Marc's Diocletian Page

Diocles or later known as Diocletian was born 236/237 A.D. on the Dalmatian coast and died December 3, 316. As a kid he received little education but was into religious piety. Later on he married his wife Prisca and they had a daughter called Valeria. Valeria was the second wife of Galerius whose first wife was her mother. She was forced to sacrifice herself to the gods during the "Great Persecution" because she was Christian. During his early life there was much fighting and anger in the Roman Empire so when he ruled from 284 to 305 he put the end to the "Imperial Crisis", also known as the "Military Anarchy" (235 to 284). He then laid the groundwork for the second phase of the Roman Empire. This stage is known variously as the "Later Roman Empire", the "Byzantine Empire", the "Tetrarchy" and the "Dominate". His reforms also made possible for the continuity of the Roman Empire in the east for a thousand plus years.

As emperor one of his first problems was to get the Roman armies under control (once he did this later on he defeated Alamanni, the Sarmatians, the Saracens, the Franks and the Persians). He did it so he could control the frontiers from attack. He did this by subdividing the fifty provinces into about one hundred. This made the imperial bureaucracy larger. He also made a policy that separated civil and military careers. He then divided the army to make border troops and palace troops. He made the emperorship into an oriental monarchy. That then made him known as Lord and Master (Dominus Noster). He also decided that the empire was too large to be ruled by a single person so he set up a system that would have the empire ruled by four. This was known as the "Tetrarchy" or "Rule by Four". He then appointed Maximianus "Caesar" in 285 A.D. to control the western half of the empire. After a while he promoted Maximianus to the rank of senior emperor (Augustus). He then appointed two more Caesar, Constantius and Galerius. All this was done so that he could restore an effective government and get some economic prosperity into the empire. Diocletian's tetrarchy then worked well. He also solved the problem of choosing a new emperor. He changed it so it would make the successor of each Augustus the new Ceaser who would then name a new Ceaser.

Diocletian also helped some other areas such as Rome's economic problems. He tried to help the problem with currency but failed because there wasn't enough gold and silver to make coins. He made a "Maximum Price Edict" in 301 to help inflation but it only drove goods onto black markets. He

Diocletian resigned May 1, 305 after twenty five years in office. When he and Maximianus resigned Constantius and Galerius became Augusti and they chose two new Caesars. Diocletian retired at his palace at Split on the Croatian coast. He died at Split on December 3, 316.

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 By Marc V. '02, Germantown Academy