The Crisis of the Third Century

## The Death of an Emperor The spring air carried an unusual chill as Emperor Alexander Severus's blood soaked into the muddy ground outside Mogontiacum (modern-day Mainz) in 235 CE. His own soldiers, frustrated by what they saw as cowardly negotiations with Germanic tribes, had turned against him. As the 26-year-old emperor drew his last breath alongside his mother Julia Mamaea, none of the assembled legionaries could have known they were igniting a fire that would nearly consume the Roman Empire itself. The assassination marked the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century – fifty years of civil war, plague, economic collapse, and external invasion that would transform Rome forever. The relatively stable Severan dynasty that had ruled since 193 CE was now dead, and with it died the last vestiges of the Pax Romana that had kept the empire prosperous for two centuries. The ringleader of the assassination, Maximinus Thrax – a towering former shepherd from Thrace – was quickly proc...