DIOCLETIAN HAD WON THE WAR. He could now rejoice in the sole possession of a post whose previous eight incumbents (counting only those who could claim control of Rome) had been murdered, some after only a few days or weeks in power. Meanwhile raiders beset the Rhine and Balkan frontiers, local warlords could still be tempted to carve out mini-empires for themselves within their provinces, and there seems to have been no settlement of outstanding disputes with the fortuitously feuding claimants to the Persian throne. It would only be a matter of time, though, before a new King of Kings emerged in the east with full authority over his rivals.
There is no indication that by the beginning of 285 Diocletian had devised a road map for the future—beyond the need to eliminate Carinus. With victory won, the problem of governing began. While the emperor plainly had some powerful supporters within the upper echelons of the governing class, he had no relative upon whom he could depend for assistance in ruling the empire. Furthermore, the great and powerful who supported him had just betrayed his predecessor. Faced with the challenge of enforcing his authority on multiple fronts and the plain fact that many to whom he might turn for aid had been in senior positions for longer than he had, he took the novel step of promoting to the rank of deputy emperor, or Caesar, a man who was not a blood relation and who had occupied, as far as we know, no major post in the civil or military hierarchy.
The individual he chose was from the area around Sirmium on the Danube. All we know for certain about his background is that in a speech given in his honor a few years later, a Gallic rhetorician named Mamertinus would say that he had served as a soldier since his youth, and that he had traversed the Danubian lands and the entire expanse of the Euphrates. This presumably meant that he had served in Carus’ expedition, which we might reasonably expect anyway. The chosen man’s name was Maximianus—or Maximian as he is now more often called. He would play the role of Hercules, the great defender of civilization, to Diocletian’s Jupiter (see figure 3.1). The names were well chosen, as might be expected of a man who seemed already quite sensitive to the nuances of nomenclature, for Jupiter and Hercules were also gods intimately related to the foundation of Rome. So it was appropriate that their earthly avatars should play the leading role in the “restoration of the empire,” Aurelian’s claim to having done something of the sort being downplayed both at this point and in the future.1
FIGURE 3.1
The new emperors: Diocletian and Maximian. Source: Courtesy of Author.
Maximian’s appointment took place at Milan. Diocletian may have moved on from there to Rome, a city which he is otherwise known certainly to have visited on only one other occasion in keeping with the practice of his recent predecessors who had spent most of their time elsewhere, before returning to the Balkans. The appointment was accompanied by some marital musical chairs among members of the inner circle. Maximian now married Eutropia, a woman from Syria who had previously been the wife of Afranius Hannibalianus. Afranius, the descendant of a noble family of senatorial stock from Asia Minor, had eschewed a senatorial career so as to rise to the top of the equestrian ladder and had been praetorian prefect for a number of years. He would still be in post when he was accorded an ordinary consulship with his colleague as praetorian prefect, Julius Asclepiodotus (another easterner) in 292, and would subsequently hold the prefecture of Rome. It is these appointments along with the evident support that Diocletian had garnered from Pomponius Bassus and Aristobulus that reveal the vague outlines of a governing group characterized by Balkan generals on the throne and traditional aristocrats, in these years with a distinctively eastern tinge, occupying the prominent positions around them.
Maximian’s first job as Caesar was to ensure the loyalty of Gaul where imperial authority remained weak. The first group he had to contend with would be described a few years later as rebellious peasants—most likely a considerable distortion of the truth. Their leaders took upon themselves the trappings of imperial power, much as Uranius Antoninus and Odaenathus had done in the east and as had a variety of other characters throughout the empire. In fact, it is now unclear whether wearing imperial-style clothing or minting coins in one’s own image represented a claim to actual imperial power or was merely a means of asserting local importance by taking upon oneself the trappings associated with power.
Whatever the truth may be, Maximian defeated the Gauls, then moved on to the Rhine where he had to deal with a wide variety of raiders, and it was at the end of 286 that Diocletian recognized his achievement by raising him to the rank of co-emperor, or Augustus. Years later, in the speech that has already told us something of Maximian’s background and his campaigns, Mamertinus refers to a further round of marital politics. Here Maximian is told that he has been joined by marriage to a man holding the leading position in his entourage. What is meant by “leading position” is unclear—it need not be the praetorian prefecture since at this point the emperor did not have a “personal prefect” as he would later, and it is more likely to refer to a military command. But we can be reasonably certain that the person in question was none other than Constantius, who at about this time married Maximian’s stepdaughter, Theodora. What we also know is that Constantius had won some notable distinction as an independent commander, capturing a king of the Alemanni, a tribal coalition in southeastern Germany, and that he had conducted some sort of operation across the Danube.2
Although the new marriage left the young Constantine in his father’s house, the transition could not have been an easy one for a seven-year-old boy. Constantine’s constant stress in later years on his place as rightful heir is a sign of just how profound the impact upon him had been. So too it is clear that his relationship with his mother remained profoundly important: it was she who would emerge at his side many years hence in the worst domestic crisis of his reign—a crisis that arose in part from his passionate relationships with the women in his life. Helena was probably in her late twenties when she was dumped by Constantius, and there was not much of a life left open to her at the time—former imperial consorts were not abundant in Roman history and the condition had often been fatal in the past. We can now only guess at her courage and determination as she made a new life for herself. We may sense in the later record the role that she played in protecting her son, giving him refuge when the world seemed to have turned against him, reassurance that he was still loved. Constantine would later help every one of his subjects understand just how important she was to his life, and the monuments to Helena after her death help us remember that debt to this day. It is hard to imagine that she would not enjoy the laughter of children playing outside what was once her palace in the park on Rome’s Viale Carlo Felice—or that her son would have changed the world if she had not given him the strength to face the uncertainty of his future.