Diocletian

Diocletian was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305. His reign stabilized the empire and marks the end of the Crisis of the Third Century. He styled himself an autocrat, elevating himself above the empire’s masses. His reforms fundamentally changed the structure of Roman imperial government.

About Diocletian in brief

Diocletian was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305. His reign stabilized the empire and marks the end of the Crisis of the Third Century. He styled himself an autocrat, elevating himself above the empire’s masses with imposing forms of court ceremonies and architecture. His reforms fundamentally changed the structure of Roman imperial government and helped stabilize the empire economically and militarily. He was the first Roman emperor to abdicate the position voluntarily. He lived out his retirement in his palace on the Dalmatian coast, tending to his vegetable gardens. His palace eventually became the core of the modern-day city of Split in Croatia. His parents were of low status; Eutropius records that he is said by writers to have been the son of a freedman. The Byzantine chronicler Joannes Zonaras states that he was a Dux Moeses commander of the lower forces on the Danube. The first time Diocletians’s whereabouts are accurately established is in 283, when he was made consulship of Augusta Augusta, a post that earned him the honour of Asulship. The second time is in 282, when the Emperor Carus made him the commander of his domestic household, the Protectores, the elite cavalry force attached to the Imperial household. He died in 305, and was succeeded by his son Maximian, who reigned in the Eastern Empire, and his son Constantius, who ruled in the Western Empire. He is the only Roman Emperor to have had a son, Constantine, as a co-emperor.

He also had two sons, Galerius and Constantius. He established the largest and most bureaucratic government in the history of the empire. His Edict on Maximum Prices, his attempt to curb inflation via price controls, was counterproductive and quickly ignored. Although effective while he ruled, Diocletsian’s tetrarchic system collapsed after his abdication under the competing dynastic claims of Maxentius and Constantine, sons of Maximian and Constantian respectively. The Dioclettianic Persecution, the Empire’s last, largest, and bloodiest official persecution of Christianity, failed to eliminate Christianity in the empire; indeed, after 324, Christianity became the empire’s preferred religion under Constantine. He had a daughter, Anulin, who became a senator called Anulin Anulin. He never married and died in his 80s. He left no children, and is thought to have died of natural causes in his 90s. His son, Numerian, was the last emperor to be alive when he died in 286. He fought against the Sarmatians and Carpi during several campaigns between 285 and 299, the Alamanni in 288, and usurpers in Egypt between 297 and 298. In 299 he sacked their capital, Ctesiphon. He led the subsequent negotiations and achieved a lasting and favourable peace. He founded new administrative centres in Nicomedia, Mediolanum, Sirmium, and Trevorum, closer to the empire’t frontiers than the traditional capital at Rome.

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