Near the Black Sea, 275
Aurelian: Emperor of Rome, Restorer of the World and Victor of a dozen battles
needs to empty his bladder
He's waiting to cross into Asia to strike the Persians in a moment of weakness
Yet another eventual victory!
Plus, he's already smashed a revolt and a germanic army on the way here
He steps away to find a secluded spot, then realizes something's wrong,
From behind, his officers have encircled him
They begin drawing their swords
Aurelian who defeated enemies from Gaul to Syria and reunited the Roman Empire,
Dies under the blades of his own captains. He has reigned only five years and the chaos rolls on..
The officers who'd killed Aurelian regretted it almost immediately!
They'd quickly launched the assassination plot after the emperor's secretary had presented them an execution list containing their names.
Written in Aurelian's own hand, which was plausible, because Aurelian was famous for harsh punishments.
But they soon learned, that list was a forgery.
Aurelian's secretary, who'd been caught in a lie, hoped to kill Aurelian before the emperor discovered his infraction and punished him
And you know that's history for ya,
It has its Julius Caesars, people who die in great tragedies of betrayal and clashing ideals,
Stabbed on the floor of the Senate by his peers to prevent him from becoming a tyrant,
Then history has its Aurelians, a guy who saved the empire multiple times,
And then was murdered for petty reasons while trying to take a leak.
But in his short reign, Aurelian had done so much.
He reunified the empire, smashed several germanic invasions and even started changing Roman Religion.
Aurelian was a follower of the god Sol Invictus,
'The Unconquered Sun'.
one of a variety of new approaches to religion that were increasingly popular in the later Roman Empire.
While Roman religion was very public with people making observances in the temples,
many of these new factions were closed groups known
as mystery religions.
Mystery religions conducted their ceremonies in private gatherings where one could only take part if initiated,
sort of both a religion and a private club.
They also served as one-stop shops for religious needs instead of appealing to a different god for every issue,
And they emphasized spiritual books and revelations over tradition and ceremony
Sol Invictus while publicly worshipped seems to have also had a small mystery cult as well,
and while Emperor Aurelian had promoted Sol Invictus,
Upgrading the status of his priests, building a new public temple,
and putting his chosen deity among the chief gods of the empire.
Aurelian also declared that the god's birthday December 25th, would be a festival,
and minted coins with his face on one side,
And Sol Invictus' on the other.
This association between Sol Invictus and the emperor would carry on among his imperial successors.
With them also worshiping the sun god and putting him on coins.
In fact, Sol Invictus, and other mystery religions, would have a major impact on the small illegal sect called Christianity.
Buuut, we'll get to that later because right now our story has some more emperors to kill.
After Aurelian's death the senate elected a new emperor,
who died after nine months from natural causes dramatic question mark.
When the throne then passed to his brother who was killed by his own troops three months later.
In favor of another guy who ruled six years before also being fragged.
The next one in line was Carus who ascended in 282,
But that's also where Diocletian enters the picture,
getting named commander of an elite cavalry unit attached to the emperor's household,
Which probably meant he'd been part of the plot to assassinate the previous emperor
Now we know little of Diocletian's origins though like many of the military emperors,
They were humble, born in modern-day Croatia, to a father who was reportedly a former slave.
He rocketed up through the military ranks during the crisis.
He followed Carus to Persia on yet another campaign
because Rome was just like constantly at war with Persia.
Anyway, things were going great!
You know apart from the emperor being tragically struck by lightning just before he celebrated a year of rule!
Killed by lightning freak accident or maybe it was Persian soldiers not by Diocletian!
Carus' sons took over as co-emperors,
one going to Rome, and the other staying in the east to start withdrawing troops from Persia.
But during the withdrawal the eastern emperor developed an eye
inflammation and decided to travel the rest of the way in a coach with the curtains drawn,
Which was going fine until someone noticed a smell,
they opened the curtains to find the young emperor dead by disease!
Or maybe possibly poisoned by someone who was not Diocletian?
The generals convened to name a new emperor with two men now standing as candidate,
Diocletian and another guy who was not Diocletian.
Diocletian went out and the next day the army gathered to look at him on a hilltop
acclaiming him emperor, and before the troops, Diocletian
raised his sword and swore an oath on Sol Invictus that he had not killed the young emperor.
Then he swore that he personally knew that his rival candidate, not Diocletian
had killed the young emperor to which not Diocletian raised a finger and said, um..
And then Diocletian buried his sword in the man's chest.
Killing him instantly and thereby avenging the emperor who was definitely not killed by Diocletian!
Great!
Six months later, Diocletian, then confirmed by the Senate,
clashed in battle with the western emperor who was technically his co-ruler.
Diocletian's army was outnumbered their prospects bleak. Nervous lines of men shuffled toward each other.
But you'll never guess what happened!
One of the western emperor's commanders, stabbed the guy in the back, and defected to Diocletian
Winning the battle and not because Diocletian paid him to do it or gave him a high office afterward.
I mean, he did do that, but that wasn't why he betrayed his old emperor because that emperor was uh,
Totally sleeping with everyone's wives and no one really liked him anyway, so it wasn't Diocletian's fault.
I mean, really?
Really?
Right now you're probably thinking wait back in ep 1 you said?
Diocletian was going to save the empire but all this civil warring and convenient accidents sounds a lot
like he's more of the same, and you're right!
in 285
When Diocletian took the throne,
it looked like he was just another spin on Rome's merry-go-round of imperial murder.
But it didn't play out that way,
Diocletian didn't carry out any campaigns of retribution against those that supported his rivals.
In fact,
They mostly kept their positions and that's because this new emperor considered himself a restorer,
not a revolutionary, and his goal was to save the empire by turning the clock back before the third century crisis,
And he was willing to, essentially, remake society to do it,
changing everything from the military, to the administration, to taxation.
His three priorities of reform were as follows:
1) secure the far-flung edges of the empire from outside attack
2) Stop the runaway inflation and low tax yields that had hobbled the economy
and 3) Solve the succession problem that had allowed the crisis to roll on and on.
Now like a lot of things in the third century crisis,
we don't always know what order things happened in during Diocletian's reign
So to keep things simple, we're going to talk about his reforms piece by piece,
beginning, as Diocletian did, with the military.
Understanding the threat of assassination, and the fact that the empire was too large to govern,
Diocletian raised one of his fellow military officers
Maximian, to the office of subordinate co-emperor.
Maximian would rule the west, and Diocletian would rule the more populous and rich east.
Immediately after this agreement,
they both set off to their respective halves to halt border incursions and put down uprisings.
And it was during these campaigns,
that Diocletian started to formulate his plans to reorganize the Roman Empire around the military!
He pushed for more troops to defend the empire,
Re-instituting conscription to expand the military's manpower by at least a third,
possibly even doubling it. And most of these new units were mounted.
See, Diocletian was a former cavalry general and had seen Roman horseman prove effective during the crisis.
Not only in mowing down the infantry armies of germanic tribes,
But in simply getting where they were needed faster.
In his new plan reinforced and expanded border forts would have a group of infantry to hold them against attack,
Just long enough for a cavalry detachment from further inside the empire to come to their aid.
Also, Rome would no longer be the place to rally troops,
Instead, he expanded or founded cities like Milan in Italy, Trier in current day Germany, and Antioch.
And they essentially became miniature Romes with all of the theaters, arenas and temples of a modern city,
So military figures could live there long term closer to trouble spots, and in those cities,
he broke up the power of governors making military commands separate from administration,
So that when the troops did march away, the city could keep running as normal.
But all of those forts, cities, men, and horses, cost something he didn't have,
Money!
To build up the military, Diocletian will essentially turn the Roman Empire into an enormous support system for the army,
Rebuilding society around it, and in doing so he will inaugurate a new era for Rome,
A more Dictatorial period where he held autocratic, even divine power,
and then divided that new authority between four men,
Known, as the tetrarchy.
Did you all know that Ahmed Ziad Turk, Alicia Bramble, Casey Muscha, Dominic Valenciana, Gunnar Clovis
Kyle Murgatroyd and Orels1 were all legendary patrons? Thanks, everyone!