legitimate and didn't usurp anything unless you count the small issue of having murdered the reigning emperor and taking his job).  Before Claudius could do anything about refractory bits of empire a whole bunch of Goths invaded part of what he had left.

At least we think this is what happened, maybe.  The historical sources are somewhat limited.  They are in fact just two one of which we know is wildly (and sometimes deliberately) inaccurate.  Both these sources in turn source their information from a single history of which no copy has survived.  Finally there was a fair amount of deliberate tampering with the information that was left as Claudius was hijacked posthumously as a putative ancestor of Constantine the Great and his history was pimped somewhat by imperial historians to put Claudius in a better light.  We're not even sure how many invasions there were and describing the participants as Goths is simplistic at best.

What we do know (tentatively) is this.  A huge bunch of people some of whom may or may not have been Goths invaded the Black Sea and Aegean regions of the empire at least once but possibly more so and that a Roman army led by Claudius (or possibly his predecessor Gallienus) met and defeated them at the Battle of Naissus which crushed Gothic (or whoever) power for nearly a century.  Claudius got the fame (and the epithet Gothicus) as a result of this or something very like it more or less. 

With the Goths spanked Claudius took a sharp left turn to pile into the Alemanni who had inconsiderately invaded northern Italy at more or less the same time.  After stamping them flat Claudius turned his attention to the western usurper ruled chunk of the empire.  Here he was helped by a series of internal revolts and civil wars that resulted in the Spanish provinces declaring for the central (and, for want of a better word, legitimate) empire.  A few victories to Claudius's troops helped them make up their mind.  Gaul remained beyond his reach but Claudius was already barrelling at full steam towards Sirmium in what is now Serbia (but was then Roman) to take on the Vandals.

If it seems like Claudius was a man in a hurry it was because he had a date with smallpox and he didn't want to be late.  As it was smallpox was courteously waiting for him when he arrived.  He died after a reign of not quite two years into which he seems to have crammed a hell of a lot.  Before he died he named Aurelian as his successor or at least that was what Aurelian said after he had murdered Claudius's brother who had briefly taken the throne.