01-11-2015, 12:41 AM
Quote:What is your take on Gallienus?
Fascinating character. He got a massively bad press from many of the Roman historians - the Historia Augusta and Aurelius Victor in particular - who painted him a cross-dressing degenerate. But he has been rehabilitated recently, and convincingly I think.
I haven't read either Bray or de Blois (the two major recent biographers), but there's an article by David S Michaels in Ancient Warfare II.6 - 'Unsung Saviour of Rome: the reign of the emperor Gallienus' that provides a very good summary and opinion.
Michaels reminds us that Gallienus ruled for 15 years, which in the third century was a major accomplishment, and not the kind of thing an ineffectual fop would have been able to pull off. He also seems to have undertaken some major military reforms (whether you believe in his 'mobile cavalry force' or not, he seems to have expanded his father's overhaul of the officer corps if nothing else) and fought pretty effectively on all fronts to hold the central empire together at its very darkest hour.
Nathan Ross