Everything we have on one person
23 entries · 14 hours · 10 shows
Available content about Diocletian. Counts refer to the entries displayed on this page, not complete coverage of their life or reign.
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Severans and the Third-Century Crisis AD 193 – 284 · 1
Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast
Eleven minutes on an accident of the record: Aurelian reunified the empire in five years and is thinly documented, while Diocletian got a biography.
Dominate and Christian Rome AD 284 – 395 · 22
Part of Lost Roman Heroes · Matteo and Matthew Storm, 101 episodes
Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium
Ninety minutes on the man who ended the third-century crisis by splitting the empire four ways and then walked away from the throne alive. The retirement is as remarkable as the reforms, and the score has to hold both.
Seventy minutes on the colleague nobody discusses, which is the reason to hear it. Diocletian's tetrarchy needed a second man who would take orders and then step down, and Maximian did both and then unretired twice.
Part of The Ancients
With David Gwynn
The most systematic Roman attempt to destroy Christianity, launched in 303, over within a decade, and followed by a Christian emperor. Also good on the four-emperor system that worked exactly once.
Part of Ithaca Bound · Andrew Schiestel on the Mediterranean, 2021 to 2022; only the Roman episodes are indexed
Part of Lost Roman Heroes
The rise, from the bodyguard ranks to sole rule, in just under an hour. The first of two.
Part of Emperors of Rome
With Caillan Davenport
The last and largest persecution, run as administration: edicts, registers of scripture, and officials asked to prove compliance. Forty-two minutes on bureaucracy turned on a religion.
With Jason Klazmer
Jason Klazmer on how Diocletian rebuilt an army that had spent fifty years making and unmaking emperors, and on the price of the fix. Forty minutes.
The system itself: two Augusti, two Caesars, and a succession plan that skipped sons. Forty minutes on the one Roman constitutional experiment that worked exactly once.
Galerius against the Persians, ending in a treaty that held the eastern frontier for forty years. Thirty-four minutes on the campaign that proved the four-man system could fight.
Diocles becomes Diocletian, and his opening move is to appoint a colleague and hand him the west. Half an hour on an emperor who started by giving half of it away.
Diocletian abdicated and grew cabbages at Split, then refused to come back when the system collapsed. Half an hour on the only Roman emperor who retired and meant it.
Two emperors become four, each with his own court and his own quarter of the empire. Thirty minutes on the arithmetic of the tetrarchy and why it needed so many capitals.
Part of When in Rome
Twenty-five minutes on the largest baths Rome ever built, put up in the early fourth century and now holding a church, a museum and a railway station.
Part of Echoes of Empires
Anastasius two centuries later, praised for leaving a full treasury and doing it with the same instruments Diocletian built. Twenty-five minutes, and a good argument for how long the reforms ran.
Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Roman episodes are indexed
Part of The Pax Romana Podcast
Twenty-one minutes on the design of the four-man empire and the assumption underneath it, that loyalty could be engineered by adoption.
The edict of 301 fixed a price for a thousand goods, from lions to legal fees, with death for overcharging. Twenty-one minutes on an experiment in price control that the market simply walked around.
A Dalmatian officer of obscure birth kills the praetorian prefect in front of the army and is acclaimed on the spot. Twenty minutes on the least likely candidate to end fifty years of chaos.
The moment the succession plan met a son with an army: Constantine is acclaimed at York and the system starts unwinding. Nineteen minutes on how fast it went.
Provinces cut smaller, a court with ceremony borrowed from Persia, and an emperor who stopped pretending to be a first citizen. Eighteen minutes on the shape that lasted to Justinian.
The tax reform behind the price edict: a new census counting land and people together, so the state could finally budget. Seventeen minutes on the dull reform that actually held.
