Roman Emperor from 285 to 305. A highly capable administrator, Diocletan, like Decius (several emperors before him) believed that the restoration of the old Roman traditions and cults would help strenghten Roman imperial unity. This led to defiance by Christians who refuse to submit to the worship of the old Roman gods and official persecution of the church, especially in Palestine and Egypt, beginning 303. Churches and Christian books were razed and many leaders killed, until Diocletian abdicated in 305.
Born Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocles in Dalmatia (in the Balkans), little is known with certainty about Diocles's early life. The history hears of him he was commander of the imperial guards of Numerian (son of Emperor Carus, the last but one of the five emperors to rule the "omnishambles" from 270-285). When Numerian was killed under suspicious circumstances while returning from Persia, his troops declared Diocles Augustus. Recognizing that, as a middle-grade officer, he was so proclaimed only because he fitted in as a compromise and, possible, a stop-gap candidate, Diocles—taking the imperial name Diocletian—quickly moved to consolidate his position and was soon marching out to meet Carinus in a "winner takes all" battle. The odds were not all in favour of Diocletian but Carinus died (some say he was killed by one of his generals with whose wife he was sleeping); it was a walk-over.
Highly intelligent and capable, both as a general and as a administrator, Diocletian set about bringing the Roman Empire back to its former glory, "a 'man with a plan' who would grab it by the balls and drag it into a new era" (Stephen Kershaw). Under him the administative, juridicial and financial structures were reformed beyond any thing Roma had ever seen. Part of that 'plan' included also the restoration of the old gods and traditions to their proper places (whose logical and practical consequences was the persecution of the Christians between 303 and 311). Diocletian's heart was trully for the Empire; accordingly he instituted a collegial of government intended to prevent the establishment of dynastic rule known as the tetrarchy (2), and showed the way by retiring in 305 to his villa in Split (in what is now modern Croatia) to grow cabbages. Even as the augusti and caesares began to tear his precious scheme for succession apart, Diocletian refused to intervene. He did about 311, possibly 313.
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