Pax Romana - Origins of The Term

Origins of The Term

The Pax Romana began with the accession of Augustus in 27 BC, which marked the end of the Roman Republic and its final civil wars, and lasted until 180 AD at the death of Marcus Aurelius. The Latin word pax, most often translated "peace," also means "treaty" or "accord." The Roman legal system, which forms the basis of many Western court systems today, unified the administration of justice in the courts throughout the provinces. The Legions patrolled the borders with success, and though there were still many foreign wars, the internal empire was free from major invasion, piracy, or social disorder on any grand scale. The empire, wracked with civil war for the last century of the Republic and for years following the Pax Romana, was largely free of large-scale power disputes. Only the year 69 AD, the so-called 'Year of the Four Emperors' following the fall of Nero and the Julio-Claudian line, interrupted nearly 200 years of civil order. Even this was only a minor hiccup in comparison to other eras. The arts and architecture flourished as well, along with commerce and the economy.

The concept of Pax Romana was first described by Edward Gibbon in Chapter Two of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon proposed a period of moderation under Augustus and his successors and argued that generals bent on expansion (e.g. Germanicus, Agricola and Corbulo) were checked and recalled by the Emperors during their victories favouring consolidation ahead of further expansion. Gibbon lists the Roman conquest of Britain under Claudius and the conquests of Trajan as exceptions to this policy of moderation and places the end of the period at the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, despite the conclusion of peace by the latter's son Commodus later in the same year. During the Pax Romana, the area of Roman rule expanded to about five million square kilometres (two million square miles).

Pax Romana, according to Gibbon, would have ended with Commodus himself, whose dispendious excesses and despotic misrule destabilised central Roman politics amidst the chaos of the Germanic invasions of the Rhine-Danube frontier. Commodus's assassination led to a succession crisis, the so-called Year of the Five Emperors, which culminated in the ascension of a soldier-emperor, Septimius Severus, who, despite giving the Empire a peaceful reign, was accused by Gibbon of catalysing the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of economic, political and military crisis that, together with the Germanic invasions and the rise of the Sassanid Persian Empire in the East, almost led the Empire to collapse.