Arveh, and welcome to Emperors of Rome, a Roman history podcast from La Trobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith, and with me today is Associate Professor Kalyn Davenport,

head of the Centre for Classical Studies at the Australian National University.

This is episode CCXXIIII, the rise of Diocles. The Man Who Would Be Emperor Diocletian was of unremarkable origins.

Quick to recognise the challenges of Rome, he decided to set up a franchise opportunity.

This worked when nothing else did, and to many he was the most successful Roman Emperor in an age.

Just don't ask the Christians. Here's Kaelan Davenport.

We've had to say goodbye to the Historia Augusta, so we don't have a series of imperial biographies

anymore, but in other ways, source material becomes much richer, actually. So we continue to have

the mid-fourth century works by Oralys Victor and Eutropius, both of which deal sort of in a potted way with

the emperors and the events of their reign. But we also have some exciting new sources.

And some of these are Christian sources, and we need to bear in mind that they're incredibly

hostile to Dioclesian of many of his colleagues this time period

because Diocletian inaugurates what's known as the Great Persecution of the Christians in AD303.

One of these works is by a man called Lactantius.

He is an orator and a teacher of rhetoric from

North Africa, and he is a Christian, and he is actually appointed professor of Latin at

Nicomedia, which, as we'll find out, is Diocletian's major capital, major residence through most of this period.

And so he reports some of the things that happen in Nicomedia as an eyewitness.

And he then goes on to be a tutor in Latin to the sons of Constantine.

Wow.

So he's a really important figure throughout this period.

...