Marcus aurelius and septimus Severus and there involvement during the fall of the roman empire - Research Paper Example

number: Marcus Aurelius and Septimus Severus and there Involvement During the Fall of the Roman Empire Marcus Aurelius was born in AD 121 and lived in Rome with his paternal grandfather who was a senator and praetor in Rome according to Thomas (215). After the death of Antoninus in AD 161, the senate decided to raise Marcus to the post of a sole emperor of Rome. His half brother Verus was made the emperor colleague after Marcus had consistently insistent on the wills of Hadrian and Antoninus. As suggested by Hazel (185), a war broke in AD 161 between Rome and Parthians which led to Roman Empire suffering serious setbacks in Syria.

Emperor Verus went to lead the campaigns in the east however, the situation was tough. The Campaign leadership was left to Roman empires and to Marcus back in the Roman Empire. The return of Verus and his troops came with a devastating plague racking the empire which was then attacked at the North by Germanic tribes. During the fight with the Germanic tribes, Emperor Verus was attacked by the plague and died leaving Marcus as the sole emperor. Later the Marcomanni and Quadi tribes launched their assault to Danube.

Marcus and his armies due to the plague had trouble in maintaining control. However, harsh conditions were affecting his forces. Though his reign was constantly affected by gruesome wars, he still worked on Governmental affairs. Marcus was of little faith and to him Christians were just fanatical martyrs who stubbornly failed to work for the empire. In AD 175, the empire experienced another tragedy followed by a bad fortune according to Winkler (68). The emperor became ill during his Danube campaign and rumor came that he was dead.

This almost led to civil wars in the country. To avoid the situation occurring again, he appointed his son Commodus as his co-emperor. The Danube wars seemed to take long, Marcus and his son left for north to lead the troops. Unfortunately due to lasting illness Marcus died in AD 180. Septimus Severus was born in AD 145 and became an emperor in AD 193 according to Markel (92). Severus came to understand his potential when he inspired fear in his potential rivals by killing several senators. He was a rude soldier was accepted by the supreme constitutional authority.

Before his reign he had commanded on of the feared Roman assignments, the banks of the river Danube. He acquired the experience from this and learned that empire only needed defense to conquer enemies. He was a barbarian to some extent and did not have any qualities of a statesman. Severus extended the civil practice of the soldiers thus improving their status as suggested by Birley (23). This led to a sense of class discrimination as difference between the citizens and non-citizens was fading.

This discrimination also involved enforcing separate punishment for the same crime as suggested by. He commanded the empire the way he had commanded the troops when he was a general. Severus with his army experience he favored those soldiers with military experience to serve the empires frontier. By his hard work Severus was able to able to maintain and improve the empire’s security and prestige which was reduced during the reign of Commodus according to Gibbon and Bury (492). However his desire to find a dynasty caused him a blunder just like Marcus as he made his unqualified son imperial successor.

Works cited: Birley, Anthony. Septimius Severus: the African emperor. London: Routledge. 1999. Gibbon, Edward. & Bury, J.B. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Rockville, MD: Wildside Press LLC. 2004. Hazel, John. Who's Who in the Roman World. London: Routledge, 2002. Markel, Rita. The Fall of the Roman Empire. Washington DC: Twenty-First Century Books. 2007. Thomas, Joseph. Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography and Mythology Part One. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing. 2005. Winkler, Martin.

The fall of the Roman Empire: film and history. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell. 2009.