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Hello and welcome to the history of Rome. Episode 106 Barbarian at the Gate.

The first eight years of Alexander Severus's reign proved to be a

relatively quiet and prosperous time for the Empire. The period was not

totally without problems as evidenced by the periodic mutinies in the army,

but compared to what had come before and what was going to come after, the

mid to late 220's AD was pretty much heaven on earth. Taxes were low, the frontiers

were quiet, and the imperial regime was stable. That period of relative calm,

however, is about to come to an abrupt end. In 230 AD, the new

Sasanid King Artichir, who we introduced last week, made the bold decision to

...