The Age of the Soldier Emperors: Imperial Rome, A.D. 244–284

A history of the Roman Empire in the middle part of the third century A.D. Ancient ways of life were collapsing in those years. The calm ideality of classical art had become difficult even to copy. Cities, the hearts of ancient civilization, had begun to forget their heritage, some of them because they had fallen into poverty, others because they were raped and ravaged by barbarians. Much of the countryside also succumbed to the barbarians, who burned and plundered as they swept through.
The decades before Diocletian have often been viewed as the nadir of the Roman experience. Recently, however, scholars have started to see a certain amount of glory in them — the glory, for instance, of philosophical questing, religious fervor, stubborn self-sacrifice, and almost superhuman military achievement. These were years of birth as well as of disruption. They were the years that made the renewed empire possible.
The book is heavily illustrated with pictures of coins of the period, of which Dr. Brauer is an avid collector.