Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (7 page)

The Tetrarchy solved the immediate threat to the empire's periphery and was also intended to solve the problem at the core of the empire, the problem of succession. Diocletian had no sons, and he constructed the Tetrarchy to ensure a peaceful transition of power to the next generation. The Tetrarchs were joined as kin: Constantius put away his concubine Helena, mother of Constantine, in favor of Maximian's daughter Theodora, and Galerius married Diocletian's daughter Valeria.64
More radically, Diocletian envisioned term limits for emperors. In May 305, some twenty years after he assumed the purple, Diocletian did what no other emperor had ever done: he voluntarily retired and induced Maximian to retire as well. Constantius was elevated to the position of Western Augus tus, assuming the senior position, while Galerius took over Diocletian's position as the Augustus of the East. Two Caesars were appointed to replace them-Severus and Maximian Daia. The succession problem seemed to have been solved.

SON OF JUPITER

Diocletian also had to solve the Christian problem; this, he knew, was integral to solving the crises of the previous century. Building on the constitution of 212 and the Decian and Valerian conceptions of a religiously united empire, he deliberately secured the Tetrarchy with a religious ideology. The rhetor Eumenius found the numerical symbolism of the Tetrarchy fruitful ground for cosmological speculation. "He sees the number four as the fundamental principle in the cosmic order, expressed in the four elements, the four seasons, even the four continents. It is not for naught that a lustrum follows upon the passing of four years; in the heavens a four-horse team flies before the chariot of the sun; and the two great luminaries of heaven, sun and moon, are attended by the two lesser lights, the morning star and the evening star."65
No wonder the tarnished old world had been restored to gold: the political system of the empire was, at long last, in harmony with the nature of things.

The notion that the Tetrarchy matched the structure of the cosmos was reinforced by the associations of the Tetrarchs with traditional Roman gods, an association that arose from religious as well as political motivations and, in the eyes of Christian observers like Lactantius, represented a dangerous innovation. Without the Senate to provide support for his rule, and recognizing that military rule was the cause and not the solution for the political crisis, Diocletian went over the Senate's head and reached for a direct theological legitimation of the empire.66
Diocletian took the honorific title Io- vius and named Maximian the head of the "Heraculian" branch of the imperial college. Coins depicted Maximian in his divine patron's characteristic lion skin.67
As Heracles in his might carried out the orders of his father Ju
piter, so Maximian did for Diocletian. This was no idle playacting. Depictions of the Tetrarchs show them not only joined in a fond embrace but also standing at an altar offering a single sacrifice.68
What buttressed Diocletian's empire was an "elaborate political theology."69

At the same time, Diocletian heightened the Eastern trappings of the imperial protocol that had been developing over the previous century. He required that members of his court address him as dominus and that they prostrate themselves in his presence and kiss the hem of his purple robe. According to Eutropius, Diocletian "was the first that introduced into the Roman empire a ceremony suited rather to royal usages than to Roman liberty," demanding "that he should be adored" and wearing "ornaments of precious stones on his dress and shoes.""
Isolated and exalted like a Hellenistic king, glittering with jewels and gold-encrusted robes, the king was no longer the princeps of Augustan political theory. He was a god, albeit one whose potestas came by the point of a sword.7'
The ceremony and fashions of the Tetrarchy indicate that the emperor was "now a figure for all to adore and venerate."

Even posture and physiognomy had to conform. Dio had described the "ugly and forbidding scowl" of Lady Tyranny, so haughty that she would not "glance at those who came into her presence but looked over their heads disdainfully." Now this haughty gaze became the mark of imperial majesty. The emperor was expected to remain stock still, face fixed in the serene, unsurprised gaze of the gods.72
He had become a colossus:

Entrance into a city, the adventus, offered men a rare glimpse of their ruler. In the world that Constantine was born into it had become a sort of act of
state in itself. As the emperor approached, the senators, Roman or municipal, came out to meet him, accompanied by priests, magistrates, workers' guilds, constables, brass bands, and a crowd of lesser folk. He appeared borne on a litter or in a carriage; guards in gilt or silver armor flanked him, bearing silk banners designed to float inflated in the air, in the shape of dragons. The soldiers' shields were painted, the chariot painted and jeweled, the rider jeweled and robed in purple down to his shoes. Etiquette demanded that he make no response to the throng. He sat still and tried to look enormous. When Constantine's son visited the capital, he aroused everybody's admiration by playing the giant-ducking his head slightly as he passed through the gates of Romej73

The emperor was also a sacral figure, surrounded by an impenetrable glow of holiness.74
When he became emperor, Constantine maintained aspects of this ceremony but treated it lightly. According to Eusebius, Constantine displayed the best of both worlds: he dutifully wore his "raiment, interwoven with gold, finished with intricate blossoms," for the sake of his "subjects' sense of proper style," but he "laughed" at it and had himself depicted in a traditional toga, distributing coins to senators, on the final panel in the frieze of his arch
.71

Jupiter was more than the emperor's distant patron. Diocletian fancied himself virtually an incarnation of the chief god of the Roman pantheon. A panegyrist honoring the emperor in 291 called him a "visible and present Jupiter, near at hand."76
Jupiter was the "creator of Diocletian,"77
and Diocletian the only begotten son of father Jupiter. Other panegyrists drew on the mythologies of Jupiter to add a mystical glow to Diocletian's political accomplishments:

Jupiter Optimus Maximus was the preserve of the Roman community, the god who had defeated the old race of the Titans and founded a new Olympian race.... In selecting Jupiter as his divine father, Diocletian claimed responsibility for defeating the usurpers, asserted his right to command the empire, and identified himself as the source of the other emperors' authority and the founder of a new golden age. In choosing to call Maximian
"Heraculius," Diocletian conveyed similarly important information about his partner. Hercules was Jupiter's son by the mortal woman Alcmene and, as Jupiter's helper, a hero for whom nothing was too difficult.... Consequently, Maximian's new name symbolically asserted that he owed his power and divinity to Diocletian. It further confirmed his subordinate role by suggesting that, like Jupiter, Diocletian initiated action and, like Hercules, Maximian carried it out
78

The two Caesars likewise adopted divine patrons-Galerius, appropriately, worked under the oversight of Mars, while Constantius was under the patronage of Apollo, the sun god so often linked with his son.79

Lactantius took Diocletian's political theology seriously. Like other pagan and Christian writers, Lactantius adopted the euhemerist theory, which taught that the gods were mere men whose reputations had inflated after death, and from this angle he criticized the political theology of the Tetrarchy. To Lactantius, Diocletian's association with Jupiter was no compliment: Jove was "a traitor from his early youth since he drove his father from his reign and chased him away. Nor did he wait for the death of the broken old man in his desire for rule."80
Jupiter, further, did not preside over the golden age; Saturn did, and the reason for the prosperity of Saturn's tenure was that he permitted the worship of the true God. By now excluding that worship, Diocletian was undermining the aspirations of his own political program. Further, the Tetrarchy did not adhere to the structure of the world. Since there was only one God, there should be a single princeps, and Lactantius attempted to convince pagan monotheists as well as Christians of the point.S1

Diocletian ruled for nearly two decades without persecuting Christians, so it would be a mistake to say that persecution was a deliberate part of his program for Roman renewal.
12 Yet persecution of Manichaeans and Christians was not some strange aberration of imperial policy but consistent with Diocletian's entire political theology. For Diocletian, the Tetrarchy was rooted in traditional Roman religion, and loyalty to the former had to
be expressed by participation in the latter. The peace that Diocletian aimed to preserve was not a secular peace. It was the "peace of the gods," a pax deorum.83

CONCLUSION

On Roman terms, Diocletian's reign was a success. The empire was safe and free of internal strife. He stayed in power twenty years, a reign long enough to provide some measure of stability. His reorganization of the empire outlasted him. Together with Constantine, he could be considered a savior of the Roman Empire.

On the three crises of the day-the border, the succession, and the Christians-Diocletian achieved midterm success only with the first. As we will see in the next chapter, his solution to the succession problem barely outlasted his retirement. His economic policies were a disaster. He attempted to arrest inflation by issuing a Price Edict that set maximum prices on many goods, which had the expected effect of driving goods and services to the black market. Lactantius complained loudly of the brutality of Diocletian's tax policies, and he was not the only one who did so.

When things went badly, Diocletian adopted the time-tested policy of finding someone to blame. He blamed the Christians for failing to honor the gods, just as later pagans would blame Christians for the evils suffered at the hands of barbarians. Once Diocletian got started persecuting, however, he had no chance of success. Too many Christians stood their ground, and the church was clearly not going anywhere. Pagans had grown in their admiration of Christian fortitude, and some pagans even offered sanctuary to Christians fleeing from the authorities. Diocletian had forced the issue and was faced down by a vigorous and growing minority within the empire, a minority who by the Antonine Constitution were citizens of Rome but who consistently and courageously refused to take part in sacrifice, one of the central defining acts of Roman citizenship. Something would have to budge, either the demands of Roman citizenship or the church, and the church showed no signs of budging.

You must share some secret with that divine mind, Constantine, which has delegated care of us to lesser gods and deigns to reveal itself to you alone.

PANEGYRIC XII, CA. 313

On May 1, 305, Diocletian gathered his troops in his capital Nicomedia and led a procession out to a hill three miles from the city. A column had been erected on the site, topped by an image of Jupiter. Twenty years before, Diocletian had stood on this same hilltop, slaughtered the "boar" Aper, and taken command of the Roman Empire as the "son of Jupiter." On this spring day, still under the aegis of the king of the gods, he was preparing to do something no Roman emperor had ever done.

Surrounded by common soldiers wearing red or undyed tunics, centurions with breastplates adorned with ornaments of valor, senior commanders whose white helmet plumes fluttered in the breeze blowing off the Sea of Maramara, Diocletian mounted a platform and began to speak. Galerius Armentarius ("cow-keeper")'
glared down from the dais, and Diocletian was also joined by the young commander Constantine-tall, his large head, hooked nose, and intense eyes giving him a look of confident mastery-along with Galerius's friend Maximinus Daia.

In a gesture as dramatic as it was unprecedented, Diocletian announced that he was retiring as Augustus and was prepared to name his successor. A few years before, he had suffered a sickness serious enough to raise rumors of his death, and he was weary from years of care, travel, and battle. It was time to remove himself and leave power to others. The senior Augustus of the Tetrarchy bid a tearful farewell to the troops on whose loyalty and skill the stability of his empire had depended.