Pestilence raged in Rome, and over most of the Empire … (The First Four Seals, pg. 27).

This well-documented outbreak was likely the black death or plague (although smallpox is also suggested), the same which decimated the population of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.

“In 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the Empire. But despite this gesture of universality, the Severan dynasty was tumultuous—an emperor’s reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution—and, following its collapse, the Roman Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague.”

“Roman Empire: History,” Wikipedia, referencing P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, London, 1971, p. 22. Emphasis added.

Commodus, the first emperor of the red horseman, emptied the state treasury on bread and circuses for the citizens, in an attempt to purchase their favor. Subsequent emperors were unable to refill it, and new taxes were devised, which were ever increased. Farmers who could no longer afford to farm left their lands and crowded into Rome, where bread was given to the people as welfare, to secure their favor for whatever emperor happened to be on the throne at the time. (The First Four Seals:96-300 AD, pg. 26).

“Most of the small farmers gave up the struggle to keep their little bit of land, for the taxes had become unbearable … The once sturdy farmer lost his independence in an eager scramble for a place in the waiting line of city poor, to whom the government distributed free bread, wine, and meat. Rome was filled with the unemployed who were supported by the State with money which had been raised by taxing more heavily the few remaining farmers. The same situation was, in the main, to be found in all the leading cities.”

James Robinson and James Breasted, History of Europe: Ancient and Medieval, pp. 260, 261.

“The time [of the city poor] which should have been spent in breadwinning was worse than wasted among the cheering multitudes at the chariot races, bloody games, and barbarous spectacles.”

James Breasted, Ancient Times: A History of the Early World, pg. 670.

“An empty treasury required economy and retrenchment, while a greedy soldiery and a demoralised people clamoured for shows and a donative. … He [Caracallus] endeavoured to secure the affections of the soldiers by combining excessive rewards for service with very remiss discipline, thus doubly injuring the Empire. The vigor of the army melted away under his lax rule; and the resources of the State were exhausted by his ruinous profuseness, which led him to devise new and ingenious modes of increasing taxation.”

George Rawlinson, Ancient History: From the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire, pp. 502, 504.

The unceasing civil wars ruined business, as we saw, and inflation grew apace. (The First Four Seals: 96-300 AD, pg. 26).

“At the same time the financial and business life of the cities was also declining. The country communities no longer possessed a numerous purchasing population. Hence the country market for the goods manufactured in the cities was so seriously reduced that city industries could no longer dispose of their products. They rapidly declined. The industrial classes were thrown out of work and went to increase the multitudes of the city poor.”

James Breasted, Ancient Times: A History of the Early World, p. 670.

“Romans in the 1st and 2nd centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them—an indication that the coin was valued on its face, not for its metal content. This tendency toward fiat money led eventually to the debasement of Roman coinage, with consequences in the later Empire.”

“Roman Empire: Currency and Banking,” Wikipedia.

Eighty emperors ruled in the space of ninety years (sometimes there were three emperors at a time, set forth by the armies in different parts of the Empire, who fought one another for supreme control); and most met death by violence. (The First Four Seals, pg. 25).

“But when the line of Severus ended (235 A.D.), the storm broke. The barbaric troops in one province after another set up their puppet emperors to fight among themselves for the throne of the Mediterranean world. The proclamation of a new emperor would be followed again and again by news of his assassination. From the leaders of the barbaric soldier class, after the death of Commodus, the Roman empire received eighty rulers in ninety years.”

James Breasted, Ancient Times: A History of the Early World, p. 673.

“But the Roman empire, after the authority of the senate had sunk into contempt, was a vast scene of confusion. The royal, and even noble, families of the provinces had long since been led in triumph before the car of the haughty republicans. The ancient families of Rome had successively fallen beneath the tyranny of the Caesars; and whilst those princes were shackled by the forms of a commonwealth, and disappointed by the repeated failure of their posterity, it was impossible that any idea of hereditary succession should have taken root in the minds of their subjects. The right to the throne, which none could claim from birth, every one assumed from merit. The daring hopes of ambition were set loose from the salutary restraints of law and prejudice; and the meanest of mankind might, without folly, entertain a hope of being raised by valor and fortune to a rank in the army, in which a single crime would enable him to wrest the sceptre of the world from his feeble and unpopular master. After the murder of Alexander Severus, and the elevation of Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe upon the throne, and every barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire to that august, but dangerous station.”

Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, Ch. 7, “Tyranny of Maximin, Rebellion, Civil Wars, Death of Maximin, Part I.”