Why The Diocletian Reforms

“Diocletian was the instigator of crimes and the contriver of evils. He despoiled everything; he could not even keep his hands off God himself! Through greed and anxiety he managed to turn the whole world inside out.” (Nagle 334) After the reforms that Diocletian committed a segment of the population were dissatisfied with his reforms as represented by the author Lactantius and were they correct with the anger? Did he really turn the world “inside out”? No, Diocletian did not. Diocletian reforms were the right course of action given both the context of the situation and the effects of they had on the Roman Empire permanently. Before examining the divide itself, it is important to take into context what was Diocletian’s reasoning for this decision.
The crisis began with Emperor Septimus Severus who founded the Severan dynasty. In his reign Severus debased the currency, which was unproblematic during his reign, however it set the precedent for future emperors and became much more vexing later. The purpose in the debasing of the currency was to provide a much desired wage increase to the Roman soldiers. This was a common theme during his rule to follow through the demands of the military, and thus set the precedent of buying and appeasing the military for the emperor’s loyalty. Although this courting of the military was present in previous emperor’s reign it was much more prevalent with Septimus Severus, and changed the prior dynamic with the Roman military. Septimus made it so that the emperor’s position was dependent on their standing with the military. Like the debasing of currency it posed no problem, however that dynamic resulted in the Crisis of the Third Century following the end of the Severan Dynasty, and commenced the Crisis of the Third Century with the assassination of Alexander Severus. And that is when Rome fell into chaos the Barrack Emperors trying to focus on pleasing the masses and the military over focusing on the barbarians at and in the gate. “. . . the emperors
This is where Emperor Diocletian came in with his reforms. Recognizing the issue of succession and administration of the empire, Diocletian created a brilliant solution, the Tetrarchy. Four rulers would be placed wherever needed and would govern over four regions: Gaul, Italy, Illyricium, and the Orient. Gaul and Italy would be the Western Empire and Illyricum and the Orient would be the Eastern Empire. Moreover, with the tetrarchy a Emperor would be in charge in one of the two divisions, each emperor was accompanied by a vice emperor. When the emperor died, the vice emperor would take his position and elect a new vice emperor. Thereupon, no longer was it an issue to manage all frontiers of Rome and succession was no longer spontaneous and disruptful. However, a counter-argument was brought by Lactatius upon these reforms, again more-than-likely representing a share of the population at the time. “To be sure that everyone was properly terrorized provinces were chopped up into pieces. Many governors and even more sub-governors were imposed on individual districts, and even on individual cities. . . . Naturally, the number of tax recipients began to exceed the number of the number of taxpayers.” (Nagle, 334) Acknowledging that this did create