Make Diocletian's Reforms Stick

So I've been listening to a podcast about Roman History on a road trip across the US and one thing that struck me is that Diocletian's reforms seem on paper to create a very solid system of government. The issue of course was that the most important thing for him to change was to make a more stable system of succession so that the Empire didn't have to endure near constant civil war.

On the surface it seems to me that if the Tetrarchy system could endure for a few more generations of peaceful transfers of power that the Romans finally might have hit upon a political system that possessed both a functional local level administration and stable macro level administration.

The problem of course is that as soon as Diocletian took his hands off the wheel the legions went straight back to appointing their own Augustus and the system was broken before it could set in. It seemed the precedent of succession by the sword was too strong in OTL and Diocletian's attempt to craft a sort of demigod person for the title of Emperor had failed.

So the question is, what would it have taken to make the new system work? Would it be enough to have precedent set by one of two peaceful generations of succession or would something else in the Tetrarchy system need to change for the system to work long term?
 
So the question is, what would it have taken to make the new system work?
Someone with the authority and respect of Diocletian as senior emperor and no disinherited biological heirs would be a good start. The second is easily doable, just have Constantine and Maxentius become the Caesar's to Constantius Chlorus and Galerius. The former is harder because, well, Galerius was not that-and while we're on Galerius, his presence makes Constantine and Maxentius's position precarious. And then consider having this problem every time a transfer of power occurs, and you start to see how unworkable the system is.

I have proposed in the past a sort of timed rotation-someone becomes junior Caesar in, say, Gaul for X amount of time, then moves on and becomes senior Caesar in the east, then becomes junior Augustus in the west, and then takes up the position of senior Augustus in the east. Rinse, repeat. This would prevent any one person from building up a strong power base in any area. It would also only mean one Augustus retires at a time-so in this case Diocletian retires when he does, but Maximian becomes senior emperor and stays on for the duration of that rotation, before retiring. The problem with this of course is there is a good reason Diocletian made Maximian retire with him and that's because Maximian can't be trusted to run his own show effectively. So you would need someone who isn't Maximian to be Diocletian's co-Augustus, but if you do that then you may very well butterfly the whole tetrarchy, as there is good evidence to suggest the tetrarchy was only created because of Maximian's incompetence in dealing with Britain and the Rhine.

IAnd all of this of course requires Diocletian's successors to follow his precedent, which isn't at all guaranteed. Not even Constantine recreating the tetrarchy within his own family was enough to stop it from falling apart into civil war again.
 
Someone with the authority and respect of Diocletian as senior emperor and no disinherited biological heirs would be a good start. The second is easily doable, just have Constantine and Maxentius become the Caesar's to Constantius Chlorus and Galerius. The former is harder because, well, Galerius was not that-and while we're on Galerius, his presence makes Constantine and Maxentius's position precarious. And then consider having this problem every time a transfer of power occurs, and you start to see how unworkable the system is.

I have proposed in the past a sort of timed rotation-someone becomes junior Caesar in, say, Gaul for X amount of time, then moves on and becomes senior Caesar in the east, then becomes junior Augustus in the west, and then takes up the position of senior Augustus in the east. Rinse, repeat. This would prevent any one person from building up a strong power base in any area. It would also only mean one Augustus retires at a time-so in this case Diocletian retires when he does, but Maximian becomes senior emperor and stays on for the duration of that rotation, before retiring. The problem with this of course is there is a good reason Diocletian made Maximian retire with him and that's because Maximian can't be trusted to run his own show effectively. So you would need someone who isn't Maximian to be Diocletian's co-Augustus, but if you do that then you may very well butterfly the whole tetrarchy, as there is good evidence to suggest the tetrarchy was only created because of Maximian's incompetence in dealing with Britain and the Rhine.

IAnd all of this of course requires Diocletian's successors to follow his precedent, which isn't at all guaranteed. Not even Constantine recreating the tetrarchy within his own family was enough to stop it from falling apart into civil war again.
Maybe have Maximian retire first? That doesn't solve everything but the only alternative I can see is for Emperors to have essentially term limits so that all the various ambitious generals feel they could achieve the office in their lifetime. Making civil war seem to be not worth the risk and expense.

Of course it would have to be the other Emperors themselves that would have to enforce this, and they could very well decide they would rather hold on to the power for as long as possible.
 
Maybe have Maximian retire first?
That's going to be a very hard sell to Maximian, who already really didn't want to retire IOTL. More importantly, Diocletian wanted to retire. You could of course just kill off Maximian and somehow also remove Maxentius from the picture.
That doesn't solve everything but the only alternative I can see is for Emperors to have essentially term limits so that all the various ambitious generals feel they could achieve the office in their lifetime.
Again though, what happens when someone doesn't want to retire?

Of course it would have to be the other Emperors themselves that would have to enforce this, and they could very well decide they would rather hold on to the power for as long as possible.
Exactly. The best way to make the tetrarchy actually last is to make the position of senior Augustus one that lasts for life. And even then, what happens when the tetrarchs don't get along? The system basically requires a strong senior emperor who can control the others, while not alienating them. Or, rather, needs the junior emperor and the Caesar's to be his men. Which was what Diocletian had. You could have this be enforced by force, as Galerius tried and failed to do, but then what stops he who does that from just getting rid of the tetrarchy altogether if they so chose?

I'm not trying to rag on this idea or anything, unlike a lot of people on this board I do believe a tetrarchy system could work out, but it needs a lot of tweeks and even more luck to entrench itself. And even then it's far more likely to look like the traditional east west split than anything else.
 
Much of his reforms did stick: tying coloni to the Land formally created what we know as European medieval serfdom for example. I wonder if that was a Great idea or if Rome really needed more of that. Also, "functioning local government"????
 
Regarding Maximian, I would argue that he needs to be removed from the picture entirely if this is going to work. He's not the singular cause of why the system fell apart, but he does have the most singular blame out of everyone involved.
 
And even then it's far more likely to look like the traditional east west split than anything else.
One of the things I liked about the system when I heard about it was that Diocletian made a point of emphasizing that the Empire was still united, and that the Emperors and Caesars would shift around if needed to deal with problems in another part of the empire. As long as they can keep it this way I think the system works. Though if it does just split the empire in half it is going to cause issues. They really did just need more hands on deck to deal with all their myriad threats and problems.
Also, "functioning local government"????
Yes! This set up the beurocracy that, while a bit, well, Byzantine it was there and gave the Eastern Empire a major advantage when the middle ages rolled around.
 
One of the things I liked about the system when I heard about it was that Diocletian made a point of emphasizing that the Empire was still united, and that the Emperors and Caesars would shift around if needed to deal with problems in another part of the empire. As long as they can keep it this way I think the system works. Though if it does just split the empire in half it is going to cause issues. They really did just need more hands on deck to deal with all their myriad threats and problems.
Well in that case, this was functionally how to system worked until the death of Valentinian I.
 
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