Diocletian

Our knowledge about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is
incomplete. It often gets attributed to the reign of Aurelian and conflicts
that took place in Egypt at the time. It is a fact that the centre
of Alexandria had been moved west from its eastern seaside districts.
However, the testimony of Ammianus Marcellinus – on which the entire current hypothesis is based - seem to be rather questionable as
this author’s knowledge about topography and history of Alexandria
leaves much to be desired. There is no way to specify during exactly
which of the internal struggles in the 3rd and 4th century was the Library
of Alexandria destroyed, and whether the forces behind it were
of human or natural origin

The Final Pagan Generation shows how the generation of Romans born in the 310s adapted to their changing religious and political environments.  The included chapter introduces the religious landscape of the Roman world of the early fourth century and sets the stage for their story.

In spätrömischer Zeit, die oft als „Epoche der Völkerwanderung“ gilt, wurde die Provinz Maxima Sequanorum geschaffen. Auf ihrem Gebiet finden sich zahlreiche Mauern von Befestigungen, zum einen im Norden am Oberrhein sowie am Hochrhein zwischen Basel und Bodensee, zum anderen auch südlich von dieser Linie. Schon seit dem 18. Jahrhundert hat man die spätrömischen Ruinen von Wachtürmen, Kastellen und Stadtmauern archäologisch untersucht. Oft sind sie restauriert worden. Sie gelten als interessant, finden sich in den Inventaren der Denkmalpflege, sind Ausflugsziele und werden für Besuche empfohlen. Doch: Was haben die Römer mit ihnen bezweckt? Was ist ihre geschichtliche Bedeutung?

Mauern sind stumm. Antworten suchen Historiker und Archäologen deshalb in Textzeugnissen aus dem Altertum. Was überliefern sie z.B. über die Aufgaben und die Verwendung dieser Anlagen? Lassen sich die Absichten benennen, welche zu ihrem Bau geführt haben? Wozu dienten die Fortifikationen? Und sind sie der römischen Politik und ihren Zielen tatsächlich auch dienlich gewesen? Wie sind die Mauern wahrgenommen und beurteilt worden?

Um diese Fragen zu beantworten, schauen die Autoren auch auf den Gesamtraum des späten Imperium Romanum. Anhand der Auswertung von schriftlichen und archäologischen Quellen versuchen sie insbesondere herauszuarbeiten, was die strategische Funktion der Befestigungen gewesen ist.

El artículo analiza el desarrollo de la figura del Prefecto del Pretorio, que desde sus comienzos fue una de las más importantes dentro de las instituciones de estado romanas, pero que con la llegada de los cambios políticos después de la muerte de Marco Aurelio, aumentó su protagonismo hasta el punto de gozar de más poder en ocasiones que el mismo emperador. La coyuntura inestable y las fuertes prerrogativas de las que gozaba convirtieron a ese alto funcionario, mitad militar y mitad burócrata, en un personaje clave dentro de las intrigas políticas romanas, que desde su posición inigualable fue capaz a menudo de eliminar al emperador mediante una conspiración para ocupar su lugar. La situación se hizo tan grave llegado el siglo iv que Constantino decidió retirarle el mando de tropas y las funciones militares, convirtiendo al Prefecto del Pretorio en un juez supremo y organizador del suministro.

Un rescripto de los Emperadores Diocleciano y Maximiano dado en Nicomedia en el año 294, recogido en Código 8.42.23, refleja una posible práctica habitual en la época postclásica, consistente en documentar por escrito una delegatio que permitiría al acreedor dirigirse a un deudor de su propio deudor, pero sin extinguir el crédito inicial, de manera que el acreedor que no pudiera cobrar del deudor cedido podría recuperar su acción inicial frente al cedente. Se plantea, por otra parte, una hipótesis sobre una posible corrupción del texto que le daría un sentido completamente diferente.

This article explores Eusebius of Caesarea’s narrative strategies in depicting Jewish history within his own Ecclesiastical History against the background of the intellectual and political environment at the time of its composition: it argues that Eusebius’s literary agenda in narrating events from Jewish history was not simply confined to the motif of replacement theology but was indeed much more political in nature than has been realized up to this point. The article argues that Eusebius carefully selected and skillfully manipulated Flavius Josephus’s historical accounts in order to portray the Jews as notorious violators of the pax Romana. He thereby evoked a picture of a relationship between Jews and Romans completely anachronistic to his own times, characterized by hostility, violence, and ultimately incompatibility. Eusebius was able to contrast this image with one of Christians as obedient citizens. Christians had never—in the past or present—been guilty of a crimen maiestatis but had always remained loyal proponents of Rome, its emperor, and his subjects. Reshaping Jewish history for his Ecclesiastical History served Eusebius in two respects: First, he could use it apologetically to refute traditional as well as contemporary prejudices against Christians in the immediate aftermath of the “Great Persecution.” By deflecting them onto the Jews Eusebius instead presented them as inheritors of a deeply anti-Roman mindset. Second, this anachronistic depiction of shattered Jewish-Roman relations presented him with a fitting narrative for his own vision of a future Christian Roman Empire in the wake of Constantine’s rise to power. In this unfolding dream the Jews were nothing more than a mere relic of the past at odds with the rapidly transforming political landscape.

En este trabajo pretendemos ofrecer una visión clara y concisa de algunos de los aspectos fundamentales del ejército romano surgido a partir de la “Crisis del siglo III”, un periodo traumático y lleno de transformaciones que alteraron las estructuras del estado romano para siempre. Intentaremos mostrar que algunos de los cambios más importantes de esos cruciales momentos estuvieron vinculados al ejército, del que emergería la base para la aparición del consabido Imperio Tardío, representado en última instancia por las reformas de Diocleciano y Constantino.

RESUMEN: Pese a la gran cantidad de sublevaciones militares acontecidas en el Imperio Romano, y muy especialmente en el siglo III, sabemos muy poco de cómo se preparaban y ejecutaban sobre el papel estos complots. Quitando el atípico caso de Procopio, relatado con detalle por Amiano Marcelino, las fuentes literarias, ya en muchos casos problemáticas y/o escasas, dejan bastantes lagunas en los relatos de tales procesos, que la historiografía reciente intenta suplir con hipótesis. Sin entrar a valorar las motivaciones del fenómeno o el grado de responsabilidad de los diferentes involucrados en las denominadas usurpaciones, nos planteamos ofrecer una propuesta explicativa desde el punto de vista meramente técnico, esto es, cómo un determinado grupo de conjurados logra idear, planear y ejecutar un plan o una serie de planes con el objetivo de alcanzar el poder mediante el apoyo de ciertas fuerzas militares para derrocar, casi siempre asesinando, al emperador reinante.
ABSTRACT: Despite the large number of military uprisings that occurred in the Roman Empire, and especially in the Third Century, we know very little about how these conspiracies were prepared and executed on paper. Not counting the atypical case of Procopius, related in detail by Ammianus Marcellinus, the literary sources, already problematic and /or scarce in many cases, leave many gaps in the accounts of such processes, which recent historiography tries to fill with hypotheses. Without assessing the motivations of the phenomenon or the degree of responsibility of the different parties involved in the so-called usurpations, we offer an explanatory proposal from the merely technical point of view, that is, how a certain group of conspirators manages to devise, scheme and execute a plan or series of plans with the aim of attaining power through the support of certain military forces and overthrow, almost always assassinating, the reigning emperor.

ACCESO A NÚMERO COMPLETO: https://doi.org/10.14201/shha202139

RESUMEN: Este artículo ofrece una perspectiva poco explorada sobre
las funciones y evolución de un cuerpo especial perteneciente al ejército
romano, los frumentarii. Asociados a la categoría de principales, al abastecimiento y distribución de suministros, y especialmente de grano, como su nombre parece indicar, fueron prontamente encargados de una gran cantidad de actividades adicionales. Misiones para transportar materiales de lujo a Roma, «espionaje», vigilancia, servicio de policía, asesinatos, recogida de tributos y supervisión de la defensa en las provincias fueron algunos de los dispares, aunque esenciales, cometidos que la tropa llevó a cabo hasta finales del siglo III. Aunque al parecer su pésima reputación propició la disolución del cuerpo, durante muchos años fueron los ojos y oídos de los emperadores. Intentaremos explicar su desarrollo e importancia en la sociedad romana, haciendo hincapié en la pervivencia de sus habilidades militares.

ABSTRACT: This article offers a fresh perspective about the role and
evolution of one of the sections of the Roman army, the Frumentarii.
Linked with the rank of principales, and with the supply and provisions,
especially grain, as their name seems to indicate, this squad took at an
early date a great deal of additional functions. Missions to drive and protect luxury stuff to Rome, «espionage», surveillance, police duties, murder, collecting taxes and provincial defense supervision, were some of the unalike but key functions carried by them until the end of Third Century. Although it seems as their infamous reputation fostered their disbandment, for long years they were the emperors’ ears and eyes. We will try to explain their development and importance in the Roman society, highlighting the survival of their military skills.

De bouwgrage keizer stichtte niet alleen steden, maar ook een geheel nieuw paleiscomplex. Hij deed troonsafstand en sleet er zijn oude dag. Maar waarom daar, in Split? In dit onderzoek wordt de reden van de vestigingsplaats nagegaan op basis van de beschikbare bronnen.

The emperor who so loved to build new architectural structures and to found cities, voluntarily abdicated and lived his last decade in his own palace. In this article, the reasons for the foundation in Split are carefully teased out on the basis of the extant evidence.

The Luxor temple was one of the most important temples in Egypt well into the Roman period. Between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century AD, the temple underwent significant architectural and decorative alterations: the enclosure wall was rebuilt and equipped with towers and gates; the inner space was newly organized with a grid of streets, whose intersections were decorated with two monumental tetrastyla honouring the emperors. The structure of the temple was altered to accommodate new functions: a vestibule to the sancta sanctorum was partly closed off and painted with frescoes depicting the emperors and other figures involved in various activities. These interventions are usually interpreted as aimed at adapting the abandoned temple to a military camp, so that the painted chamber would have been the shrine of the standards, or a room dedicated to the imperial cult. Much effort has been devoted to the reconstruction and interpretation of the paintings, relying mostly on the watercolour sketches made by John Gardner Wilkinson in 1856 and rediscovered in 1953 by Ugo Monneret de Villard.

Thanks to the restoration led by the American Research Center in Egypt in 2005-2008 and the subsequent publication of a detailed monograph, new materials are available for analysis. The aim of this chapter is to place the temple and its paintings in the framework of late antique visual culture, on both a regional and an empire-wide scale. The new architectural arrangement of the complex is compared to other buildings of the tetrarchic period (fortresses, military camps, palaces) in order to outline a clearer picture of what Luxor would have looked like after the late antique interventions. The analysis of the paintings is focused on the images of the emperors, comparing them to other official representations in an empire-wide perspective in order to highlight the peculiarities of the Luxor frescoes and their meaning. Much emphasis is placed on the reception of imperial images in the Egyptian context, as well as on the interaction between these and local visual traditions, with the aim of defining how much the formal arrangement and iconography of the paintings owes to the temple’s (old and new) functions and the local artistic milieu, and how many features they share with other imperial images in non-Egyptian contexts. Analysis of this unique evidence contributes to understanding the visual culture of the late Roman provinces, as well as visual manifestations of imperial ideology.

Books I-XIII of Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae, which covered the years from 96 to 353, are missing from our manuscripts and generally believed to be wholly lost, except for a few references that Ammianus himself makes to them in his surviving Books XIV-XXXI.  Yet much of these supposedly lost books probably survives in Greek summaries.  In all, we may have around a fifth of the contents of Ammianus' Books I-XIII.

The nummi struck in the Alexandrian mint at the end of the first Tetrarchy obviously break the uniformity of the Tetrarchic coinage while using new reverse legends: HERCVLI - VICTORI for Maximian Herculius Augustus and Constantius Chlorus Caesar, IOVI CO-NS CAES for Diocletian Augustus and Maximianus Galerius Caesar. This aes coinage continued to be struck during the second and the third Tetrarchies, also using new types of reverse, with a restored gold coinage and a short reappearance of silver coinage. This constitutes a specific iconographic program for the time which is certainly to be linked in particular to the political, economic and religious background of the city of Alexandria at the beginning of the 4th Century. Considered as a whole,
this coinage is far more diverse and complex than it is usually thought.

L'émission de nummi de la première Tétrarchie aux revers HERCVLI - VICTORI pour Maximien Hercule Auguste et Constance Chlore César, IOVI CO-NS CAES pour Dioclétien Auguste et Maximien Galère César, marque une rupture manifeste avec l'uniformité tétrarchique. Cette émission qui se poursuit et se complète sous les deuxième et troisième Tétrarchies s'accompagne d'une reprise du monnayage en or et, ponctuellement, en argent. L'ensemble constitue un programme iconographique original pour la période, qui n'est pas étranger au contexte politique, économique et religieux très particulier d'Alexandrie au début du IVe siècle. L'ensemble de ces frappes est bien plus riche et complexe qu'il n'est souvent supposé.

Con este libro, resultado de bastantes años de trabajo, se pretende ofrecer a la Romanística una visión completa de la producción jurídica de Diocleciano, que ha llegado hasta nosotros. Desde el primer momento fuimos conscientes de la dificultad que entrañaba nuestro empeño, pues basta con hojear el Código justinianeo, para observar que los rescriptos dados por este emperador, con su colega Maximiano, ocupan un espacio muy considerable en la gran mayoría de los títulos. Al concluir nuestra labor hemos podido comprobar que el número de constituciones dioclecianeas es de 1216. Sólo 9 de ellas no están recogidas en el Codex, sino en la Romanarum et Mosaicarum Legum Collatio. Por razones de economía editorial no ha sido posible incluir en este Conspectus los textos latinos, como habría sido deseable. Por ello se debe advertir al lector que la numeración corresponde a la undécima edición del Codex Justinianus de Paul Krüger (Berlín 1954). Las constituciones tomadas de la Collatio se han consultado en la base de datos B.I.A... El estilo de los rescriptos dioclecianeos es conciso, preciso y nada pomposo, muy semejante al de los juristas clásicos. En algunas ocasiones aparecen los argumentos enunciados como regulae, pero lo más frecuente es que describan el caso, dictando la solución y su fundamentación jurídica, en la más castiza tradición de los responsa… En este Conspectus se incluyen dos Edicta de Diocleciano y Maximiano, extraídos de la Collatio (Coll.6.4 y 15.3), cuya redacción responde fielmente a los patrones estilísticos de la nueva etapa: son los referentes al matrimonio y a la represión de los maniqueos…

Les autorités romaines ont toujours sérieusement considéré les manifestations religieuses pendant les périodes de crise. Elles craignaient en effet l'instabilité éventuelle causée par les rites et les croyances sortant du cadre ordonné de la religio. Les mesures politique-religieuses prises par Rome dans les périodes de crise avaient comme fins essentielles de calmer les peurs provoquées par un sentiment d'abandon de la part de la divinité et de restaurer l'équilibre social en unissant les consciences autour des rites religieux traditionnels. Refusant de se soumettre aux rites communs, les chrétiens des trois premiers siècles se retrouvèrent aux marges de la cité antique. En raison de son autonomie, le christianisme était en effet perçu comme superstitio. L'hostilité officielle de l'autorité romaine s'est principalement  exercée contre les chrétiens lors des graves crises que l'Empire a traversé, de l'incendie de Rome en 64 jusqu'à la lutte engagée contre eux par la Tétrarchie, en passant par les désordres politiques et économiques qui agitèrent le IIIe siècle, de Dèce à Aurélien.

At the turn of the fourth century, four soldiers ruled the Roman Empire: Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius and Galerius. This Tetrarchy, as modern scholars call it, was the brainchild of Diocletian, and under this emperor's leadership, the regime brought stability to an empire shaken after a half-century of political and military convulsions. These Tetrarchs defeated the resurgent enemies of the empire, they ended an epidemic of military rebellion that had lasted decades, and they attempted numerous reforms in an effort to better the empire both economically and spiritually.

This dissertation examines the Tetrarchy as an imperial dynasty, and it uses the concept of dynasty to highlight how the Tetrarchic regime was often at odds with imperial precedents. Like other Roman dynasts, the Tetrarchs employed adoption, marriage and shared nomenclature in the expression of their rule, but they also ignored certain dynastic norms. Diocletian and Maximian presented themselves as brothers despite being unrelated, and they used the names Jovius and Herculius to imply a close connection to Jupiter and Hercules. Diocletian and Galerius repeatedly excluded the sons of the Tetrarchs from the succession, and the sons themselves were variously hostages, symbols of imperial unity and targets of assassination. Moreover, for most of the Tetrarchic period, imperial women were neither empresses nor deified.

This study investigates these issues through the lens of the Roman army, and it presents the Tetrarchic dynasty as a military experiment, created by and tailored to soldiers. At the beginning of Tetrarchic rule, Rome's armies exerted an unprecedented influence over imperial politics, and the Tetrarchs themselves were products of these armies. This thesis shows that the Tetrarchs gave their sons and the imperial women important but subdued roles within their regime. It proposes that these approaches to dynasty and the decision to create the Tetrarchy came about because of military experience and responded to the pressing need to forestall army rebellion. Furthermore, the study argues that the regime represented the Augusti and their Caesars as pairs of brothers, and that it did so to appeal to the army. It is concluded that friendship, namely the camaraderie of Diocletian and Maximian, was central to dynastic cohesion and imperial unity during the Tetrarchic period. Whatever the intentions of the Tetrarchs, their dynastic junta could only be temporary, since the friendship of the Augusti could not be replicated.

In un'orazione contenuta nel corpus dei Panegyrici Latini il retore Eumenio, dopo aver celebrato la restaurazione della potenza romana dovuta alla tetrarchia, insiste sulla necessità di stimolare la rinascita dell’eloquenza e cita un passo (l’inizio del frammento I.11 Maurenbrecher) delle Historiae di Sallustio, fornendone così una importante testimonianza finora ignorata.
Eumenio sembra non accorgersi della amara riflessione di Sallustio sul contrasto tra la crescita della potenza materiale e la degenerazione morale di Roma dopo la terza guerra punica. Quello che interessa all'oratore è infatti la rinascita delle scuole di retorica e quindi Eumenio non ripropone la complessità ideologica del frammento, bensì lo usa strumentalmente per sottolineare che uno degli aspetti della grandezza romana nel passato era l’eloquenza e auspicarne quindi il rifiorire. Draft of the article published in "Revue de l'Histoire des Textes", n. s. 5 (2010), pp. 281-290.

In successive studies of unmarked nummi, Pierre Bastien clearly identiied a group of
unmarked nummi of Lyonnese style. Those are often attributed to a Moneta comitatensis working
during the reconquest of Britannia in AD 296. However, analysis of the typological and stylistic
patterns of a group of 238 of these nummi suggests they were actually examples of the irst issue
struck at the Lyon mint after Diocletian’s reform in AD 294.