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When he became the Emperor he called up the leaders of the Jews, who were fearful, saying "We have teased Diocletian the Swineherd but we respect Diocletian the Emperor" – to which Diocletian responded, "You must show respect even to the smallest and lowest of the Romans, because you can never know which one of us will rise to greatness."
Coin of Pescennius Niger, a Roman usurper who claimed imperial power AD 193–194. Legend: IMP CAES C PESC NIGER IVST AVG. While the imperial government of the Roman Empire was rarely called into question during its five centuries in the west and fifteen centuries in the east, individual emperors often faced unending challenges in the form of usurpation and perpetual civil wars. [30]
Diocletian, acclaimed emperor on November 20, 284, was a religious conservative, faithful to the traditional Roman cult. Unlike Aurelian (r. 270–275), Diocletian did not foster any new cult of his own. He preferred the older Olympian gods. [42] Nonetheless, Diocletian did wish to inspire a general religious revival. [43]
The transition to divided western and eastern halves of the empire was gradual. In July 285, Diocletian defeated rival emperor Carinus and briefly became sole emperor of the Roman Empire. Diocletian's reign stabilised the empire and marked the end of the Crisis of the Third Century. Diocletian appointed a co-emperor in 286 and delegated further ...
Diocletian, who had no son, made a Pannonian officer Maximian his co-ruler, first as Caesar in 285, then as junior Augustus in 286. The power-sharing agreement proved durable, with Diocletian mostly ruling in the East, and Maximian in the West. The diarchy developed into a tetrarchy—the rule of four co-emperors—when Diocletian appointed two ...
The period after the Principate is known as the Dominate, derived from the title dominus ("lord") adopted by Diocletian. During his rule, the emperor became an absolute ruler and the regime became even more monarchical. [59] The emperors adopted the diadem crown as their supreme symbol of power, abandoning the subtleties of the early Empire. [60]
These policies and preoccupations culminated in Diocletian's Tetrarchy: the Empire was divided into Western and Eastern administrative blocs, each with an Augustus (senior emperor), helped by a Caesar (junior emperor) as Augustus-in-waiting. Provinces were divided and subdivided: their imperial bureaucracy became extraordinary in size, scope ...
When Diocletian became Roman Emperor in 284, the military situation had recently stabilized, [5] which allowed him to enact badly needed constitutional reforms. Diocletian resurrected the system that Marcus Aurelius had first used, and divided the empire into east and west. [6] Each half was to be ruled by one of two co-emperors, called the ...