HYPERSPACE
AURELIAN
In the year 260 the emperor Valeri...
HYPERSPACE
AURELIAN
In the year 260 the emperor Valerian marched a Roman army into Persia, historically an enemy of Rome. The entire army was destroyed, Valerian taken alive, tortured to death, the Persians stuffing his body in taxiderm fashion. At the same time the Empire was beset on all sides by barbarian hoards, consisting mostly of Germanic tribes, most notably the Goths and the Alemanni. Hence, the Roman empire at that point in time was on the verge of collapse three hundred years before its actual fall. Successor to Emperor Valerian was his son, Gallienus, a profligate and, as described by the English historian A.H.M. Jones, a "poltroon"! Gallienus, more interested in enjoying life, eschewing the military discipline ingrained in the Roman psyche since the days of the Republic almost a thousand years before, allowed the empire's decline to precipitously proceed. At this time military officers of the empire's long held provinces, rather than the politicians of Italy, vied for the imperial Purple. During the reign of Gallienus, the Illyrians were the provincials most powerfully visible in the Legions, Illyria having been a province located in the area of modern Albania. These Illyrians, filled with youth, dynamism, and military pride, could no longer tolerate Gallienus' incompetence and possible cowardice, so they overthrew him, he now being replaced by Claudius II, an Illyrian soon to be known as Gothicus, because the very year of his ascendency to the Purple he smashed the Goths so badly in the battle of Naissus, that this tribe of vicious invaders were quiet for the next seventy years. Claudius died of plague the following year. The next man to ascend to the Purple was another Illyrian, Aurelian. During the time of Aurelian's reign another Germanic tribe invaded. This time, however, the scene of strife was not in central Europe, but in Italy, with Rome herself the prime target! With a shadow of the Legions that once conquered half the world, Aurelian literally exterminated every Alemannic warrior that entered Italy. When Aurelian finished destroying the Alemanni, he turned eastward. Reinforcing the Legions with great manpower, as in days of old, he marched against Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, a city in Syria, which had claimed the eastern part of the Empire as its own. After having re-conquered that half of the empire, Aurelian had new coins minted, his image on the obverse with the words RESTITUTOR ORBIS (RESTORER OF THE WORLD).
