During the third century conditions grew still worse. Invading tribes broke through the frontiers again and again, forcing cities to construct protective walls and threatening for a time to tear the Empire to pieces. Imperial survival depended increasingly on a military defense, and the Roman legions, well aware of the fact made and unmade emperors. Roman armies repeatedly battled one another for control of the imperial office until (to exaggerate only slightly) a man might be a general one day, emperor the next, and dead the third. Some twenty-odd emperors (depending on whom you count) reigned during the calamitous half-century between 235 and 285, and all but one were murdered, were killed in combat or died in captivity. With political anarchy came social and economics breakdown. The cost of living soared 1000% between A.D 256 and 280, and the increase in numbers of soldiers and administrators forced the government, in order to pay their salaries, to levy higher and higher taxes on its peasants and townspeople. Many fled their homes and jobs to escape the tax collector. The golden age had given way to what one third-century writer described as an "age of iron and rust".
The Empire was saved, though just barely, by a series of warrior-emperors of the late third and early fourth centuries. By tremendous military effort they threw back Germanic raiders and Persian armies, recovered the lost provinces and restored the old frontiers. They also took measures to arrest the social and economic decay and to reconstruct the Romans administration - on severely authoritarian lines. These measures have often been criticized, and with some justice. But they enabled the faltering empire to survive for nearly two more centuries in the West and for over a thousand years in the East.
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