h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

P.S. Some of the Roman emperors were pretty good by anyone's standards. I want to go on record with that.

I thought Constantine's "conversion" had something to do with getting his troops on side many of whom were of the Christian faith, while he was busy with the bloody business of usurping the throne - during the time of the supposed tetrarchy or something?

On the political backdrop of Constantine's alliance with the Christians, in the aftermath of the Tetrarchy, Constantine was engaged in a civil war with Diocletian, the last of the Roman Emperors to make an all out effort to exterminate the Christians completely.

It was this that was the foundation for Constantine's successful alliances with the Christians.

"I thought Constantine's "conversion" had something to do with getting his troops on side many of whom were of the Christian faith, while he was busy with the bloody business of usurping the throne" [Stone Aart]

This is where I have to admit that there are huge gaps in my knowledge of Roman history. Searching for info on Diocletian tells me that he divided the Empire into 100 provinces and arranged these into 13 dioceses, each ruled by a vicarius. English versions of those terms survive in the Catholic Church of today. true, Diocletian revived mandates for worshipping the old Roman Gods -- even Christians were required to worship them on pain of prison or death.

But it wasn't Diocletian that Constantine had to fight in order to get the throne. Diocletian retired voluntarily in 304, leaving others to rule in his place. Constantine's father was a regional power, and Constantine rose to the position n his father's death.

Wikipedia says : "Acclaimed as emperor by the army after his father's death in 306, Constantine emerged victorious in a series of civil wars against the emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both west and east by 324."

Google and Wikipedia make *everybody* seem smart, but I would hate to have to pass a test on this material!

I suspect that much of Wiki was written by the victors

That's an interesting perspective ITIWBS - which makes additional sense. As always it seems that history is best understood in terms of the self interests of the "powerful". No wonder Wikipedia has it then that "the army" acclaimed him Emperor.

ps I too am trying to fill in the gaps.

History isn't written by the winners, it's written by those with the publishing rights.

That too. In Winston Churchill's case he both going for him.

Diocletian may have been 'retired', but his party was still active in western Europe even after Constantine's martial successes and an importent part of the reason he relocated the capital to what became Byzantium.

One really can't understand European history without understanding Diocletian.

The Code of Diocletian served as the basic constitutional law of especially western Europe until the Medicis broke the deadlock on credit and profit taking at the beginning of the Rennaisance and the Rothschilds administered last rites in consideration of their support for the anti-Napoleonic alliance after Napoleon's return from the isle of Elba. (Mind you, Napoleon would have done the same.)

Of Diocletian's code, its been said that he somehow managed to combine all the evils of both communism and capitalism without any of the benefits of either... ...in the process reducing Europe to death camp conditions... ...average life expectancy to 30 years... ...in Roman times and for that matter, pre-Columbian Mexico, it was 50 years.

The differentiation of western and eastern Europe began with Constantine.

The schism of the Orthodox community from Rome also began on the authority of Constantine when he made (Orthodox) Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.




On the other hand, many of the worst excesses of the Inquisition were due to the Holy Office allowing itself to be made an enforcement agency for the Code of Diocletian, having forgotten that he was the last Roman Emperor to attempt extermination of Christianity, having taken over the forms and offices of his institutions.

henry Purcell wrote incidental music for a play about Diocletian. I figured that Diocletian must have been a major historical figure, though I had him pegged as one of the good guys, not a bad one.

Most of the bad press on Diocletian comes from the fact that he was the last to commit a purge of Christians, and is (surprise) written with a christian perspective.. Christians out-played him on that one in Spades later on, much of the history of the Byzantine empire (eastern roman empire) is filled with them massacring each other.

History as defined by those who've actually studied it properly have Diocletian do have him down as one the greatest Emperors in roman History. As a leader and emperor probably more so than Constantine who really was a genocidal maniac (killing his own son and wife - hmm, nice guy).

Preceding Diocletian the roman empire had nearly fallen in what historians call the crisis of the 3rd century. This was a period of civil war when there were something like 30 official emperors and 50 odd pretenders. At this time there were two breakaway empires also (the Palymyrene in the east and er... whatever it was called in the west). The general and then emperor Aurelian managed to Unite the empire but it was Diocletian who stabilised it and held it together for another 1000 or so years (if you don't count the fall of the west in 476).
Much of what he did was necessary (although we'll never know if it could have been different of course) since the Empire was no longer the same place it was before the Crisis. The borders were not really able to hold back migrating peoples and towns became fortified and the countryside was bandit country. Large landowners began to have private armies to protect themselves and their workers (what became serfs and leigemen). The medieval guild system was started by him also. He ordered massacres of Christians because they were a serious rival to his power. He made the Emperor properly divine and since Christians weren't really amenable to worshipping anything other than the one god, they weren't massively compatible with him. From what I've read and heard, it was actually one of his close subordinates who was really responsible for the massacre that Christians get all het up about and Diocletian himself wasn't very happy about it.

(my numbers above are probably not accurate, I'm writing from memory here, no wikipedia here).

Incidentally, Byzantium was a 1000 year old town by the time of Constantine. It didn't 'become' Byzantium through him, Byzantium became Constantinople when he made his capital there. People just kept calling it that too.

The tetrarchy by the way was Diocletian's attempt at getting a stable form of succession for the throne, this being the major problem throughout roman history (and not so well solved throughout much of history).
The army and particularly the pretorian guard became very used to choosing their own emperors over time, on some occasions even auctioning it off. He who controlled the army, controlled the empire, but they also got very used to tearing down the emperor when they chose.

The idea of the tetrarchy was that there would be two senior emperors (Augustus, Augustii) one in control of the west and one in control of the East. Each appointed a caesar (junior emperor) who would then succeed upon the death (or otherwise) of the Augustus.
It was a valiant attempt but did not last much beyond his lifetime as of course, it only works if all of those people were happy with it. Ambition got the better of them even in his lifetime (after he retired civil war started very quickly) and the end of that civil war was the ascension of Constantine to the throne of a reunified emperor.

I'm not sure how one can say that the schism between orthodoxy and roman catholicism can be traced to Diocletian. Maybe, depends what you mean. The christian church wasn't fixed on any one doctrine until the Council of Nicea in the time of Constantine and even after that they spent many centuries having brutal purges, massacres and occasionally just arguments over minutae of religious doctrine. Even the issues over the Great Schism of the 11th century seem rather strangely minor - I suspect it was as much political and cultural as over religious worshipping methodology.

If I could name a single thing it would the vague transformation of the Roman Senate into the College of Cardinals. It is, admittedly, a bit of a stretch but it isn't entirely silly either. Certainly it was true-ish during the middle ages, when the cardinals were essentially squabbling representatives of Roman aristocratic families. It isn't true now.

More directly, a love of long processions with the most important person coming last is Roman. Also the chasuble was the formal garment of late Roman gentry (replacing the toga). Church liturgy being more conservative than theology or ecclesiology there is probably more to be found there.

Famously a week is a long time in politics. The Roman Empire lasted for 1500 years which is a VERY LONG TIME. The bishops and clergy of the western church were in nearly every way a subjects of the Emperor for nearly half a millennia. It would surprising if there weren't some influences but, given the sheer size of the two organisations and lengths of time involved, I would be even more surprised if they were directly traceable.

The Code of Diocletian, besides mandating that sons were restricted to pursuing the trades of their fathers in the establishment of the guilds, also prohibited technological innovation, making, for example, the invention of the water wheel the height of Roman technological advancement.

This was very much an issue of the Rennaisance which marked the beginning of the end of the Code of Diocletian, which by the times of the Rennaisance was administered primarily by the Holy Office, though I've never been able to see how temporal laws like the Code of Diocletian were properly issues of theology.




There were exceptions to rule of restriction to the trade of one's father, military orders and holy orders, also the only possible alternatives to enslavement for displaced persons.

There is irony in the point that the exemption for holy orders predated Christianization.




Women, of course surrendered all their rights in marriage.




The fall of Rome is usually reckoned from the sack of the city by the Goths.



One does need to differentiate between the Roman era and that of the Holy Roman Empire founded by Constantine.




Diocletian reminds me strongly of Lycurgis, the Spartan dictator who founded the classical Spartan state and probably strongly admired him.

Both remind me more strongly of the current North Korean dictatorship than anyone else in our current world scene.

The Holy Roman Empire was declared in the year 800 (ish) and Charlemagne was their man. This was a direct challenge to the authority of Constantinople and had nothing much at all to do with Constantine - it was a Frankish (Barbarian) thing and was not at all stable in any case. The Vikings in particular put a spear right up its jacksy in the North for example.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean.

You think Diocletian was a more horrid emperor than the likes of Caligula and Caracalla? I'm not convinced his motives were as nefarious as you are making out, certainly he required absolute obedience but does that make him any worse than anyone else around the same era? His laws were largely born out of necessity as I've said (and I got that from my own reading, others may disagree as you do, and I am happy to be disabused of that, but many many historians regard him very highly) and it's easy to diss his laws with the hindsight of what became of them over time. Noone in the Roman empire really knew about economics and they were hardly great scientists before Diocletian, great engineers and architects for sure, but not innovators.

1500 years is indeed a very long time but the Roman Catholic church was essentially independent from Rome (as in from imperial authority, New Rome/Constantinople) within about 150 years of Constantine (the Western empire fell in 476 an all that) and church creed and heresy was defined in 361(?) with the council of Nicea. They were not under Roman rule for 1500 years by any stretch. The Orthodoxy were for about 1000, that's true.

I've justly idly googled for lists of people's best and worst Roman emperors and it seems Constantine and Diocletian are either love 'em or hate 'em emperors. They are both found in both the best and the worst lists

That still happens with best-selling books and movies, too. Ya can't please everybody!

As for Diocletian's antipathy to innovation, I expect that he would have understood the Jesuits.

All good points, Orcus.

On the effect of Diocletian's code, it is the effect I'm focusing on.

I certainly wouldn't call him dissolute.

I wouldn't call Lycurgus dissolute either.

Instead I'd place him at the pathological opposite extreme.

I think the analogy with both to the current North Korean dictatorship is quite a good one.




The point of this is that many of structural forms of the organization of the Roman Catholic Church originated in the Code of Diocletian under a principle of 'render unto Caesar' rather than in Christian doctrine under the principle 'the sabbath is made to serve man'.




On the decline and fall of Rome, Rome certainly was in in decline by the time of the Tetrarchy and you are right about Charlemagne and his solidification of the split between east and west which began with Constantine.

The Code of Diocletian was carried forward in the east from the times of Constantine and wasn't brought to an end in the east until the Soviet era.

On Constantine, no more dissolute than say Peter the Great.




I'm going to carefully re-read this entire thread before continuing.

Fair enough. It's all good stuff.
Some might say the current Russia and Ukraine etc. are back with it a little bit, part of the horror Russia seems to feel at current events in Ukraine stems from the fact that Kievan Rus was the progenitor of the russian state and that very much had a very heavy Eastern Roman influence. (I personally don't like the useagae of Byzantine, even though I use it myself on occasion as it pretends the Eastern Empire wasn't a continuation of the Roman state and was something different)

I might be arguing with you a bit but I'm keen to learn, you clearly have another side to this that I'm not massively familiar with. Up to now, the only criticism of Diocletian I've encountered was his christian massacres which makes those who hate him for that blind to all else he achieved.

I see where you're coming from with the North Korean analogy, my only problem with it is that I don't think one can judge the ancients with todays morals and standards, it's such a hugely different world now.

Byzantium had evolved into something very different by the time of the first Crusade, in an age in which the Papacy and the Orthodox patriarchy had mutually excommunicated one another, versus Orthodox Byzantium, over western dissatisfactions with what they perceived as excessively high Byzantine tarriffs on far east trade goods.

The destruction of Byzantium left them with the Turks to contend with, against whom they made no further headway.

Actually, the high tariffs originated primarily with warlords in what is nowadays Chechinye.

In turn, the quest for better prices stimulated the age of discovery, which, with the advent of maritime mercantilism, brought an end to the ancient silk road traffic.

Camel caravans simply can't compete with sailing ships either in carrying capacity or security.

The Chinese also made a belated effort to bypass the silk road, arriving just barely too late at Aqaba to stave off the fall of the medieval kingdom of Jerusalem.




There are current efforts underway to reopen the silk road caravan route with a modern transportation system to stimulate and support east west trade and especially central Asian trade.

The Russians are routing their section of it around Chechinye.

Of course it evolved. How much of a resemblance did the Empire of Augustus have to the Republic? To the Empire of Vespasian or the Empire of Diocletian/Constantine?

How similar is the UK of today to the UK of Queen Eliabeth I (about the same distance in time from the late Roman Republic to the fall of the Western Empire)?

The Byzanitine emprire as people like to now call it was a direct continuation of the Roman Empire and as such it really was the Roman Empire. They certainly called themselves romans and wouldn't have know what we were talking about referring to the Byzantine Empire.

The term Byzantine was coined by a german scholar in the 17th century (I think) as a derogatory term deriving more or less directly from the antipathy between the East and West. Gibbon solidified this in his Decline and Fall as he despised the later Empire because he despised Christianity. This still infects the western attitude to the later Empire.

One of histories great What-ifs is what would have become of the fragmented and weak West if the Eastern Empire hadn't held back the Islamic invasions for 700 odd years. Some might say we are ungrateful beggars