The Rest Is History - 260: Croatia: The Man Who Saved The Roman Empire

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

"In conditions of chaos, people from outside the Roman social elite can rise to the top." Join Tom and Dominic for their World Cup episode on Croatia, where they discuss the extraordinary life of the Emperor Diocletian. They talk about the Crisis of the Third Century, the Roman 'sidebar of shame', crisis in Gaul, Roman Brexit, foundations of the Byzantine Empire, and the best fact Dominic has heard in the World Cup series so far... Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. For fans of the England football team, Tom, the subject of today's podcast is something of a sore point because four years ago when the World Cup was held in Russia, England went on a remarkable run to reach the semi-finals but were knocked out by the eventual runners-up Croatia and um Croatia

is a wonderful country fascinating history Tom you've chosen a subject from Croatian history to focus on today and who or what are you talking about Croatian-ish because the the focus is um a period long before the creation of the modern state of Croatia okay and the focus is a period long before the creation of the modern state of Croatia. Okay. And the focus is a man called, he was born Diocles in the 3rd century AD, early 240s AD at a place called Salona. And today, if you've been to the city of Split, Solin is still there. It's a suburb of Split now. But back in the 3rd century AD, it belonged to a region called Dalmatia, which in turn was part of a region of the empire called

Illyricum. So Tom, just to jump in for one second. So those people who don't know much about Croatian history, but maybe have been to Croatia, if they've been through Split, they will have seen, won't they, one of the most extraordinary Roman buildings still standing, which is Diocletian's palace, which is basically the city centre of Split. Yes, it is. And you may be wondering, what's the link between this chap Diocletian and Diocletian? Well, all will be revealed in due course, because Diocletian is a figure from a very, very obscure background. He's the son of a scribe who may have been a freedman or may actually have been a slave. So Diocles may conceivably have been born unfree. So he comes absolutely from the bottom of the pile. And yet amazingly,

Diocles will become Diocletian. I'm giving away the twist. He rules as emperor for over 20 years from 284 to 305. So how is it possible that someone from the bottom of the social order could have risen to become not just emperor, but ruling for two decades? And the answer to that lies in the circumstances into which he is born, which is one of utter convulsion and chaos for the Roman Empire. It's basically a kind of 50-year period of anarchy that almost sees the Roman order implode completely. And it's in conditions of chaos that people from outside the social elites can rise to the top. And this is what people call the crisis of the third century, isn't it? Crisis doesn't really do it justice. So essentially, it sees the entire order of the Roman Empire as it had been set up by Augustus, and which had prevailed for essentially two

centuries. It sees it pretty much on its uppers. So the essence of the Augustan settlement, the imperial order that he creates out of the collapse of the Republic, which had been the previous kind of great process of convulsion and near collapse that the Roman order had gone through, is that it's an autocracy. You have rule by one man, an imperator comes, you know, the emperor. But that it is done in association with the Senate. And Augustus pretends that he is less powerful than he actually is. And the Senate has the illusion that it is more powerful than it really is. And so senators, they rise up through a kind of chain of military and civilian commands. And they're providing the emperor with the elites

that enable the empire to be administered. And this had served the Roman order very well for about two centuries. But then in the third century, it all goes to pot. And it's a vast kind of conflux of circumstances that we don't really have time to focus in on. And I think that we should do maybe a series of episodes on this process because it's very, very interesting.

And maybe mildly topical when we look at the state of Britain and Europe at the moment. Oh, no, Tom, don't say that. But, you know, if we want to cheer ourselves up now, things were far, far worse in the Roman Empire in the third century. So what you have, you have huge pressure on the frontiers. So you have the barbarians along the Rhine and the Danube, which had always been there,

but they're kind of tribal entities that are conglomerating. So they're able to execute more and more pressure. But the real problem is, is that in the East, the Parthian Empire, which had been a rather ramshackle entity, has collapsed and been replaced by a much more aggressive and efficient imperial order under a Persian dynasty called the

Sassanids, so the Sasanian Empire. And that is a superpower fit to rival Rome. So for the first time, it's up against a kind of equal power. And that generates huge pressure. At the same time, within the fabric of the empire itself, you have a succession of civil wars people grasping after the uh the the the imperial purple being dispatched so you know at various points you have maybe three four five people in very very rapid succession um in charge so you have civil war you have external war the the consequent effect of this is the collapse of the tax base. You see fields, particularly along the frontiers, turning to weeds. Cities are left as charred and pillaged piles of rubble. So these are regions that are no longer paying taxes. As a result, the emperors need to impose ever higher taxes

on those who can pay. That in turn generates economic collapse. Economic collapse in turn generates famine. On top of that, you get cycles of plague starting to sweep in. Remember we had an episode with Karl Harper on this? Yeah. Absolutely kind of horrendous process. So it's a terrible state of affairs. And essentially, in this process of anarchy, the one key institution, the only institution that is capable of maintaining some kind of order.

It's not the Senate. It's the army. Right. Because these emperors who are rising and falling, are these generally rival commanders, basically, being elevated by their troops? Yes, by and large. And to begin with, they're from the senatorial class. But increasingly, with all the pressure that you're getting on the frontiers, the absolute kind of requirement for efficient military leadership, having some kind of amateur guy come in for a couple of years is inadequate. You need a professional officer class.

And so what happens over the course of the third century is that you get this kind of elite army corps, protectores, they are called, who start to replace the senators as people in charge of the legions and the auxiliary forces. And most of these tend to come from the Balkans. They're called Illyriki, so they're from Illyricum. And that's because these are tough, brutal guys who are not produced from the flesh pots of Italy. They are raised to fight. And they are essentially the most effective military operators in the empire. Senators hate them, of course, but more and more they are coming to run the army.

And this is the background into which Diocles, who is, you know, he's from Illyricum. This is what he's born into. And Gibbon, who, you know, his account of the decline of the Roman Empire is the great narrative account of this process, says of Diocles that his abilities were useful rather than splendid. And I guess that that sums up the whole kind of warrior caste from Illyricum. They are useful, they're not splendid. They do not have a background in Virgil. They are not able to construe Greek poetry. They do not have a knowledge of philosophy, but their abilities are very, very useful in a time of invasion and civil war.

They're kind of hardheaded military, ruthless fixers. Yes. And in a way, the paradox is that Diocles, you know, he has no real education beyond that, that his father as a scribe can give him. So he's literate, but he doesn't have the kind of the equivalent of, you know, a doctorate from Oxford or, you know, being to Stanford, that kind of level. He doesn't have that. But what he does have is a sense of himself as Roman in the traditional sense, the traditional hard, tough kind of early Republican sense, the turnip eating peasant who goes out and defeats the Samnites or the Carthaginians, that kind of thing. He's aware of that. And he's a very pious person. He feels that the dues have to be paid to the traditional gods and that perhaps the traditional dues haven't been paid. And this is why the gods are punishing the Roman people. So although he would be despised by a senator as a barbarian, he sees himself as a deeply, deeply Roman figure. And so he's very proud to serve in the Roman army. He's very good at it. He rises to the command of a squadron of troops on the Danube. And meanwhile, as he is rising up through the ranks of the army, what you are seeing is people from Illyricum not just rising to the command of legions, but becoming emperors. And they prove themselves to be excellent emperors.

So what sort of names are we talking about, Tom? So there's a guy called Claudius, who- Right. Not the Claudius. Not the Claudius who conquers Britain, but the Claudius who people who listen to our episode on St. Valentine's Day may remember that we talked about. There's a Claudius who supposedly executed a Valentine. This is the Claudius. But he's a very effective leader. He defeats an enormous Gothic invasion over the Danube.

You have a guy called Aurelian who at a time when the empire is falling apart at the seams you've got people declaring independence in gaul in the east all over the place he stitches it all back together very very effectively he's also the guy who builds the walls around rome itself yeah uh which is a real kind of measure of the time that even the even the the eternal city needs protection and then you have a guy called probus who right who as his name implies is is he goes in hard he goes in deep and uh thanks for that tom and and he he rose for about six years and he's very very militarily successful and he he he pushes back uh again anyone who dares to kind of cross the Rhine,

the Danube, the frontier with Persia. And in fact, at the end of his life, he's preparing the invasion of Mesopotamia, which is very traditional Roman behavior. Carrying the fight to the enemy. Carrying the fight to the enemy. And also he feels able to kind of reinstate a form of the the traditional constitutional order the um the the traditional relationship between the emperor and the senate so he's he's kind of feeling that he's able to inch his way back to to restoring that traditional relationship um and that may be why when he dies inevitably in a mutiny that you know this is happening all the time, the guy who follows him, a guy called Carus, I mean, he's the kind of figure who you might recognize from the second century. He's born in Gaul. He's been raised in Rome. He's a senator. His rise through the ranks, it's not just been military. He's also held civic offices. And in a way, as it will turn out out he's almost the last of a kind so he perhaps is the

last of these traditional civilian augustan figures who rises to become emperor but he's only in power for about nine months um he rushes out he takes control of the um uh the invasion that probus had been preparing of mesopotamia a bit like alexander taking over after philip is murdered and he launches an invasion of Mesopotamia. It all goes tremendously well. He captures Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sassanid Empire. The Sassanid king is very distracted by civil wars himself. Diocles goes as commander of his cavalry. The commander of the Praetorians, a man called Arius Appa is also there. All seems to be going splendidly. And then Carus dies in the summer of 283,

so nine months after he became emperor. And the story is that he got struck by lightning. Oh, that's bad luck. Gets incinerated by a lightning bolt. That's incredible bad luck, Tom. It is. And it's such incredible bad luck that inevitably people have wondered whether it really was credible. But let's say it did

happen. So Charis has two sons. One is a guy called Carinus, who is back in Rome. And the other is a guy called Numerian, very Tolkien-esque name, I think, who is there with him and with the legions. Oh, I know what happens to Numerian. But go on, tell the story. I love this story. Numerian is proclaimed kind of co-emperor with his brother, Carinus, back in Rome. And they decide to withdraw because Numerian wants to go back and make sure that he's not going to be stabbed in the back by his brother. They're marching back, very slow process back.

Numerian ends up being confined to his litter. And Arius Appa, the Praetorian prefect, says that this is because he's got bad eyes. You you know he can't wear shades the sun is very bright in his eyes so he has the desert be bad for you it wouldn't be bad for your eyes tom he has to lie in his his litter with you know kind of wet flannel over his over his eyes and they go on and on back back and back and various soldiers who approach the litter start to report an unpleasant smell coming coming from the litter and arius appa says it's absolutely nothing he's he's the emperor is very well um he's got some personal hygiene problems, but which of us hasn't?

And this is where Gibbon, ever skeptical, says, could no aromatics be found in the imperial household? And sure enough, they've reached the Bosphorus, Nicomedia, city south of what will become Constantinople on the south side. And they peep behind the curtain and there is numerian looking very very dead indeed presumably bright green by this point yes yeah he's really not looking good and there are there are two things to be decided the first is who is responsible for the for the death of numerian you know natural

cause is always he murdered and the second is who's going to replace him and there are really two candidates one is arias app of the praetorian prefect and the other is diocles the commander of the horse and they they all head off to a kind of military council at chalcedon which is just up the coast from from nicomedia and it's basically it's appa against diocles who's going to become emperor and it's diocles who wins and diocles wins by saying that appa has murdered numerian well it's a reasonable a reasonable yes but i think a bit but the the paucity of our sources and the fact that that diocles wins and is then emperor for two decades it means it's perfectly possible that perhaps he did i I mean, we don't know.

Yes, of course. But basically what happens then is that, so this is late November 284. Diocles goes back to a hill outside Nicomedia and he adopts the splendid name of Gaius Aurelius Valerius Dioclesianus. So Diocletian on this hill. He then has Appa dragged out in chains to stand behind him, tells the assembled legions that Appa is the man who killed Numerian. He draws out his sword,

stabs Appa, runs him through, and he is now emperor in the east. However, there's a problem because listeners may remember that the the unfortunate numerian had a brother that's right who is still back in rome now the reports on carinus make him sound an absolute rotter kind of up there with caligula and near well so he apparently he has a succession of wives and he gets each one pregnant and then he's so revolted by the fact that he's got them pregnant that he dumps them and moves on to another one and this is just a typical example of his disgraceful behavior that's the kind of behavior you see on the man online sidebar of shame every day though tom yes he's he so he he is on he's put in the sidebar of shame by uh diocletian's propagandists but in fact he he he

seems to have been pretty effective pretty efficient and he collects together an army he marches out from rome he he marches into the balkans he meets with uh with diocletian at a place called margus very near uh where belgrade is today and he's he's on the verge of winning the battle when he too gets assassinated oh and again chances you may wonder well you know people who come up against diocletian yeah they all they all all seem to come to grisly ends. So he's assassinated just at the moment of victory, and Diocletian becomes emperor, and he's the sole emperor. So Diocletian at this stage is how old, roughly?

About 40. And do we know anything about him in those first 40 years, other than the rise up the ranks? Not really, no. 40 years other than the rise up the ranks not really no apart from the fact that he is from this very humble background that he has no real cultural hinterland but he sees he he's a very patriotic roman he's a very devout uh in the in the kind of the sense of you know the ancient traditions of yeah of the roman city he despises oddly paradoxically that the city of rome itself so okay um he does not go to to Rome to have his powers ratified by the Senate. And clearly the reason for this is that he's rubbing the noses of the Senate in the

fact that they're obsolete. And over the course of his rule, what he will do is essentially terminate the entire Augustan settlement. and his rule will probably be the most decisive um the most influential since the time of augustus because it will end up putting the roman empire on entirely new foundations and i think we should uh we should take a break at this point that's a great cliffhanger tom very exciting an institutional cliffhanger we don't think ever enough when we come back we'll have a look at how he did it. Great. See you in a minute. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. to live tickets head to the rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com

welcome back to the rest is history we are talking about the history of croatia well croatia ish according to tom holland so we're talking about probably I mean you could argue the most famous the most influential the most important historical character to have ever come from the lands that we now know as Croatia and that is the Roman Emperor Diocletian so Tommy has just become emperor yeah all kinds of there's been lightning bolts there's been people turning green in letters all kinds kinds of stuff carry on yeah but now diocletian is the man he hates rome but he likes romanitas i suppose it's fair to say yeah wonderfully put and um he wants to well he wants to make rome great again but he's a modern he's

not just a traditionalist he's a modernizer as well is that right he's a kind of cultural traditionalist but an institutional modernizer. Nobody in Rome would characterize themselves as modernizers. You introduce radical reforms by saying that you're going back to the past. Yeah. And what Diocletian is doing is he's trying to get Rome back to its rugged military self that he sees as having been lost. But initially, his job is the job that's been confronting Roman emperors for at least 50 years, which is basically to try and stabilize what is absolute chaos. So there are barbarians crashing across the Danube. So that's what Diocletian in person, he goes to sort that off. There's also huge crisis in Gaul. There are barbarians that have crossed the Rhine,

but there are also basically, it's the Gilets Jaunes are making their first appearance in Northern Gaul. They're called the Bagaudai. They're objecting to the enormous amounts of tax that are being imposed on them. They are kind of coming out with their tractors and their yellow jackets and dumping manure in the streets of Lutetia and all that kind of stuff. So they need to be sorted out. And the other very 21st century Europe thing that's happened is that a guy called Carousius has launched Brexit. Of course he has. So he's a kind of, he's the commander of the Saxon shore forts.

So he's commanded the kind of the channel fleet. And he has declared a kind of unilateral independence. Although it's not actually a full Brexit because he sees himself as Roman as well. And he basically sees himself as an equal of Diocletian. So all of this has to be sorted out. The barbarians need to be pushed back. The Bagaudi need to be crushed. And Britannia needs to be brought back into the fabric of the Roman Empire.

And Diocletian sets about doing this very effectively in a rather novel way. So he himself campaigns in the Balkans, does it very effectively, flings them back into the wilds beyond the Danube. But he takes on a partner. So he adopts a guy called Maximian as his son and gives him the title of Caesar. Diocletian's own title is Augustus. He gives Maximian the title of Caesar. So is this the first time that happened, Tom? This is the first time that it's institutionalized. So essentially, Maximian is his partner. He is equal. And this is quite a novelty because essentially what Diocletian is saying is that he is unable to cope or anyone is unable cope, with the rule of the entire empire.

He needs an autonomous fellow emperor covering the West. He basically takes responsibility for the East. And so he appoints this guy, Maximian, to the rule of the West. And Maximian, like Diocles, is an Illyrian peasant. He's a seasoned general. He's got the kind of classic square head of the third century. Is that what people have? Balkan square heads?

Judging by the sculpture, there's a very kind of cubist trend in Roman sculpture at this point. They all have these kind of terrifying square heads and short hair, like the kind of minders that Djokovic had when he went to, when he refuses to take vaccines. The men you would expect to see outside guarding the entrance to a nightclub, turbo folk drifting down the street. Yes.

A massive German BMW outside. That kind of thing. Absolutely that kind of thing. And Maximian is a very, very effective general. He lacks Diocletian's cunning and ability to see the kind of whole, the kind of statesmanship that Diocletian comes to show. But he's an effective operator.

He goes off to Gaul. He crushes the Bagaudae. He, as Diocletian had done, pushes the barbarians back, in his case, back beyond the Rhine. And he then has to deal with Carusius, but he can't do that because he can't raise a fleet.

So it's a bit like Napoleon trying to raise a fleet, you know, to seize control of the channel. He lacks control of the shipping lanes and so he can't get his forces over to Britain. So Carusius is kind of thumbing his nose at Maximian and of course Diocletian. And so this brings home to Diocletian that maybe even more wholesale reform is needed.

So in 286, he promotes Maximian to Augustus. So there are now two Augusti. And this is kind of key innovation. Two emperors. However, at the same time, it's also not an innovation because of course the idea that power should be divided between two people is actually a primordial Roman idea going back to the consulship

because classically the Romans had two consuls and so this is kind of classic Diocletian maneuver on the one hand it's a radical innovation that there can be two Augusti on the other it's kind of back to the future you're going back to the primordial origins of the Roman Republic and the entire Roman state as people remember from our podcasts about Caesar crossing the Rubicon or indeed the downfall of Cleopatra, the idea of dividing power between two or more people is part of the great stories of Roman history, isn't it introduced. So there are all kinds of paradoxes lurking around there. And Diocletian proclaims himself to be the son of Jupiter. So he takes on the title of Jovius. You know, Jove is alternative name for Jupiter. And Maximian is cast as the son of Heracles. So he takes on the name of Hercules. So these are peasants who are now basically divine, they're semi-divine. Tom, can I just ask about their names? So Maximilian had been Caesar and then he's promoted to Augustus. So obviously there's a sense at this point that Caesar,

which was originally a name, has become a title. But is it diocletian who dreams up the fact that caesar will be junior to augustus or was there already a sense that augustus was a superior title to caesar well so caesar as you say is a family name that becomes um one that is adopted by everyone who becomes emperor yeah um so it's a name that ultimately derives from the roman aristocracy but augustus is a title that conveys an almost supernatural quality. You're midway between the earthly and the divine, midway between the mortal and the human. So to be an Augustus is better than being a Caesar. Do you not think that all British prime ministers should become a Walpole?

Yeah, that'd be quite good, wouldn't it? Yeah. Some, I think it's fair to say, Tom tom would do greater justice to the name than others yes i i mean what the equivalent of augustus would be i don't know kind of god or something god yeah so if you do very well you become god otherwise you're war pole yeah i mean that kind of idea right in fact in 292 yeah diocletian makes the system even more complicated because he he he and maximian both adopt very successful very able deputies who then take on the name of caesar and they're all emperors now so you now have four emperors so you have uh a tetrarchy four rules in greek so this has always fascinated me tom i love the Tetrarchy. I think it's just so strange.

So first of all, it comes at the end of a period in which basically emperors will be rising and falling about every two weeks or something, like British prime ministers and the present day. And it's extraordinary self-confidence on Diocletian's part to share his power with people that somebody, a lesser man, might have seen as military rivals isn't it it is and i think i think it's a reflection both on um diocletian self-confidence but also his cunning and his ability to to choose the right people so that's the key yeah he chooses people he he completely trusts but it's not just trust it's It's also people who lack the ability to rival him. So Maximian, he's a kind of solid deputy.

He's the kind of guy that a mafia boss would want at his back. But he's not smart enough. He's not imaginative enough to rule the whole empire. And do the four Tetrarchs, do they ever hold kind of board meetings altogether where they discuss policy? a guy called Galerius. So the Western Augustus and the Eastern Caesar are meeting up. The empire is kind of roughly divided up. So Constantius gets the territory beyond the Alps, so Gaul, and the responsibility for finishing off Carusius. Maximian gets Italy and Africa. Galerius gets Greece and the Balkans, and Diocletian gets italy and africa yeah um galerius gets greece and the balkans and diocletian gets the rest right yeah so diocletian keeps for himself the richest provinces basically so that's

not utterly dissimilar from the divisions that you'd seen in previous periods in roman history the basic east west kind of division i suppose it's following the fracture lines of geography so the alps is an obvious division line. The Adriatic is an obvious dividing line. Yes. And these are the fracture lines that again and again, over the course of Roman history, keep kind of splitting apart. You always want the East because the East is the richest cities,

the most urbanized, all of that stuff. Yeah. But in a way that, that, that the sense that they're getting, you know, the equivalent of provinces is,

is not entire. I mean, it's kind of true, but it's not entirely true because they are all equally emper provinces. I mean, it's kind of true, but it's not entirely true because they are all equally emperors. So there's a geographical specificity, but there's also a sense that if one of them goes to another part of the empire, they're still equally emperor. And all of them are very, very successful. So all of them, like Diocletian, are Illyrian peasants, rustic, uncultured but great they

prove to be great great servants of the empire you know they're seasoned by hardship they're seasoned by war they they do what has to be done tom are you look i i never would have guessed that you would have such a a fondness for kind of balkan warlords i'm not fond of them they're terrifying figures yeah i mean they them. They're terrifying figures. Yeah. I mean, they're brutal, terrifying figures and you would not want to run up against them. But when you're in a condition where the alternative is complete collapse and anarchy.

Yeah. I mean, it's the age old decision. What's worse, anarchy or brutal order? You know my views, Tom. I do know your views. And I think that if I was a barbarian, I wouldn't be in favor of them you know, if I was a barbarian, I wouldn't be in favour of them.

But probably if I was a guy, you know, trying to run a business in Gaul, I'd be very keen. You're on your own double-gazing company. Smack a firm government. Yeah, you need to smack a firm government. So it all goes very well. Constantius ends up retaking Britain. So there's a famous medallion in the Britishish museum the only illustration from the roman period of london where he's shown riding in on a horse

being greeted by uh cheering by the kneeling figure of londinium uh there's a rebellion in egypt which diocletian suppresses yeah and best of all and the real marker that rome is back there's a brilliant war against the Persians. I love a brilliant war. Fabulously well. Fabulously well. And in fact, it goes so well that Diocletian and Galerius, who have teamed up for this, actually managed to capture the Persian royal family.

So again, like Alexander. Alexander captures the Persian royal family. Diocletian does the same. And the Persian king is so desperate to get them back that he agrees to pretty humiliating terms so this is um a treaty signed at a place called nisibis on the uh the roman persian frontier in 299 uh and it sees the um the roman frontier massively strengthened. So this has been a source of weakness and instability for decades and decades and decades for Rome. And now it's massively, massively strengthened. And this is probably the single most important contribution that

Diocletian makes to the stability of the Roman empire. It's the shores of the East. The shores of the East. And that then enables him, gives him the breathing space to turn to the kind of reforms that no emperor has had for 60 years. The functioning of the economy, the functioning of the administration, all that kind of thing. So Diocletian's reforms are incredibly significant. And they basically provide the foundations for what will become the Byzantine Empire. So they will survive the collapse of the Roman Empire in the East, and they will provide the underpinnings for Roman provincial administration up until the coming of the Arabs in the 7th century. century so these are very very momentous obviously his focus as it's been for every emperor is the army so he he increases forces he improves fortifications so a lot of the um the most impressive roman fortifications that that survive are from this period you know they're they're

right expressive of a kind of revolutionary approach to how you defend places. And he is able to pay for this because he has simultaneously introduced a bureaucracy that is closer to that of China than the traditional Roman kind of decentralized form where you have people from senatorial backgrounds kind of rising up and employing freed men or equestrians or whatever um this is this is a a kind of a bureaucracy that obeys a um a kind of chain of command pretty much like the army well it's about to say it's a much more militarized state under the very it is so basically the whole of the Roman Empire exists to raise money, to pay troops, to defend it so that money can be raised to pay the troops. Right. So it's a military fiscal complex is perhaps the best way to put it.

A sort of self-perpetuating tax raising machine. Yes. And so from this point on, Roman emperors and their servants, they have a much heavier tread than emperors in previous generations had had. And he is a very efficient administrator. He restructures the Augustan provincial system entirely. So he divides the provinces up into much smaller units. Do you know the name of the people who are put in charge of these kind of much smaller units um it'll be very popular with with uh with a lot of the uh the more clerical wangs that we have um see yeah and they're called deacons no they're called vicars vicars so diocletian in the hour of the the empire's need, trusts the administration to vicars. To an army of vicars.

An army of vicars. But there are also larger units, which are called diocese. Oh. And Italy loses its privileges, so it becomes a kind of region much like anywhere else. So it now starts to be taxed for the first time. Quick question about Diocletian. Where does he spend most of his time? He spends most of his time in Nicomedia.

So that's Iznik in Turkey. Yes. But he's peripatetic. He kind of roams across the Balkans and across the East. He is very, very keen on people showing him the kind of respect that people show the Persian persian emperor's respect so uh he introduces this custom of proskinesis that have been a cause of of outrage to romans and to greeks for centuries and centuries alexander the great terrible trouble with this so it's this is prostration this is uh people coming into the presence of the um the emperor have to bow they have to prostrate themselves um and this is very very not what what Augustus had done. You know, the whole thing about Augustus was that he was pretending to be a senator like anyone else.

This is the absolute opposite. Diocletian is insisting that people who come into the presence of an Augustus or a Caesar show the respect that is due to him as the head of the Roman state. Does that plus the bureaucracy suggest that the Roman Empire is, for want of a better word, and I know this isn't the ideal word, being orientalised? Is it becoming more Persian? Because you mentioned China, say a Chinese-style bureaucracy. Are the Romans getting a lot of these ideas from Persia and perhaps beyond that, though they might not know it, from powers further east? I mean, I think that the custom of proskynesis does come from Persia. So to that extent, perhaps you could say yes. But I think that the fact that Diocletian ends up constructing a bureaucracy that does

parallel that in China is simply a reflection of the fact that there are only certain ways that you can order an emperor, a large empire. Yeah. Reflects the fact that there are only certain ways you can structure an empire in a pre-industrial age. And that Rome had begun as a city and a republic. And in the face of the crisis that it faces in the third century, those ancient traditions are inadequate to cope with the scale of what is required. And that is why you have this kind of this heavy tread and this obsession that Diocletian shows with basically trying to impose

order on everything. And he can only impose order if he has the military and the bureaucracy. He can say, do this, and they go off and do it in a way that simply hadn't existed before. And the measure of how keen he is to do this is that he starts to try and impose order wherever he sees chaos. So notoriously, one of the ways he does this, he's desperate to stop inflation, which is completely out of control. So he tries to stabilize the currency. He introduces gold and silver coinage um but he inflation still continues to raise and so notoriously he introduced in 301 he introduces this edict on maximum prices oh yeah which is quite uh i mean that's quite what it's quite harold wilson yes it is it's very heath it's

very ted heath harold wilson richard nixon Nixon. Richard Nixon was probably from price controls by the early 70s. So essentially, what Dark Clichon is doing, he has no understanding of economics. He looks at prices rising. He assumes the only reason for this can be that all the merchants are being greedy. And so he imposes a list. Stop it.

This is how much things have to cost, and you're not allowed to go any higher. And of course, for economic historians, it's fascinating. People love to write about this period, don't they? It gives this complete list of what prices were, what they should be. Really, really interesting. Of course, it doesn't work. It doesn't work.

But Diocletian's ambition to stabilize the currency by improving the gold content and the silver content does work. Because it's been progressively devalued, hasn hit the Roman currency although in due course the the silver standard will be abandoned the gold standard will be preserved and the gold solidus will become the basis for the Byzantine recovery in due course the other even more notorious attempt to impose order is an attempt to impose order on the dimension of the supernatural yes I thought we'd get to this so in the in the wake of the treaty of Nisibis, which he signed with the Persians, he is now able to ask the kind of theological question, why have things been going so badly?

Now that I've stabilized the eastern frontier, I can start to try and make things up to the gods who have clearly been angered. And he arrives in Antioch, which is after Rome and Alexandria, the third city in the empire in Syria. And while he's there, a Christian deacon called Romanus, he comes from Caesarea just down the coast, tries to stop sacrifices to the gods. This, for Diocletian, clarifies everything that's been going wrong. There are groups of people that have emerged who are disrespectful of the gods. This for Diocletian clarifies everything that's been going wrong. There are groups of people that have emerged who are disrespectful of the gods, who don't believe in the gods, who are scorning them. There are people called Manichaeans who are followers of a Persian

prophet called Marni. So Diocletian launches a campaign of persecution against them. But Romanus is a Christian. And so it's the Christians that become the main focus of his ambition. So Romanus himself, he has his tongue cut off. He's taken to prison. He's executed. Diocletian and Galerius, and again, you asked, do they meet up? Absolutely, they do. Diocletian and Galerius have a consultation about what they should do about the Christians. Diocletian is happy just to stop Christians from being allowed to hold office. Galerius wants to go much further. He says we should have a campaign of extermination. And Diocletian says, well, we should consult the Oracle. So they go to the Oracle of Apollo at Didymus. And Apollo says, yeah, go for it. Go for it. Go flat out. So February 303, Diocletian by this point is back in Nicomedia. There's a church that had

just been built there and he has it raised to the ground. And the following day he issues an edict against the Christians. Yeah. Notorious edict. Yeah. So by the terms of this edict, all the scriptures are destroyed. Every Christian is required to hand over their scriptures. And so the people who do this are called traditores, which means people who hand over. And so for Christians, devout Christians, these traditores are traitors. And that's where we get the word traitor from. It's from this time. So a traditor is originally someone who hands over scriptures tom that is one of the the best facts i've learned in all these all these episodes of the rest is history it's a it's a top

fact it's a great um church it's continued to be pulled down yeah and christians are banned from assembling um to worship and in the immediate wake of this this the publication of this edict there are a series of fires in the commedia uh sections of Diocletian's palace get burnt down. And Diocletian assumes that this is Christians. And in fact, he regards Nicomedia as being so unsafe that he leaves. So he sees himself basically as a target of kind of terrorism. And so he sees the persecution of Christians as a war on terror. And when Christians are captured, they are

executed very horribly. Some of them are kind of roasted over fires. And the memory of this persecution will live very, very long in the memory of the church. I mean, it still does to this day. The Diocletian persecution is remembered as absolutely the worst. Although I think the motor for it is Galerius. It's Galerius who is really, even more hostile than Diocletian. Diocletian absolutely puts his name to it. However, in the West, Maximian and Constantius,

they don't really push it through. So it's really in the East and it's the absolute worst. Do they not push it through in the West, partly because perhaps there are fewer Christians? It's not such a big deal. It's not so urban. Maybe Christianity hasn't taken off as much as it has in the East.

Is that one reason? Yes, it may be. I think also that they just don't have the kind of ideological animus. Right. That Diocletian seems to have had. And so all of this is by way, it's a radical, radical process of reform. It transforms the Roman empire utterly and permanently, but Diocletian sees himself as a traditionalist. And so in due course, in November 303,

he visits Rome for the first and last time. I mean, it's possible that he visited Rome very fleetingly in the very early months of his reign, but I think it's unlikely because he seems to have viewed this visit to Rome as being a kind of celebration of the fact that he has restored to the Roman people their traditional customs and therefore their traditional greatness because the two for Diocletian are mutually independent. And so he goes to Rome and he celebrates the 20th anniversary of his rule and a triumph that is the very last pagan triumph to be celebrated in Rome. Right.

But he hates Rome and he is appalled by what Gibbon calls the licentious familiarity of the Romans. Oh no, what are they doing to him? No. So he leaves by the end of the year. It's December, it's cold. He gets a chill and he just falls increasingly ill. He gets to Nicomedia by November the following year, makes a public appearance and then collapses. And it's feared that he's going to die, but he doesn't. But March 305, he reemerges, but he's an absolute shadow of himself. And two months later, he goes to the hill where he had been proclaimed emperor,

where he'd taken on the name of Diocletianus. And he there, for the first time, for the first time ever, he abdicates. So he's the first Roman emperor to give up the purple. Well, that's the most extraordinary detail of this story at all i think tom that he lays down his command yeah which is something that not even augustus or tiberius those first emperors had felt able or had wanted to do tiberius i think kind of did want to do it and i think if it had been an option he would have done it but he retires he doesn't he doesn't. He doesn't know.

And Tiberius says, well, you know, you can't, you're holding a wolf by its ears. When you're emperor, you're holding a wolf by its ears. And so you can't let go of those ears because if you do, the wolf will turn and savage you and rip you to pieces. But Diocletian was confident that he wouldn't be prosecuted. He wouldn't be, no one would come after him. He is. And I think that that's a reflection in his his confidence in the people that he's chosen and in his hope that just as he's instituted very clear kind of cycles of promotion for the military and for the civil service so the same thing will

happen with with um with the rulers of the roman world so galerius who had been caesar to him becomes augustus and does maximian retire at the same time? Yes. So Maximian is required to retire as Diocletian does. He doesn't like it. He doesn't want to at all. He thinks it's a ridiculous idea, but he's obliged to. Now the question is, who will succeed Galerius and Constantius as Caesar now that they've become the Augusti? Yeah, they need to choose their own deputies. And I think that they had assumed that their sons would. So the son of Constantius is a young man called Constantine.

And when Diocletian resigns the purple, Constantine is there with him on that hill outside Nicomedia. But Constantine does not become Caesar. It's a guy called Maximinus who becomes Caesar in succession to Galerius, who in turn has become the Augustus. And it's a guy called Severus in the West. So there's an inherent instability created there because the sons of the two Caesars who've now become the Augusti, what is their role?

And Constantine manages to slip away, and he goes off to join his brother Constantius, who is busy pacifying Britannia. And in due course, Constantius will die in York, and Constantine will lay claim directly to his rule with momentous consequences that I'm sure we will do an episode on we'll do episodes on on constantine however diocletian meanwhile he retires back to his homeland so he goes back to dalmatia um and he goes back to uh salona and he he builds a huge pack he's been building a huge palace there and it's it's built like a kind of fortress he grows his cabbages there yeah he famously grows cabbages yeah and maximian wants to come back. Maximian, he's retired to Southern Italy. He kind of writes

to Diocletian and says, you know, let's get the band back together. Let's get back on tour. And Diocletian says, you know, if you could see my cabbages that I've grown with my own hands, you wouldn't want to do that. And he dies in 312. And I think he's the first emperor for a very, very long time to kind of die in his own bed. And by this point, it's evident that the tetrarchal system that he set up has failed because civil war has broken out again. And in due course, Constantine will emerge as sole ruler, sole emperor. But as I say, he is very much not a failure because the framework that he provides enables the Roman Empire to survive this near-death experience. And in the fourth century, it's a ferociously strong and effective imperial entity, very, very,

very, very strong. And the palace that he has founded, so the Latin for palace is palatium. Yeah. And in due course, palatium gets shrunk to become split. So the derivation of split is the palatium of Diocletian. And it's one of the great sites. Oh, it is. Of Roman archaeology. For people who don't know, if you go to split, it's uh you know it's it's one of the great sites oh it is of roman archaeology

for people who don't know if you go to split it's right there on the waterfront it's huge i mean that the corridor the halls of the palace are now the streets of this sort of old quarter of split and they're lined with shops and restaurants and ice cream parlors and what have you but you can still see the app i mean you're absolutely the right there in the palace in the outline of the palace it's the most amazing building if you like the romans or indeed if you like balkan ice creams it's the perfect place to go so i think that's a brilliant end for the croatian tourist board and i hope that they will they will they they'll appreciate that um and uh as i, Diocletian, very, very, very significant figure in the history of Rome

and indeed in the history of Europe and the Mediterranean world more generally. So I hope you enjoyed that. I'm sure, Dominic, that we will do more on the late Roman Empire. Oh, that's fascinating, Tom. I love this period. We must absolutely do Constantine, for instance. But in the meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed that. And we will definitely be back.

We'll be back tomorrow. We'll be back the day after that. We're never going away. Never going away. We are lingering like the corpse of Numerian in his litter. That's not how I thought of this podcast, but I'll take it. Okay. Bye-bye, everybody.

See you next time. Bye-bye, everybody. See you next time. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde.

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