Economic Impact

Internally the empire faced hyperinflation caused by years of coinage devaluation. This had started earlier under the Severan emperors who enlarged the army by one quarter^. and doubled the base pay. As each of the short-lived emperors took power they needed ways to raise money quickly to pay the military's "accession bonus" and the easiest way to do so was by simply cutting the silver in coins and adding less valuable metals. This had the predictable effect of causing runaway inflation and by the time Diocletian came to power the old coinage of the Roman Empire had nearly collapsed. Some taxes were collected in kind and values were often notional in bullion or bronze coinage. Real values continued to be figured in gold coinage, but the almost solid silver coin, the denarius, used for 300 years, was gone (1 pound of gold = 40 gold aurei = 1000 denarii = 4000 sestertii).The currency had almost no value and trade was by barter. Every aspect of the Roman way of life was affected.
One of the most profound and lasting effects of the Crisis of the Third Century was the disruption of Rome's extensive internal trade network. Ever since the Pax Romana, Imperial Rome's economy depended in large part on trade between the Mediterranean ports and over Rome’s extensive road system. Merchants could travel from one end of the Empire to the other in relative safety in a few weeks, moving agricultural goods produced in the provinces, and manufactured goods produced by the great cities of the East. Large estates produced cash crops for export, and used the resulting revenues to import food and manufactured goods. This resulted in a great deal of interdependence between the Empire’s inhabitants. The historian Henry Moss describes the situation as it stood before the Crisis:

Along these roads passed an ever-increasing traffic, not only of troops and officials, but of traders, merchandize and even tourists. An interchange of goods between the various provinces rapidly developed, which soon reached a scale unprecedented in previous history and not repeated until a few centuries ago. Metals mined in the uplands of Western Europe, hides, fleeces, and livestock from the pastoral districts of Britain, Spain, and the shores of the Black Sea, wine and oil from Provence and Aquitaine, timber, pitch and wax from South Russia and northern Anatolia, dried fruits from Syria, marble from the Aegean coasts, and – most important of all – grain from the wheat-growing districts of North Africa, Egypt, and the Danube valley for the needs of the great cities; all these commodities, under the influence of a highly organized system of transport and marketing, moved freely from one corner of the Empire to the other.^[1]

With the Crisis of the Third Century, however, this vast trade network broke down. The widespread civil unrest made it no longer safe for merchants to travel as they once had, and the financial crisis that struck made exchange very difficult. This produced profound changes that, in many ways, would foreshadow the character of the coming Middle Ages. Large landowners, no longer able to successfully export their crops over long distances, began producing food for subsistence and local barter. Rather than import manufactured goods, they began to manufacture many goods locally, often on their own estates, thus beginning the self-sufficient "house economy" that would become commonplace in later centuries, reaching its final form in Manorialism. The common free people of the cities, meanwhile, began to move out to the countryside in search of food and protection. Made desperate by economic necessity, many of these former city dwellers, as well as many small farmers, were forced to give up basic rights in order to receive protection from large land holders. In doing so, they became a half-free class of citizen known as coloni. They were tied to the land, and in later Imperial law their status was made hereditary. This provided an early model for serfdom, which would form the basis of medieval feudal society.
Even the cities themselves began to change in character. The large, open cities of antiquity slowly gave way to the smaller, walled cities that were common in the Middle Ages. These changes were not restricted to the third century, but took place slowly over long periods of time, and were punctuated with many temporary reversals. However, in spite of extensive reforms by later Emperors, the Roman trade network was never able to fully recover. The decrease in commerce between the provinces put them on a path towards increased insularity. Large landowners, who had become more self-sufficient, became less mindful of Rome’s central authority and were downright hostile towards its tax collectors. The measure of wealth at this time began to have less to do with wielding urban civil authority and more to do with controlling large agricultural estates. The common people lost economic and political power to the nobility, and the middle classes waned. The Crisis of the Third Century thus marked the beginning of a long evolutionary process that would transform the ancient world into the medieval one.

Read more...