Curated playlist
Tetrarchy
- Constantine II (emperor)In June 337, Constantine II had not yet been named emperor, but he was already acting like one. He issued an order returning the exiled bishop Athanasius to Alexandria, a city under the jurisdiction of his brother Constantius II. To…
- LiciniusIn September of 324, at a place called Chrysopolis near Chalcedon, Licinius surrendered to Constantine I. It was the end of a sixteen-year reign as Roman emperor. He had spent those years as both colleague and rival to Constantine.…
- Constantius Chlorus"Constantinian propaganda bedevils assessment of Constantius, yet he appears to have been an able general and a generous ruler." That verdict comes from the Oxford Classical Dictionary. It frames the central difficulty with Constantius…
- Constantine the GreatConstantine the Great was born on the 27th of February 272 in Naissus, a provincial city in what is now Serbia, to a Roman army officer and a Greek woman of low birth. He died on the 22nd of May 337 as the sole ruler of the Roman Empire,…
- Civil wars of the TetrarchyThe civil wars of the Tetrarchy tore the Roman Empire apart across eighteen years, beginning in 306 AD with a throne seized at York and ending only when one man stood alone over the ruins of shared power. At stake was not merely who would…
- DiocletianDiocletian retired from the most powerful office in the world and went home to grow cabbages. When rivals begged him to return to the throne in 308, he wrote back: "If you could see the cabbages I have planted here with my own hands, you…
- GaleriusIn the streets of Antioch, Galerius walked a mile ahead of Emperor Diocletian's imperial cart. He wore the full purple robes of a Roman emperor. This was not ceremony. It was punishment, delivered before watching crowds after his forces…
- MaximianMaximian died by hanging in July 310, on the orders of his own son-in-law, the emperor Constantine. Within seven years, that same man had declared him a god. Born around 250 near Sirmium, in what is now Serbia, Maximian grew up in a family…
- MaxentiusRome itself recognized Maxentius as emperor. Every other emperor in the empire refused to. He ruled from 306 to 312, holding the ancient capital while the rest of the empire called him a usurper. The man who finally defeated him spent…
- TetrarchyThe Tetrarchy was Diocletian's answer to a Roman Empire that had spent decades tearing itself apart. In place of one emperor struggling to hold three thousand miles of frontier, Diocletian built a college of four rulers, binding them…