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Updated: May 15, 2025
Diocletian made several ineffectual efforts to alleviate the misfortunes of his daughter; and, as the last return that he expected for the Imperial purple, which he had conferred upon Maximin, he entreated that Valeria might be permitted to share his retirement of Salona, and to close the eyes of her afflicted father.
But that which was superstition to him he regarded as beneficial for others, who had to have something and who got it, in temples where a sin was a prayer. There was once a play of which there has survived but the title: The Last Will and Testament of Defunct Jupiter. It appeared in the days of Diocletian, but it might have appealed when Cicero taught. Faith then had fainted.
It was introduced by Constantine as part of the Orientalizing of the empire begun by Diocletian. As Seeley says, 'Constantine purchased an indefeasible title by a charter. He gave certain liberties and received in return passive obedience. He gained a sanction for the Oriental theory of government; in return he accepted the law of the Church.
But at the beginning of the fourth century Diocletian built his palace at Spalato, where we have all learned to see classicism and the new spirit from the East fighting it out side by side; and, if we may trust Strzygowski, from the end of that century dates the beautiful church of Kodja-Kalessi in Isauria.
With these views, Diocletian had selected and embellished the residence of Nicomedia: but the memory of Diocletian was justly abhorred by the protector of the church: and Constantine was not insensible to the ambition of founding a city which might perpetuate the glory of his own name.
Of the nineteen tyrants who arose during the reign of Gallienus, not one died a natural death. And when, after a disgraceful period of calamities, Diocletian ascended the throne, the ablest perhaps of all the emperors after Augustus, no talents could sustain the weight of public administration, and even this emperor attempted to extinguish the only influence that had power to save.
Another inscription, which preserves the name of one of those who suffered in the most severe persecution to which the ancient Church was exposed, and which, if genuine, is, so far as known, the only monument of the kind, is marked by the same simplicity of style: Lannus Martyr of Christ here rests. He suffered under Diocletian.
The last great persecution, in the reign of Decius, cruel though it had been, did not approach in severity this final effort to exterminate the disciples of the Christian faith, who had now become very numerous. Terrible sufferings were inflicted, but without avail. In 305 Diocletian, partly on account of a serious illness, formally abdicated, and obliged Maximian to do the same.
The last great act of Diocletian one of the ablest and most warlike of the emperors was an unrelenting and desperate persecution of the Christians, whose religion had been steadily gaining ground for two centuries, in spite of martyrdoms and anathemas; and this was so severe and universal that it seemed to be successful.
It was necessary to ascend to the times of Diocletian, to find an example of a similar abdication of empire, on so deliberate and extensive a scale, and the great English historian of the Roman Empire has compared the two acts with each other. But there seems a vast difference between the cases.
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