Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome, episode 122, Jupiter, and Hercules.

I think it's fair to say that for the last 50 odd years, the Roman Empire had been

flying by the seat of its pants.

Emperors would appear on the scene, run around madly trying to deal with whatever that

week's crisis was, and then pass the baton off to the next man, who would run around madly

trying to deal with the next week's crisis before passing the baton off to the next man,

and so on, and so on.

Improvisation was the order of the day, and if anyone even had a long-term strategy, they

usually had neither the time nor the resources to put it into action.

Most of the emperors who ruled during the 3rd century had no idea that they would

even be emperor a year before they found themselves draped in the purple, sometimes

not even the day before, so it's not like these men were bringing with them carefully

laid out plans when they took over power.

But by all accounts, Diocletian was different.

He had been thinking about it, he had thought long and hard about the problems facing the

empire, and what he would do if he had the chance to solve them.

This is not to say that Diocletian was immune from the twists and turns of fate, and he

was forced to improvise with the best of them, but he at least had some broad notions about

the direction the empire needed to go in, and he did his level best to keep the empire

going that way.

And after defeating Cariness in 285 AD, he wasted no time getting going.

Anyway, Diocletian set the tone for the kind of administration he planned to lead.

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