HIST-211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 52: Cassius Dio
15 Sep 2020
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Document Summary
At the end of the second century, roman stability, prosperity and public spiritedness began to confront a number of serious challenges. Agricultural and industrial production declined, inflation ran rampant, and imperial coinage was debased. Dio cassius described the roman world around him as a golden kingdom turned into a realm of iron and rust . Rome"s decline resulted from a combo of internal weaknesses and external pressures. Cyprian, the christian bishop of carthage and an early martyr, announced his belief that the world was coming to an end. Many of these problems were long standing and for various reasons came to head in the third century. The geographic expansion of the empire under trajan and hadrian had created many long term problems with short term gains. The conquest of mesopotamia indirectly triggered a revolution in the parthian empire that brought a new regime, the sassanids to power.
