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On the death of Probus, in A.D. 283, the empire fell to Carus and his sons, Numerianus and Carinus, whose names are found on the Alexandrian coins, but whose short reigns have left no other trace in Egypt.
The death of Numerianus being discovered after several days by the soldiers near Calchedon, they arrested Aper and proclaimed Diocletian emperor, who addressing the soldiers from his tribunal in the camp, protested his innocence of the death of Numerianus, and then upbraiding Aper for the crime, plunged his sword into the traitor's body.
And the choice was a good one; and the new emperor, Carus, at sixty years of age, conferring the title of Cæsar upon his two sons, Carinus and Numerianus, whom he left to govern the West, hastened against the Sarmatians, who had overrun Illyricum. Successful in his objects, he advanced, in the depth of winter, through Thrace and Asia Minor to the confines of Persia.
He became a great hunter, but no wild boar that he killed seemed to bring him nearer to the purple, till, when the army was fighting on the Tigris, the Emperor Numerianus died, and an officer named Aper offered himself as his successor. Aper is the Latin for a boar, and Diocles, perceiving the scope of the prophecy, thrust his sword into his rival's breast, and was hailed Emperor by the legions.
Diocletian commanded the household or imperial body-guards when young Numerianus, the son of Carus, was secretly put to death by Aper his father-in-law, while travelling in a close litter on account of illness, on the return of the army from Persia.
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