In Maximian was raised to Augustus, and propaganda tended to identify Diocletian with Jove and Maximian with Hercules.
Diocletian spent five years campaigning against the Danube tribes and unsuccessfully dealing with the upstart Carausius. Although the dual emperor system worked well, he began to worry about the succession. As a solution, Diocletian and Maximian each appointed a junior Caesar to succeed when either of the Augusti died Constantius and Galerius.
Diocletians reorganization of the imperial system proved his greatest contribution to the Roman empire. The Senates influence was on the decline, and the empire was divided into more orderly provinces, with stricter rules about their governance. His satisfaction with the arrangement led him in to raise Maximian to the rank of augustus, or coemperor.
In Diocletian extended and formalized the system of joint leadership by the establishment of the so-called tetrarchy. He and Maximian adopted as their caesars and aides Galerius and Constantius I Chlorus, respectively, and each young man was prevailed upon to divorce his wife and become the son-in-law of his augustus. Maximian assumed the general supervision of the West prefecture of Italy with headquarters in Milan; Constantius had special responsibility in Gaul and Britain and Galerius in the Balkans Illyrium.
Diocletian was in general control of the East with headquarters at Nicomedia modern Izmir, Turkey , but the others also regarded him as their superior and guide. Diocletian's innovation proved a military success: in Constantius returned Britain, which had split away nearly a decade before, to the empire; Maximian triumphed over Moorish revolts in ; and Diocletian suppressed insurrections in Egypt in and Galerius held the Danubian frontier successfully, and in he so thoroughly defeated Narses I of Persia that more than 50 years of peace was achieved for that area.
During the 3d century governors of the larger provinces of the empire had repeatedly become rival claimants for the throne.
Diocletian sought to correct this danger by splitting up the provinces into far smaller units—the number rose from less than 50 to well over —and within these units civil and military administrations were carefully separated.
The smaller units fostered more careful and personal administrative and judicial work by governors and promoted imperial stability, but resultant proliferation of bureaucratic machinery effected a severe strain on the economy.
Diocletian also began to systematize a new organization of the army, formalizing tendencies that constant 3d-century warfare had brought about.
The old legions, now sedentary and in effect a militia of farmers, were stationed along the frontiers to absorb the first shock of external attack. New, mobile, and much smaller legions 1, to 1, men, as opposed to the old 6, were stationed in garrison cities to back up the frontier troops. Diocletian also developed the use of mounted troops and began the organization of special crack troops, the comitatenses, or friends of the emperor, to serve as an imperial bodyguard. All this raised the size of the army from about , to about , men.
It also increased the financial burdens of the state, though the frontier troops undoubtedly largely supported themselves from the land. In , the senior emperors jointly abdicated and retired, allowing Constantius and Galerius to be elevated in rank to Augusti. They in turn appointed two new Caesars—Severus II in the west under Constantius, and Maximinus in the east under Galerius—thereby creating the second tetrarchy.
The four tetrarchs based themselves not at Rome but in other cities closer to the frontiers, mainly intended as headquarters for the defense of the empire against bordering rivals. Although Rome ceased to be an operational capital, it continued to be the nominal capital of the entire Roman Empire, not reduced to the status of a province, but under its own, unique Prefect of the City praefectus urbis.
Zones of Influence in the Roman Tetrarchy. In terms of regional jurisdiction, there was no precise division between the four tetrarchs, and this period did not see the Roman state actually split up into four distinct sub-empires. Each emperor had his zone of influence within the Roman Empire, but this influence mainly applied to the theater of war.
The tetrarch was himself often in the field, while delegating most of the administration to the hierarchic bureaucracy headed by his respective Praetorian Prefect. When, in , the year term of Diocletian and Maximian ended, both abdicated.
These four formed the second tetrarchy. However, the system broke down very quickly thereafter. Book online. Check in:. Persons: 1 2 3 4 5. The Emperor Diocletian.
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