Gallic Empire

The Gallic Empire (in Latin Imperium Galliarum) is the modern name for the independent realm that existed for a brief period during the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century, from 260 to 273.

The Gallic Empire consisted of the breakaway Roman provinces of Gaul, Britannia, and Hispania, including the peaceful Baetica in the south. The crisis was ignited when Emperor Valerian was captured by the Sassanid Persians, leaving his son Gallienus in very shaky control. As governors in Pannonia staged unsuccessful local revolts, this took the emperor to the Danube, leaving Postumus, who was governor of Germania Superior and Inferior, in charge at the Rhine.

The imperial heir Saloninus and the praetorian prefect Silvanus remained at Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), to keep the young heir out of danger and perhaps also as a control on Postumus' ambitions. Before long, after some successful border skirmishes, Postumus took control of Colonia Agrippina, and put the young heir and his guardian to death.

Postumus set up the Empire's capital at Cologne, with its own senate, two annually elected consuls (not all of the names of the consuls have survived) and its own praetorian guard. Postumus himself seems to have held the office of consul five times.

Beyond a mere symptom of chaos in the third century crisis, the Gallic Empire can be interpreted as a measure of provincial identification competing with the traditional sense of romanitas, of the cohesive loyalties of individual legions, and of the power accumulated by entrenched Romanized aristocratic kinship networks whose local power bases ranged from the Rhine to Baetica, although the extent of "Gaulish" self-identification that nationalist historians have inferred is probably inflated. Postumus declared his sole intention was to protect Gaul — this was his larger Imperial task — and in 261 he repelled mixed groups of Franks and Alamanni to hold the Rhine limes secure, though lands beyond the upper Rhine and Danube had to be abandoned to the barbarians within a couple of years.

The Gallic emperors are known primarily from the coins they minted. The political and military history of the Gallic Empire can be sketched through their careers. Their names are as follows: