From Conquest to Cabbages

It is surely one of the ironies of Roman history that Diocletian, the emperor who guided Rome through one of the most turbulent periods of its history, is also an emperor about whom, relatively speaking, little is known. Lee Fratantuono has thus done students of Roman history a great service with the recent publication of his book Diocletian and the Military Restoration of Rome, which draws on sources both ancient and modern to provide a detailed, yet thoroughly engaging, account of this enigmatic emperor’s reign.

Written for scholars and general readership alike, Fratantuono’s book commences with an overview of Roman history up to the third century A.D., a period of protracted crisis and instability eerily reminiscent of the contemporary situation confronting the increasingly fraught U.S.-led liberal world order. Within the Empire, near-constant civil strife allowed one strongman after another to usurp the purple in what became known as the reign of the “barracks emperors”—a rogue’s gallery of military commanders and career soldiers who took advantage of their positions to seize power for themselves. Such internal political machinations also generated chaos beyond Rome’s borders, as hostile tribes and rival kingdoms in Europe and the Near East alike attempted to break free of Roman influence or gain territory at the weakened Empire’s expense.

Amid this tumultuous state of affairs, Diocletian was born in the border province of Dalmatia, likely near the town of Salona in what is today Croatia. According to the fourth century author Eutropius, Diocletian was either the son of a scribe or the freed slave of a Roman senator named Anullinus. Beyond these sparse details, very little is known of Diocletian’s formative years, though at some point he joined the Roman military, eventually serving as an elite cavalryman under Emperor Carus during the latter’s celebrated campaign against the Persians in 282-283. It was at the conclusion of this campaign that Diocletian would make his dramatic entrance onto the stage of history, being appointed to the imperial office by his fellow officers after Carus and his son Numerian met their untimely ends—the former after supposedly being struck by a lightning bolt, and the latter shortly thereafter at the hands of an unknown assassin. In a remarkably brief span of time, Diocletian was thus catapulted from practical obscurity to the heights of political power.

Restoring the World

After consolidating his position, Diocletian turned his attention to the numerous unresolved political and administrative issues plaguing the Empire. Doubtless the most significant development in this early period of Diocletian’s reign was the eventual formation of the tetrarchy, a novel political arrangement under which power was shared among four persons—two senior “Augustuses” and the two junior “Caesars” with whom they were paired. By 293, Rome thus had not one emperor but four, at least in theory. These were Diocletian and his “Caesar” Galerius, who managed affairs in the East, as well as Maximian and his “Caesar” Constantius Chlorus (father of the future Emperor Constantine), who were responsible for the West.

In Fratantuono’s view, the principal accomplishment of the tetrarchy lay in preventing the accumulation of too much power in the hands of any one individual, as this had proven a recurring source of conflict and internecine strife throughout the third century. Although the tetrarchy would not endure for long after Diocletian’s death, the arrangement proved instrumental in stabilizing Rome’s internal political situation at a time when the Empire seemed to teeter on the precipice. Indeed, while Diocletian has often been criticized by scholars for inaugurating a system that did not last, there is a strong argument that his willingness to share power among his colleagues extended the lifespan of the Empire well beyond what it likely would have been otherwise.

The division of the Empire into different spheres also allowed for more effective engagement with the myriad rebellions and foreign policy crises with which Rome was confronted. A notable example was the Egyptian rebellion under the would-be usurpers Lucius Domitius and Aurelius Achilleus in 297-298. Once again, the historical record is murky, though the catalyst for the uprising appears to have been a number of heavy-handed tax reforms instituted by Diocletian in the interest of standardizing civil administration throughout the Empire. For their part, the Egyptians proved significantly incensed by such bureaucratic diktat, which were perceived as an affront to Egypt’s traditional sense of autonomy. After a lengthy eight-month siege of Alexandria, Diocletian eventually emerged victorious, successfully imposing his administrative reforms on the region as well as settling a number of outstanding border disputes with neighboring tribes. Meanwhile, Galerius was dealing with the ever-present Persian threat in the East while Maximian warred with Berber raiders who were harassing Roman holdings in northern Africa. In short, the power sharing arrangement instituted by the tetrarchy not only prevented the recurrence of civil war, but also allowed for a more synchronized process of restoring order throughout the troubled Empire.

While Diocletian enjoyed considerable success on the foreign policy front, his attempts to address domestic issues were not always so fruitful. Like many on the political left as well as those in National Conservative circles today, Diocletian seemed to believe that a robust society could be manufactured from the top down through an expansion of bureaucratic apparatus and elaborate public works projects funded at taxpayer expense. While such a managerial approach is typical of the military frameworks to which Diocletian was accustomed, it often failed to yield the desired results when applied to Roman society as a whole. One example Fratantuono touches on is the Edict on Maximum Prices, an inflation control measure that “shows only a limited economic wisdom,” but which reflects the “essentially military approach to the state’s problems” so characteristic of Diocletian’s reign. In practice, the Edict proved difficult to enforce consistently, and Rome’s economic issues continued apace.

“For a servant when he reigneth…”

Diocletian’s top- down approach to governance also coincided with an increasingly autocratic style of conduct at the imperial court, which the ancient sources suggest was more befitting a Caligula or a Domitian than an Augustus or Marcus Aurelius. As Eutropius tells us, Diocletian was responsible for introducing “the form of regal habit” to the Empire, ordering that he be adored, rather than merely saluted, as had long been customary. Eutropius also criticizes Diocletian for sporting lavish displays of jewels and gemstones on his clothing, whereas before “the insignia of imperial power had been only a purple cloak, with everything else being in common with other men.” Eutropius’ account is corroborated by the fourth century historian Aurelius Victor, who takes Diocletian to task above all for allowing himself to be revered as a god. Although Aurelius Victor goes on to praise Diocletian for his other accomplishments, he concludes that those who are suddenly elevated to the heights of power and prestige often prove “the most immoderate in their ambition,” an insight as relevant to our own time as it was to Victor’s. 

The most infamous example of Diocletian’s capacity for excess was by far the Great Persecution of the Christians, a subject to which Fratantuono devotes considerable attention. Although there are accounts of Christian martyrdom throughout the period of the Tetrarchy, the years 298-299 seem to mark the beginnings of a systematic effort to root out the faith. The onset of the persecution appears to have been motivated in part by inauspicious augurs: the ancient sources suggest that pagan priests warned of trouble for Rome if the challenge posed to the ancient religion by the burgeoning Christian faith was not addressed. The spread of Christianity among the legions proved particularly problematic, as the tenets of the Christianity forbade its adherents from participating in traditional Roman cult practices honoring emperor and state. As Fratantuono observes: “Roman legionaries venerated even the standards of their unit; to refrain from cult practice because of one’s monotheistic beliefs would be seen readily enough as a threat to security.”

Despite a concerted effort on Diocletian’s part (he issued four edicts against Christians from 303-304), the attempt to suppress Christianity ended in failure. For one thing, Christianity had already spread far and wide throughout the Empire by the time of Diocletian’s reign, and the available sources suggest that at least some imperial officials (notably the Western tetrarch Constantius) were less than enthusiastic in implementing his anti-Christian measures. Moreover, Diocletian failed to heed the timeless political truth that making martyrs of men often allows the belief system or ideology they represent to gain traction. So it proved with Christianity. In less than a generation, the Christian faith would become the favored religion of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine. 

Abdication and Legacy

By 305, Diocletian was advanced in age and beset with health problems. On the Kalends of March of that year, Diocletian became the first (and only) emperor in the history of the Empire to voluntarily abdicate, retiring to a luxurious villa in what is today Split, Croatia, after roughly 20 years in power. It was during this period that one of the most famous anecdotes associated with Diocletian is alleged to have taken place. As the tetrarchic system began to break down in Diocletian’s absence and the prospect of civil war loomed over the Empire once more, we are told that numerous emissaries implored the former Emperor to resume the purple and bring matters back into accord. Refusing the offer, Diocletian said “If you could show the cabbage I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.” In an odd twist, the self-styled autocrat known for his disdain of Roman libertas suddenly seemed more akin to the legendary figure Cincinnatus, who became a republican hero when he willingly surrendered dictatorial power and returned to his life as a farmer.

Diocletian died at his villa in the year 311, sometime in the month of December. While some would claim that Diocletian took his own life in a state of despair at seeing the tetrarchy unravel amid the renewed civil wars of his successors, others maintain that his death was a serene one, brought about by natural causes. Somewhat poignantly, Fratantuono observes that Diocletian is one of those “fortunate men of history whose burial place has largely been spared the ravages of time.” Ironically, Diocletian’s grave is today the site of a Christian church that, somewhat miraculously, has remained intact despite the countless wars and conflicts that have been waged around it throughout the centuries.

What are we ultimately to make of Diocletian’s reign? While Fratantuono does not hesitate to rank Diocletian among the greatest of Roman emperors for his role in bringing the Empire back from the brink of collapse, he maintains that Diocletian was both “a dramatic success and a dramatic failure.” Perhaps the most substantial question (and it is one that Fratantuono leaves for the reader to determine) is whether Diocletian warrants the admonition of tyrant. If we take Plato’s conception of the tyrannical soul as one which is beholden to the basest elements of its own nature as our starting point, one can certainly argue that Diocletian fits the mold in certain respects. By all accounts, he was a severe man susceptible to fits of cruelty as well as the most ostentatious displays of pageantry. Writing against the backdrop of the 20th century experience of totalitarianism, however, the American mythologist Joseph Campbell, drawing on the myth of King Minos and the Minotaur, articulated a somewhat unique understanding of the tyrannical soul as the “holdfast,” or one that desperately clings to those manifestations of the ego that would better be relinquished for the sake of the greater good, whether wealth, power, or glory. In this sense, Diocletian is decidedly un-tyrannical, as he knew when it was time to walk away from the trappings of power. As Fratantuono puts it, “It is a measure of the man that for all his fondness of bejeweled robes and gemmed shoes, he was, in the end, able to resist any siren song to return to purple and power.”

Indeed, while scholars and enthusiasts of Roman antiquity will no doubt continue to debate Diocletian’s legacy, the story of his life lends itself to at least one certainty: Cicero had the right of it when he said, “if you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

Diocletian and the Military Restoration of Rome
By Lee Fratantuono
Philadelphia: Pen & Sword, 2023; 272pp.

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