Ahve, and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr. Kaylin Davenport, a senior lecturer in

Roman history at Macquarie University and a Humboldt Research Fellow at Gurther University, Frankfurt.

This is episode CXL VI.

The sun is getting real low.

The Roman Empire was unprepared for the rule of the Emperor Maximinus.

Regarded by many as a savage barbarian, he came to the purple by blood, would rule by blood, and would leave it much the same way.

Here's Kalin Davenport.

The period from the death of Severus Alexander in 235

to the accession of Diocletian in 284 is often referred to as the crisis of the third century. A lot of scholars are now debating the extent of the crisis and whether it penetrated all areas

of the of the empire but we can definitely say for our podcast on the emperors of Rome

that there was definitely a political crisis during this period of

almost 50 years. So we're looking at about 26 legitimate emperors with the rank of Augustus during this period so that the

emperors recognized by the Senate at Rome as well as by the army. During this period

we'll see a breakaway Roman Empire, the so-called Gaelic Empire, which

controls Gaul, Spain, and Britain for a period of about 14 years. So these are people who set themselves up as emperors in Gaul.

They have their own Senate, their own consuls. They claim a Roman authority. So it's about six of them during this period.

Plus there are countless other rivals and claimants to the Imperial Purple

mainly along the Rhine, Danubian, and Euphrates Frontiers.

So those zones of conflicts, we have provincial armies claiming their own emperor who they think can help them deal with the

current invasions.

And when you say that there's 26 recognized emperors by the state during that time, that

...