The collected army leadership halted near Nicomedia, and in a ceremony the representatives of the military units elected Diocles emperor.. When the battle between Carinus and Diocletian
Trang 1their right to command legions and the sons of senators
of their rank of deputy tribune These positions were
given to career soldiers, thus opening opportunities for
advancement in the rank and fi le Diocles was either a
freed slave or the son of a freed slave, and his education
was extremely limited Diocles joined the imperial army
before 270 and in less than two decades rose far
In the 270s mention was made of Diocles being
commander of a sizable military unit on the lower
Danube, roughly modern-day Bulgaria Descriptions
vary, but they agree that Diocles lacked natural heroic
bravado Rather, he set himself to military tasks with
cautious and cool precision, showing himself to be a
better leader than soldier In 282 the legions of the
up-per Danube declared the Praetorian prefect Carus
em-peror, and before the emperor Probus could respond,
his own soldiery killed Probus Diocles’ role in the coup
is unclear, but under Carus’s short reign he rose to the
highest levels of military leadership Carus elevated
Di-ocles to command of the protectores domestici, the elite
force that accompanied the emperor into battle This
gave Diocles intimate access to Carus, and he was made
a consul in 283 Following Carus’s sudden death, his
son, Numerian, was named emperor, and Numerian’s
father-in-law and the prefect, Aper, began gathering
military power In 284 Numerian died, and Aper, who
had charge over him, was arrested by soldiers on
suspi-cion of plotting against the emperor The collected army
leadership halted near Nicomedia, and in a ceremony
the representatives of the military units elected Diocles
emperor Diocles’ fi rst act was the execution of Aper
for Numerian’s murder He then took the name Gaius
Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus
Diocletian still needed to subdue Numerian’s brother,
Carinus, who controlled the western provinces of Rome
Constantius, the governor of Dalmatia, supported
Dio-cletian, and Carinus was weakened by the revolt of one
of his military leaders, Sabinus Julianus When the battle
between Carinus and Diocletian took place near
Bel-grade in 285, Diocletian was nearly defeated when his
armies’ lines were broken But Carinus’s forces did not
take advantage of their battle gains and soon discovered
that Carinus was dead Tired of battle, the soldiers of
Carinus’s armies swore allegiance to Diocletian, who
be-came sole ruler—Augustus of Rome
In order to overcome simultaneous military
emer-gencies continuing to befall the Roman Empire,
Dio-cletian adopted the younger general Maximian as heir
and elevated him to the status of Caesar, a powerful
and historic position inferior to the status of the
Augus-tus While Maximian was ambitious and able, he was
a soldier of little political imagination, making him the least likely of Diocletian’s supporters to attempt to seize power Maximian, now legal son of Diocletian and a Caesar with armies, was charged with restoring Roman authority in Gaul and the West
A revolt in Britain soon necessitated a more drastic measure When Carausius, a general in Britain and Gaul, was declared Augustus by his armies and challenged the mere Caesar, Maximian, Diocletian boldly elevated his adopted son Maximian to the status of Augustus Diocle-tian and Maximian, both soldiers commanding armies, held real power in their dual rule Under their leadership the question of dividing the empire into opposed states never arose, and this reform in government would play a central role in Rome’s recovery The two emperors could now face their enemies simultaneously in the north and east and take advantage of the fact that the fronts were composed of small, independent armies
Diocletian sought to establish his capital in Nico-media After the fi rst fi ve years of the dual rule, Diocle-tian set about to further cement the government and made reforms that would consolidate advances made
to secure Rome after its long decline Diocletian fi rst moved to establish the Tetrarchy in order to secure succession to the throne and maintain orderly dual rule
In the Tetrarchy each Augustus would adopt into his family a Caesar as junior partner After a decade the two Augusti would retire in favor of the Caesars, who would in turn each adopt a Caesar
Beyond the military and governance reforms of the establishment of the Tetrarchy, Diocletian reformed the military structure, establishing frontier forces that pro-vided defense, with a mobile reserve force maintained more centrally When hot spots fl ared, the reserves could reinforce the frontier armies The power of military leader-ship was divided in an attempt to reduce their threat to imperial authority Diocletian’s rebuilding projects and investments in infrastructure can be seen as part of a
larg-er plan for economic reform Availability of goods, such
as food and materials, was improved when they could more easily be transported across the empire However, rampant infl ation was hard to control, and Diocletian engaged in an attempt at price fi xing His Edict on Maxi-mum Prices, while ultimately failing to control prices and infl ation, was a serious attempt at controlling runaway infl ation, with some offenses punishable by death
Perhaps under the infl uence of Galerius, who was known to be opposed to Christianity, Diocletian’s rule continued Rome’s persecutions of the Christian re-ligion Begun in 303, this wave of persecution would cease only in 312 A series of edicts commanded that
118 Diocletian