The first Tetrarchy - Jovians and Herculians - The Caesars at war - The army of the Tetrarchs - The Great Persecution - Lactantius: On the Deaths of the Persecutors
With a better understanding of the Roman empire in the third century, one can approach Constantine, who fused the vigour of the Christian faith with the power of the army. Constantine exploited the traditional interaction between faith and military power, the imperial theology of victory, to construct for himself the image of ‘unconquered emperor’; he took as his patron the ‘greatest god’, whose identity was revealed to him in a vision; and later, having established his hold on power, he transformed himself from ‘unconquered emperor’, a style enjoyed by so many of his predecessors, to Christian Victor, a title unique to Constantine. His response, however, was not to the situation at the death of Aurelian, when Constantine was but an infant, but to that which prevailed in the first decade of the fourth century. At that time, the Roman empire was ruled by four emperors, two junior with the title Caesar, and two senior with the title Augustus. Together they were known as the Tetrarchs. One of these was Constantine’s father, Constantius Chlorus, a junior emperor who was subordinate to Maximian in the west. To the east, the junior emperor was Galerius, subordinate to Diocletian.
The first Tetrarchy
Diocletian, commander of the imperial bodyguard, was acclaimed emperor by his troops near Nicomedia in Bithynia (Izmit in modern Turkey), in November AD 284. He attained power in the same manner as so many of his predecessors, but he retained it in a manner no other had achieved. Through the period of crisis one of the commonest acts of a recent usurper was to seek recognition of his son as Caesar, which designated a junior emperor and heir or occasionally, as Augustus, co-emperor. Diocletian emulated this but removed the dynastic element, and hence harnessed the dynamism of new men to the new system, obviating the tendency to place teenaged puppets on the throne, such as Severus Alexander and Gordian III. He could then campaign without the fear, which every one of his predecessors had felt and to which most had succumbed, that appointing a successful general was tantamount to signing his own death warrant. If the emperor himself could not win all battles - and no man could fight on northern and eastern frontiers simultaneously - then he had better hope that his appointed general failed to win any spectacular victories.
According to a papyrus record from Egypt dated March 285, Diocletian was called Diocles upon his accession, but he took for himself the more imperial style Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus. His first act was to dispose of Aper, the Praetorian Prefect with whom he had conspired to kill Numerianus, elder son of Carus (282-3). Before May 285 Carus’ second son, Carinus, was murdered by his own troops in Moesia to avoid battle with Diocletian. Shortly after that, perhaps on 21 July 285, Diocletian took a trusted subordinate, Marcus Aurelius Maximianus, or Maximian, as his Caesar. This was not a radical departure from recent precedent. Valerian had appointed Gallienus immediately to the rank of Augustus, and more recently Carus had involved his sons in his rule, first as Caesars and later as Augusti. Countless others had tried and failed to ensure the succession of their son or sons. But Diocletian had no son, only a daughter, whom he later married to Galerius. He needed a general whom he could trust to operate in the west while he campaigned to the east, one who would not view success as an opportunity for rebellion. Early victories against the Bagaudae in Gaul saw Maximian elevated to Augustus before the end of May 286. With no higher position to which he might aspire, the second emperor remained loyal.
Soon after his appointment, Maximian entrusted a subordinate, Carausius, with the construction of a fleet to clear the seas between Gaul and Britain of pirates. Carausius was an expert sailor and was immediately successful. However, he kept much of the recovered booty for himself and was called to account by Maximian. Rather than face retribution, he rebelled and swiftly established control over north-western Gaul and southern Britain. Maximian made extensive preparations to quash the rebellion, spending a year building ships. And while thus occupied, he relied increasingly on his Praetorian Prefect to carry out the duties Diocletian had entrusted to him. The prefect, Flavius Constantius, whom we know better as Constantius Chlorus, was a popular and effective commander. He led his army as far as the Danube, capturing a barbarian king and devastating the lands of the Alemans. His success was a threat, and Maximian moved to secure his loyalty by engineering Constantius’ marriage to his daughter Theodora. Constantius embraced this arrangement at the expense of his existing union with Helena, mother of Constantine. That he proceeded to father six more children over the next decade, in between battles, suggests no lack of enthusiasm for his new, younger bride. But it also implied no derogation of Constantine, his first-born son.
Diocletian’s establishment of a Dyarchy, the rule of two emperors, was clearly an ad hoc measure to ensure that he did not suffer the fate of so many predecessors. But within a few years of his elevation Maximian had become a liability, no longer able to lead his army effectively, having failed perhaps twice to defeat Carausius. Since he could not entrust the task to Maximian, Diocletian himself struck against the northern barbarians in 288 and 289. In 290, his attention was required on the eastern frontier, and he marched the length of the empire to Syria. But shortly afterwards, he transferred his base from Nicomedia in Asia Minor to Sirmium on the Danube. This was not the situation he had anticipated in appointing Maximian, who could not now have been saved if his army desired his removal. A natural successor, Constantius, was poised to take over. But Maximian and Constantius were linked by marriage, and Diocletian had reason to worry. The emphasis placed by orators at this time on concordia, ‘harmony’, between the imperial colleagues suggests that all was not harmonious. Diocletian anticipated either that Constantius and Maximian would conspire against him, obliging him to take the field against them both; or that Constantius might raise the banner of revolt against Maximian. Recent experience reduced the likelihood that Maximian would triumph in such a clash, and his demise would oblige Diocletian to march against Constantius. A resolution was required, one which would prevent a return to the familiar cycle of military acclamation and civil war, and which would allow a concerted effort to be directed against Carausius, the latest pretender.
The senior emperor convened a summit in Milan in winter 290-1. Senators arrived from Rome to add further gravitas to the event, or at least to offer an additional veneer of legitimacy to the radical constitutional reform that was resolved. A deal was struck that Constantius was to be appointed Caesar, junior emperor, and would remain subordinate to Maximian. But Diocletian would also appoint a Caesar, and his choice was his own Praetorian Prefect, Galerius Maximianus. The elevations did not take place until 293, and the reason for the delay of two years is unknown. The years 291 and 292 are peculiarly obscure, but we can be fairly sure that the Augusti did not meet again between January 291 and spring 293. On 1 March 293, the Roman empire had for the first time four recognized emperors who had undertaken to rule as one, as a Tetrarchy.
Jovians and Herculians
By 287 the imperial colleagues had begun to use the adjectival epithets Jovius and Herculius, ‘of Jupiter’ and ‘of Hercules’. Jupiter was, of course, the father of the gods, and more specifically father of the semi-divine Hercules. Diocletian, as the Jovian, might achieve all he desired alone, but frequently relied on his Herculian subordinate Maximian to execute his wishes. This was a clever improvisation which appealed greatly to the orators charged with praising the emperors. One, named Mamertinus, offered in 289 a speech in honour of Maximian to mark Rome’s birthday, a piece which is replete with references to Hercules. It is explained that Maximian’s task is to assist Diocletian:
For just as all useful things … come to pass for us through different divinities but nevertheless flow from the supreme creators, Jupiter, ruler of the heavens, and Hercules, pacifier of the earth, so in all the most splendid exploits, even those carried out under the leadership of others, Diocletian makes the decisions, and you carry them out. It is through your good fortune, your felicitas, Emperor, that your soldiers have already reached the ocean in victory, and that already the receding waves have swallowed up the blood of enemies slain upon the shore.
The language here is familiar, within the imperial theology of victory. The junior emperor, Maximian Herculius, owed his victories to his felicitas, his divinely bestowed good fortune, and to the instructions of Diocletian Jovius, which he carried out to good effect. In fact, this last passage misrepresents the scale of Maximian’s victory, rather than merely exaggerating. The ‘ocean’ in question is today’s English Channel, and the blood is that of the soldiers of the rebel Carausius, whom Maximian could not defeat and whose successes provoked the elevation of the Caesars. By that innovation, the symmetry of the ‘divine’ relationship between Diocletian-Jupiter and Maximian-Hercules was destroyed. This, of course, presented no problems to orators, who saw the manifest opportunities to praise the new arrangement for its arithmetic. One, speaking in 297, observed:
in addition to the concerns and interests of the state, that kindred majesty of Jupiter and Hercules also required a similarity between the entire world and heavenly affairs in the shape of Jovian and Herculian rulers. For indeed all the most important things depend upon and rejoice in the number of your divinity, for there are four elements and as many seasons of the year, the world divided fourfold by a double ocean, the orbits of heavenly bodies (lustra) which return after four revolutions of the sky, the Sun’s team of four horses, and Vesper and Lucifer added to the two lamps of the sky.
Constantius, although the senior of the two Caesars, was formally adopted into the junior Herculian line. Galerius was adopted into the senior Jovian line and married to Diocletian’s daughter, but he was the junior Caesar and hence the most junior of all four emperors. The situation was complicated further when the Caesars took patron gods of their own, with Constantius favouring Mars, popular in the west, and Galerius venerating the eastern favourite Sol Invictus. More troubling than this tinkering with the pantheon was the fact that Maximian, unlike Diocletian, had a son who was effectively sidelined by the convention. Maxentius was then still a youth, a little younger than Constantine. But there were evidently still hopes that he might one day succeed, and some time later Maxentius was married to the daughter of Galerius. Constantine similarly became a pawn in the great game, despatched to the east with Diocletian and Galerius, a potent incentive to Constantius to remain loyal and a reminder that the rhetorical unity of the Tetrarchs required serious underpinnings.
The harmony between the four emperors is illustrated by a porphyry statue, carved from the purple marble quarried only in Egypt, which has survived as plunder taken from Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. It is now located in the south-east corner of the southern facade of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice (fig. 15). Four emperors are depicted, each clasping the eagle-headed hilt of his sword with his left hand and the shoulder of a fellow emperor with his right. This requires that one of each pair lean across his partner, affecting a manly embrace. The embracer in each pair sports a beard of light stubble, and he is slightly taller than the embraced. Only these marks of maturity and stature distinguish the Augusti from their Caesars, for in all other ways the men are identical. Their facial features are the same, as are their military costumes. One of the Caesars has lost his left foot, presumably when he was ripped from his base in Constantinople in 1204. All Tetrarchs have both feet, and indeed short beards, in a second set of porphyry pairs, now held in the Vatican (fig. 16, illustrating two). Instead of hilts, they hold in their left hands orbs, imperial insignia symbolizing earthly dominion. Once again the embracer in each pairing must be considered the Augustus, for his eyes are slightly higher than those of his Caesar. All look upwards, like so many heavenwards-gazing Alexanders (see below, p. 207), but with the close-cropped hair and angular, masculine chins of soldiers. Their squat legs and powerful, oversized arms convey strength abstractly.
The porphyry statues reflect an ideal of concord and co-operation that certainly did not exist between the Tetrarchs. The emperors were rarely together, perhaps only once and briefly in two decades. They all travelled constantly, spending summers in military compounds and winters in various provincial capitals. Edicts, imperial pronouncements, issued by each emperor were held to have effect throughout the empire, but rarely were they enforced universally. Each emperor was largely autonomous in his own territory, and although there was no absolute schematic division of imperial territories in 293, each of the four emperors went back to where he was most needed and where his personal authority was established. These regions were, roughly and in modern terms: Maximian in Italy, Spain and North Africa (Tunisia and Algeria); Constantius in northern France and the Benelux countries, southern France and Britain; Diocletian in eastern Turkey, Palestine and Syria, and Egypt; and Galerius in western Turkey, the Balkans, and Austria-Hungary (see map 2).
The porphyry statues also, in their abstract and blockish manner, convey an ideal of haughty power to which the emperors aspired, jointly and individually. Increasingly through the third century, as we have seen, emperors had drawn parallels between themselves and the gods, and as emperors were shown with divine attributes, so gods were portrayed in imperial dress or military costume. But Diocletian took this a stage further, seeking to elevate himself above those who, like him, might aspire to ultimate power. For a man of such humble birth, interposing distance between himself and those who would challenge his authority was not simple, as the author Aurelius Victor observed, but it could be achieved with silks and gems and titles:
He [Diocletian] was a great man, yet he had the following characteristics: he was, in fact, the first who really desired a supply of silk, purple and gems for his sandals, together with a gold-brocaded robe. Although these things went beyond good taste and betrayed a vain and haughty disposition, they were nevertheless trivial compared to the rest. For he was the first of all after Caligula and Domitian to permit himself to be called ‘Lord’ in public and to be worshipped and addressed as a god.
Aurelius Victor ascribed the new style to Diocletian’s low birth, but in that he was hardly unique. Indeed, after the Severans, all third-century emperors were equestrians, not senators, and many shared the author’s given name, Aurelius, which was given to all new citizens without an established family upon the extension of citizenship by the Antonine Constitution of 212. This was formalized upon recruitment into the army, when a full name was required for the rolls. One might recall that Constantine’s chosen forebear was Marcus Aurelius Claudius (Claudius Gothicus), who was replaced by Marcus Aurelius Aurelianus (Aurelian), who a decade before Diocletian permitted himself to be called ‘Lord and god’, dominus et deus. Still, the point is well taken that Diocletian greatly elaborated imperial ceremonial, establishing a distance between emperor and subject that could only be crossed, figuratively and literally, with the assistance of his court eunuchs, employed for the first time in numbers by the imperial household in emulation of the Persians. He greeted visitors in immense reception halls, where his elevated throne would tower above all else. Yet still the minion would be required to offer the emperor his obeisance in a low bow, and only the most eminent would be permitted to kiss the bejewelled sandal. Constantine would later emulate this scheme in all its parts at his court at Constantinople.
A new imperial architecture emerged as the backdrop to this elaboration of ceremonial. Huge basilicas were constructed in each imperial city to serve as reception halls of the god-emperors, one of which still stands, rebuilt at Trier. The eyes of a visitor now are cast up towards the ceiling of the tall chamber, but then none were permitted to meet the gaze of the emperor, which in any case would itself be upwards, in commune with a divine patron. And divine patronage was needed, as ever, most urgently on the field of battle.
The Caesars at war
Immediately upon his elevation as Caesar, Constantius set to his assigned task of crushing Carausius. In 293, he drove the rebel out of northwestern Gaul, to Britain. This was no mean feat, as Carausius had widespread support and wealth at his disposal. He was the only man claiming the title emperor who at that time was able to mint coins in silver. These expressed his claim to rule alongside Diocletian and Maximian, whose heads were shown behind his own. The defeat led to Carausius’ murder by his deputy, Allectus, who strengthened the walls of the British shore castles in anticipation of an assault. Constantius turned to the Rhine frontier, before settling affairs with Allectus in 296. The campaign to recover Britain is well covered in a panegyrical oration delivered in 297, and from this we learn that Constantius was himself still at sea, adrift in the mists of the English Channel, when the initial victory was won by his Praetorian Prefect, Asclepiodotus. The orator does his best to obscure this fact, which would have been well known to all his listeners, mentioning neither Asclepiodotus’ name nor his title, and he does so within the traditional framework of the imperial theology of victory. Hence, the success is attributed directly to Constantius’ felicitas and to his demonstration of virtus in setting off first from Boulogne (although he failed to reach the shore opposite). Constantius’ subsequent triumphal arrival at London is praised most highly. The event is also commemorated on a celebrated medallion, found at Arras in 1922 (fig. 17), which shows on its reverse a woman, representing the city of London, kneeling before the emperor, her back to her fortified gates, her hands raised in supplication and thanks to the mounted warrior. He appears to float, larger than life, above the river Thames, on which a warship rests at anchor, having delivered the city and the province back to Rome. In this way, as an inscription hails, Constantius had become the ‘Restorer of the Eternal Light’ of Rome. But the victory was not his alone. The Caesar shared his success with his three colleagues, and all took the cognomen Britannicus Maximus. Later they would also take Persicus Maximus, to mark the victory over the Persians, in which campaigns Constantine cut his military teeth.
Constantine was not with his father in Britain but had been despatched to the east and put to work in the army, learning the skills that would earn him the respect and loyalty of his troops in later years. When Constantius became Caesar, Constantine achieved the rank of military tribune, and a later tale has the young officer offered the insignia of his new status by Fausta, daughter of the emperor Maximian, who would later become Constantine’s wife. Constantine spent the period after 293 between the eastern frontier in battle with the Persians and the Danube frontier fighting the Sarmatians. There are no contemporary representations of Constantine’s youthful exploits - we may dismiss a suggestion that he is depicted alongside Galerius’ rearing horse in the battle scene on the Arch of Galerius, to be discussed shortly - but we know that he played a role in Galerius’ campaigns and that this was later held to be heroic. According to the Origo Constantini:
When Constantine, then a young man, was serving in the cavalry against the Sarmatians, he seized by the hair and carried off a fierce savage, and threw him at the feet of the emperor Galerius. Then sent through a swamp by Galerius, he entered it on his horse and made a way for the rest to the Sarmatians, of whom he slew many and won the victory for Galerius.
This took place in 299 and thus was the fourth such victory over the Sarmatians during Diocletian’s reign. The four Tetrarchs each took the title Sarmaticus Maximus IV alongside Persicus Maximus II, which Galerius had secured for them all by a major victory in 299. Constantine certainly fought in Galerius’ campaigns against the Persians, which initially went poorly. The Romans lost the Battle of Carrhae (modern Harran, in eastern Turkey) in 296, but Galerius returned in full force in 298, marching as far as the walls of the Persian capital Ctesiphon. Constantine would later recall this campaign in his Oration to the Saints, when he had seen the ruins of Memphis and Babylon.
The Romans entered Ctesiphon, one hundred years after Septimius Severus had done the same. The campaign was celebrated in stone on an arch erected in Galerius’ honour in Salonica (or Thessaloniki, in Greece), his base between C.AD 298 and 303 (fig. 18). The friezes include, on the north-east side, a representation of the victorious battle, where Galerius is depicted in a pose rather similar to that of the emperor on the Ludovisi Sarcophagus (figs. 11, 19). Although his head has been defaced, it is clear that he, unlike his men or his foes, wears no helmet. His horse is rearing up, trampling a Persian, who is trying to unsheathe his sword, even as the emperor engages the mounted Sassanian ruler, Narses, son of Shapur I. This is an entirely fictive image of single combat, intended to personalize the victory of the unconquerable emperor. On the frieze immediately beneath this, the four emperors are depicted together, the two Augusti enthroned, their Caesars standing beside them (fig. 20). Their faces are missing, but Diocletian is sitting to the right of Maximian (to the left as we look at it), with Galerius standing beside him. Constantius stands at Maximian’s left hand. Victoria offers the Augusti laurel wreaths, and Fortunes hold trophies, as the emperors elevate personifications of the liberated provinces of Syria and Britain. Beneath the feet of the Augusti and beside their subordinates, we see images of deities of the earth and ocean, demonstrating the power of four as it had been described by the panegyrist of 297. Beneath this is a badly abraded line of seven Victorias, each bearing an illegible symbol and together offering an intriguing suggestion that Galerius’ devotion to Mithraism and its seven spheres is here illustrated. One recalls that his patron deity was Sol Invictus and wonders whether overt references to personal beliefs were to be suppressed in favour of the common gods of the Tetrarchs. Thus, on the south-east side of the arch, Diocletian and Galerius are depicted together, offering a victory sacrifice at Antioch to the patron gods of the Tetrarchy, Jupiter and Hercules, who are depicted frontally enthroned on the altar, although Galerius was not a Herculian but rather the junior Jovian emperor (fig. 21). The victory over Persia, the greatest a Roman had enjoyed for a century, rendered the juniority of Galerius moot.
The army of the Tetrarchs
The Tetrarchs were all soldiers, emperors by dint of their ability to lead men and of their success in war. Diocletian, Maximian and Constantius had all served as Protectors (protectores), to which position only the most capable of soldiers were promoted from all other units. Protectors served many functions, for example rounding up the sons of veterans for enrolment in the legions, but in times of war they were to be found with the emperor. Gallienus had established a cavalry corps of Protectors which accompanied him always, reacting swiftly to military needs across the empire. During Diocletian’s reign, and perhaps before, one notes a further development in the structure and stature of the Protectors. A corps had been established, which was known simply as his ‘retinue’ (comitatus), but which later took the title Domestics (domestici), meaning defenders of the imperial household. The role of guarding the emperor had traditionally fallen to the Praetorian Guard, which had failed to protect a good number of third-century emperors, including Maximinus Thrax in 238. Commanders of the Praetorian Guard, Praetorian Prefects, had benefited from proximity to the emperor by elevation to the throne, for example Macrinus in 217 and Philip the Arab in 244. The retinue of Protectors, therefore, was formed in no small part to protect the emperor from the Praetorians, although Diocletian had himself failed in that task when he had commanded the Protectors attending the emperor Carus and his sons Carinus and Numerianus. He played a role in all of their deaths, and immediately afterwards slew his principal competitor for elevation, the Praetorian Prefect Aper. The Praetorian Guard henceforth enjoyed a far less privileged position, many of its cohorts rarely leaving Rome and thus rarely seeing emperors. Diocletian and Galerius both considered disbanding the Guard, resenting having to pay the elevated stipends and donatives demanded by the Praetorians (half as much again as for regular troops), and anticipating that it would be an unstable force of uncertain loyalty in the city. This proved to be the case, as we shall see.
The Tetrarchs, as soldiers, devoted particular attention to reforming the military. Lactantius, a Christian author to whom we shall turn in detail shortly, claims that they quadrupled the size of the army, each emperor competing to lead the largest force. He wilfully misrepresents the situation, but his claim has some foundation in fact: there were many more units, but not as many more troops as this might suggest. John Lydus, writing in the sixth century, states with disconcerting precision that Diocletian maintained an army of 389,704 and a navy of 45,562. If he is broadly accurate, then around AD 300 it would have required 20,000 new recruits each year to maintain the fighting strength of the army, to replace those lost to discharge, disability and death. Diocletian introduced conscription, formalizing the custom that sons of veterans were obliged to serve. But this could not rapidly produce battle-ready troops, and consequently some established legions were broken into two, with the new units distinguished as senior and junior. The junior legion comprised largely new recruits, bolstered and commanded by a cadre of distinguished troops from the original legion, which formed its first cohort. The senior legion was depleted, but all legions now comprised fewer than the regulation 5500 men.
In addition, new elite infantry legions were formed bearing the telltale names Joviani and Herculiani. Once again, the best men were drawn from established legions, which would have remained understrength. If these new legions were attached at first to Diocletian and Maximian in turn - and certainly Diocletian travelled with the first Jovian legion in his retinue - soon they were serving where needed. Legionaries bearing the mark of a Herculian legion - Hercules bearing his club - can clearly be seen on the Arch of Galerius, participating in the Jovian Caesar’s Persian campaign (fig. 22). When additional manpower was needed for expeditions, ad hoc groupings known as vexillations were formed by drawing men from several units. It was logistically simpler to move some from several places, rather than all from a few camps, which might then prove to be vulnerable to attack. The newer recruits, or those who had proved less able, would be left behind as garrisons. Vexillations were commanded by tribunes, the rank held by Constantine.
Although many young Romans were conscripted into the legions, the bulk of new troops recruited by the Tetrarchs were ‘barbarians’, who formed new auxiliary units. Many were recruited from peoples settled along Roman frontiers, or from peoples against whom the Tetrarchs won victories. The auxiliary unit known as the Regii was formed by Constantius in 298 from a group of Alemans who had been trapped on an island in the frozen river Rhine. They joined his army as a group and served under their own king, Crocus (hence their name, meaning ‘of the king’). Crocus and the Regii would serve a crucial role in the elevation of Constantine. The unit of Regii was paired with that of the Batavi, probably raised at the same time from among the Franks settled next to the Rhine. The purpose of pairing was to maintain unit morale and promote excellence through competition, and this was achieved very well by trading on established rivalries. One month the Batavi might have been fighting off Aleman raiders, the next fighting beside them against their kinsmen. The Cornuti and Bracchiati were similarly recruited from among the Franks at this time, fighting together but distinguished by their eponymous horned helmets and armbands.
There were clear precedents for the formation of imperial units from recently conquered barbarians. Aurelian had used two thousand Vandals vanquished in 271 and bound to him by a treaty as a guard unit. But the Regii and Batavi and the Cornuti and Bracchiati were permanent palatine units (auxilia palatina), bolstering the imperial bodyguard. They provided additional security for the emperors, for as barbarians their leaders would never have been accepted as alternative rulers by the rest of the army. Moreover, the kings owed their loyalty to the emperor himself, and not to a series of intermediate officers under whom they may have served or by whom they may have been promoted. Just as Byzantine emperors in later centuries would surround themselves with fierce Anglo-Saxons and Rus, the Varangian Guard, so Constantius Chlorus, and following him Constantine, were accompanied by the barbarian auxilia palatina.
Providing for a vast and growing army was a complex task, which has been elucidated by a cache of papyri discovered at Panopolis, near Ptolemais, in Egypt. The task was made considerably harder by galloping inflation in the last decades of the third century. Diocletian attempted, piecemeal, to re-establish some sense of order, starting with currency reform as early as 293-4. Gold coins were struck, and a new silver coin of high value, the argenteus, was issued thereafter from new mints that were placed in provincial cities under the direct control of the Augusti and Caesars. However, despite these attempts to restore confidence in the currency and to ensure its widespread circulation, the state economy continued to falter. High-grade coins were withdrawn from circulation and hoarded by those fortunate enough to receive them, and silver did not make its way back to the centre, where it was needed to finance the essential functions of government.
Diocletian’s administrative reforms allowed closer regulation of taxation, and consequently imposed a heavier tax burden across the empire. For this he was condemned by several authors. But the reforms stuck. More and smaller provinces were created from older, unwieldy units, and civilian and military matters were entrusted to different bureaux. Provincial governors, no longer soldiers, answered to ‘vicars’ who oversaw the administration of groups of provinces, or ‘dioceses’ (see map 3). Each vicar answered to his regional Praetorian Prefect, no longer the commander of the Praetorian Guard but rather the deputy of each Tetrarch and head of his civil service. Indeed, the creation of Praetorian Prefectures seems to have been intended in large part to allow the emperors to concentrate on their main task: commanding the armies. These developments were modified over the following decades, and we shall return to them in chapter 10, in addressing Constantine’s administration.
Several attempts were made to institute a regular fifteen-year tax cycle, known as the indiction, which would prevail through the Byzantine period. But sufficient funds were still not reaching the imperial coffers, and rather than once again raise the overall tax burden on his subjects, Diocletian determined to recalibrate the relative value of the coinage and to fix prices for essential goods and services. In September 301 an edict was issued that doubled the value of the high-grade silver coin, the argenteus, from 50 to 100 copper coins, denarii. Thus the purchasing power of the state, which collected taxes in silver, was instantly doubled. Two months later, in November 301, an attempt was made to impose maximum prices, in an edict posted throughout the eastern provinces, where it has survived in more than forty inscriptions. Indeed, Diocletian’s edict of maximum prices is the best-attested epigraphical document of antiquity.
The prices of more than thirty items, including wheat, barley, lentils and beans, were fixed according to the measure employed by military quartermasters: the army modius. That amount of grain or pulses would feed an eight-man contubernium, the army’s smallest unit, for one day, providing about a dry litre per person. The daily grain allowance, the frumentum, was supplemented by the cibaria, including meat and drink. But not all items monitored were on a soldier’s or quartermaster’s daily shopping list. Thus, in the edict slabs of pork and beef were distinguished from best fig-fed pig’s liver (16 denarii per pound) and smoked Lucanian beef sausage (10 denarii per pound), or still more expensive items like dormice (40 denarii for ten) and peahens (200 denarii each). Salaries were also capped for those who might provide services to the military. Thus, a camel-driver or ass-driver was to be paid no more than 25 denarii a day, whereas a shipwright for seagoing vessels might command 60 denarii (and consequently take home 10 thrushes for his wife or concubine to roast). Other craftsmen were unlikely regularly to have been required in a camp, where many could as easily wield a brush as a sword. However, the price edict specified that a wall painter could expect only half as much as a figure painter, whose 150 denarii would buy him one whole hare.
The state was to be the only real beneficiary of the new strictures. Small-holders and hunters, who transported their wares to market, treated currency largely as a unit of account, needing coin only to pay taxes, and even that burden might frequently be commuted. Thus, most in the wider economy were unaffected by the dearth of coin in circulation and by the inflated price of an army modius of wheat or brace of hares. They could barter one for the other. The soldier did not enjoy this luxury, for he was paid in coin. This was apparent to the emperor, who condemned inflation as the result of profiteering. The preamble to the edict of maximum prices explains that Diocletian was most troubled that a soldier ‘is deprived of his donative and salary in the transaction of a single exchange, and that the whole world’s entire tax contributions for the maintenance of armies are spent on the profits of thieves’. Price-fixing was, of course, no solution, since those who would police the system, the municipal councils and local potentates, were the very men who would benefit from higher prices and laxer controls. Arriving at a place where the edict was enforced, a seller might simply take his wares to another where it was not.
Pay and conditions had traditionally made life in the army attractive, but this was no longer the case at a time when recruitment targets had risen. An Egyptian papyrus of 299-300 reveals that legionaries and cavalry troopers received an annual stipend of 600 denarii, paid in three instalments. Auxiliary troops had always received less than legionaries, but this shortfall was offset by an additional allowance of 200 denarii for rations. At these rates, even if the price edict had been enforced, a soldier would have been paid in a year what a wall mosaicist made in ten days, or a carpenter in twelve. But this was but a fraction of a soldier’s annual pay, as a far greater proportion was now paid in donatives, lump-sum payments associated with celebrations in the ritual calendar marking the birthday and accession day of each emperor. As there were now four emperors, donatives were paid four times as frequently. A distinction was drawn between Augusti and Caesars, but which emperor one served directly did not affect the size of one’s donative. Hence, a legionary could expect to receive 1250 denarii for each celebration of an Augustus, and 625 for that of a Caesar, although since the junior emperors were elevated together, on 31 March 293, the donative would be 1250 denarii on that day also. An auxiliary soldier was far less privileged, receiving only 250 denarii for celebrations of the Augusti and 125 for those of the Caesars. In times of financial crisis, the fact that barbarians were willing to accept far less to serve in the army explains a great deal of their attraction to the Tetrarchs.
The Great Persecution
In the years after the Persian victory, Diocletian found himself with no military campaign to lead, nor one to plan. In 299 he had swapped stations with his victorious junior, shuttling between Antioch in Syria and Nicomedia in Bithynia. Galerius moved to Salonica, to live in the shadow of his arch. The Caesar had attained such prestige by his victory over Narses that he eclipsed the Augustus; clearly Jupiter was working through Diocletian’s subordinate, to the credit of both, but to the greater glory of the younger man. While Galerius ensured order at the Danube frontier, Diocletian toured the eastern provinces of the empire he had ruled for two decades, now at peace. He was no longer young, and his attention had been fixed for some time on the type of empire he would leave behind. Unable to tame the economy, Diocletian turned his controlling urges to the state’s moral and spiritual health, promoting a fictive return to traditional Roman values. Thus, in 295, an edict issued in Damascus specified that Roman laws of marriage were valid everywhere, and any unions contracted under other conventions were not only void but ‘like the lustful promiscuity of cattle or wild animals’. Conformity with Diocletian’s notion of romanitas, ‘Roman-ness’, was to be ensured in the face of regional and local variation even at the cost of social cohesion.
The Augustus had only a poor, perhaps no, knowledge of Greek, the language spoken by citizens of his capital at Nicomedia and the lingua franca throughout the eastern provinces that he regularly toured. His Illyrian peasant upbringing and decades in the army camps made Latin his preferred tongue, and seeking to make a virtue of his shortcoming he made the revival of Latin a core element in his programme of cultural renewal. It had never been un-Roman to speak Greek, which was the core of a rounded education. But now all official business was to be conducted and recorded in Latin, even where all parties spoke Greek. The new emphasis on Latin was not to appear anti-intellectual: professors of Latin were appointed in the imperial capitals, and it is due largely to this revival that such a variety of Latin panegyrical material has survived, to elucidate the otherwise opaque decades of the Tetrarchy.
Mamertinus and Eumenius composed and delivered eloquent Latin orations in the major cities of Gaul: Trier, Arles and Autun. And in Nicomedia, Lactantius, a North African professor of Latin rhetoric, rubbed shoulders with the administrator-cum-polemicist Sossianus Hierocles and the philosopher Porphyry. These last two men are often held up as the intellectual architects of a revived attack on Christians, which was so vicious and protracted that it became known as the Great Persecution.
Living in the east and moving constantly through the provinces, Diocletian became increasingly intolerant of religious differences. He was no longer willing to countenance claims by Christians, like Origen, that they prayed in their own way for his well-being. Their forms of worship, their ways of being Roman, clashed with his own limited conception of romanitas. Riding beside Diocletian on a protracted trip through Egypt and Syria in 301-2 was the military tribune Constantine, who observed the aging emperor’s consternation at the antics of adherents of various religious sects. In March 302, a letter was despatched from Alexandria, where Diocletian had recently arrived, to Julianus, the proconsul of Africa, instructing him that: ‘Excessive leisure sometimes provokes ill-suited people to cross natural limits and encourages them to introduce false and outrageous forms of superstitious doctrine … No new belief should criticize the religion of old.’ The targets for this rescript, whose new religion challenged the old, were Manichaeans, followers of Mani, whose practices and popularity Diocletian had observed with disgust. He found their religion to be too ‘Persian’, which is somewhat ironic, for just a few years earlier the followers of Mani had been persecuted in Persia for not being Persian enough. The Persians similarly persecuted Buddhists, Jews and Christians. In Diocletian’s Roman empire there were few, if any, Buddhists, and the Jews had long enjoyed the right to pray to their own god for the good of the emperor and the state. The Christians, however, had never enjoyed that right, and their observances, accepted since the reign of Gallienus, once more came under scrutiny.
The Manichaean precedent should have given Christian leaders pause: those who would not relinquish their scriptures were to be burnt with them; and those whose status allowed them greater leniency were to spend the rest of their lives in the slave mines. But still they provoked the Augustus. In Antioch in the autumn of 302 a Christian deacon from Caesarea Maritima named Romanus disrupted the religious observances that preceded court proceedings. Diocletian ordered him gaoled and his tongue removed. He was killed a year later. This was perhaps still fresh in his memory when, late in 302, Diocletian travelled from Antioch, Constantine still at his side, to spend the winter in Nicomedia. There both Sossianus Hierocles and Porphyry delivered lectures to the court on a subject that chimed well with Diocletian’s sentiments. Sossianus, like Pliny two centuries earlier, was a governor of Bithynia faced with a familiar problem: the unwillingness of Christians to sacrifice. He observed that followers of Christ had been duped into believing he was a god by the miracles he had performed. But had not Apollonius of Tyana performed yet greater miracles at the same time? Had he not forbidden gossip that he was divine? Did Apollonius not urge his followers to see him, in his piety and asceticism, merely as a channel for divine grace? And did he not urge them all to continue to sacrifice? Sossianus’ message was simple and clear, and he would later apply it practically, torturing a dissident Christian bishop whose name, Donatus, would come to bear greater meaning during the so-called Donatist schism.
More complex commentary was offered by Porphyry, the philosopher, who averred that respect for Jesus was compatible with traditional religion. Oracular pronouncements of Apollo and Hecate had affirmed the wisdom of Jesus, but equally had shown that he was a spiritual guide, not a god. Christians, Porphyry held, deserved pity and instruction, so that their error would become clear. But those who persisted in worshipping Jesus as a god merited punishment. Porphyry did not set out an unequivocal case for persecution, and the notion that his agenda mirrored Diocletian’s deserves critical scrutiny. His observation that Christians were wrong to believe that a soul united to a body (i.e. Christ) could be worshipped could equally be aimed at those who venerated the emperor. The line between the Augustus and his numen was ever blurry, and never more so than during the reign of the heavenward-gazing Tetrarchs. Furthermore, the philosopher had recently written a treatise condemning sacrifice, On Abstinence from Killing Animals. Although he did not seek to bind those in public or active life, including soldiers and sailors, to vegetarianism, he recommended it to intellectuals. He quoted a story of Apollonius of Tyana, who claimed to have been told a story by a swallow, and of a friend ‘who used to tell how he was fortunate to have a slave boy who understood the speech of birds. Everything they said was a prophecy announcing what would soon come to pass. But he lost his ability to comprehend when his mother, fearing that he would be sent to the emperor as a gift, pissed in his ear.’ The emperor would likely have welcomed such a gifted boy, for he revelled in oracles, but he held sacrifice above all else, and here his views were far from consonant with Porphyry’s intellectual agenda. Sacrifice was the core of state religio, and correct observation was a foundation of Diocletian’s reactionary project.
Years before Porphyry spoke at court, Diocletian had set his stall against those on his palace staff who would not sacrifice. According to Lactantius:
Diocletian’s anxious disposition made him an investigator of future events; and while he was busy in the east, he was once sacrificing cattle and looking in their entrails for what was going to happen, when certain of his attendants who knew the Lord [i.e. Christians, like Lactantius] and were present at the sacrifice placed the immortal sign on their foreheads; at this the demons were put to flight and the rites thrown into confusion. The diviners began to get agitated at not seeing the usual marks on the entrails, and as if they had not made the offering, they repeated the sacrifice several times. But the slaughter of victim after victim still revealed nothing; and finally their Tagis, the chief of the diviners, said that the reason why the sacrifices were not yielding an answer was the presence of profane persons at the rites. Diocletian then flew into a rage; he ordered that not only those who were attending the rites but all who were in the palace should sacrifice, and any who declined should be punished by scourging. He also sent letters to commanders ordering that soldiers too should be compelled to perform the abominable sacrifices, and that any who disobeyed should be discharged. But this was as far as his anger went: he did nothing further against the law and religion of God.
It is noteworthy that Diocletian began not by persecuting but by purging Christians from his immediate staff and from the army, both directly under his control. The decision taken at Nicomedia in spring 303 was far more stringent. When the Augustus and his eastern Caesar, Galerius, met, they considered ways to oblige all to participate once again in state religio and to reduce the influence of certain Semitic cults. Constantine was still with the Augustus at this time, and one must conjecture, therefore, that he participated in the deliberations. Later apologists would assign the greater part of the blame, however, to Galerius, who is the villain of Lactantius’ account. From him we learn the details of the first edict of persecution, issued on 24 February 303. One day earlier, on the festival of the Terminalia, the termination of Christian worship commenced. The pun is Lactantius’, who records the destruction of the Christian church at Nicomedia, which could be seen from the imperial palace, by gangs armed with tools and weapons.
The first edict of persecution has survived only in Lactantius’ account, but it is fairly certain that it ordered the destruction of churches and of scripture, the loss of rights and status by Christians, and the use of sacrifice as a test. Among the more revealing asides is that Diocletian obliged his daughter Valeria and his wife Prisca ‘to be polluted by sacrifice’, strongly suggesting that they were Christians. Universal sacrifice was not, however, mandated, nor was death prescribed for Christians in particular. It was unnecessary, since the regular penalties for resisting an imperial edict included torture and death, and that was the fate of some who refused to hand over Christian books. Therefore, for the first time in half a century, we hear of Christian martyrs, for example Felix, bishop of Tibiuca in Africa. A second edict of persecution was issued, later in 303, ordering the imprisonment of all Christian clergy. The tightening of the screw may be related to the fires set in the imperial palace at Nicomedia, blamed on Christians but which Lactantius claims were Galerius’ handiwork. A third edict gave gaoled clergy the opportunity to apostatize and earn release, thus losing authority over their communities and breaking down hierarchies of resistance. Indeed, the rapid issue of a general pardon, providing for the release of all held in imperial prisons to celebrate Diocletian’s twentieth year in power, must have sown confusion in many communities, obliging them to ask: was our priest released in the general pardon, or was he an apostate? The third edict, therefore, may be considered a device intended merely to facilitate rumour-mongering. However, a fourth edict marked a return to the full persecution of the reigns of Decius and Valerian, moving from efforts to decapitate communities to attacks on individual Christians of every social status. All citizens were ordered to sacrifice before official witnesses. Those who refused were first tortured and then burnt.
Lactantius: On the Deaths of the Persecutors
Exactly why Diocletian determined to reinstitute the persecution of Christians has generated much debate, starting with the observations of the contemporary Christian writer Lactantius, who fled the persecution in Nicomedia to settle in the lands ruled by Constantius. Lactantius wrote On the Deaths of the Persecutors in 314-15, shortly after the Great Persecution had come to an end. His hero, therefore, is the man who brought an end to persecution: Constantine. Lactantius was in no doubt that the chief instigator was Galerius, the bull-necked son of a priestess. But the meeting at which Diocletian is alleged to have been persuaded by his junior took place behind closed doors, and the most Lactantius could have heard was rumour. Still, he wished to attribute the greatest crimes to the man who suffered most and whom Constantine grew to hate. Galerius died painfully shortly after rescinding the order of persecution, possibly of cancer, if we are to trust Lactantius’ description which draws heavily on the biblical demise of Antiochus. Galerius, like Decius and Valerian, suffered divine retribution, whereas Diocletian, with whom Constantine had spent some important, perhaps happy, years, ended his life cultivating cabbages at his palace in Split. Despite the fact that Constantius died only shortly after the edict was promulgated, Lactantius plays down any role for Constantine’s father, revealing only that the edicts were despatched to him to enforce, and that he, ‘to avoid appearing to disagree with the instructions of his seniors, allowed the churches … to be destroyed. But the true temple of God, which is inside men, he left unharmed.’ The fourth emperor, Maximian, as we shall see, died at Constantine’s command.
The failure of the Great Persecution was inevitable, as there were in AD 303 simply too many Christians for it to work. There was sure to be resistance in every community, and the actions of the martyrs gave it focus. Those who witnessed their willingness to die, and the brutality with which the state punished their conviction, could not fail to be impressed. Nor were pagans convinced that the slaughter of fellow citizens for their beliefs could be in the best interests of the state. After all, as we have noted, the Roman way had always been to promote tolerance. And so it was not so much the spectacular protests of the Christian minority as the growing disgust of the pagan majority that put an end to the persecution.
Lactantius’ On the Deaths of the Persecutors is the best and fullest account of the period 303-13 and thus is indispensable. But it is also an angry screed, with no known model in Greek or Latin literature, nor in Christian apologetic. Not only did Lactantius delight in the misfortune and demise of the persecuting emperors, he also attributed them to the intervention of the god of the Christians, defending the interests of the faithful. Such an approach rejected the very premise on which martyrs had accepted death at the hands of their persecutors: that their god did not meddle in earthly affairs to bring misfortune upon Roman emperors. This was the first step in articulating a new Christian triumphalist rhetoric, which we shall explore more fully in later chapters. In doing so, Lactantius drew on an Old Testament model, the Second Book of Maccabees, which still forms an accepted part of the Orthodox canon. Thus, the opening refrain of each text thanks God for punishing the wicked, and the agonizing death of Galerius mirrors that of Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Maccabees 9). And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius. It is to this that we may now turn.