After the barracks emperor, Principate became difficult to maintain.
The era of Pax Romana has passed, and pirates, bandits, and robbers have frequently occurred in the territory, and the emperor has been killed one after another by the Senate, soldiers, and guards.
It was Emperor Diocletian who appeared in such an era.
Given the state of the Roman Empire, he decided that it was impossible to maintain the traditional Principate, and he made a major shift from the head of state to a tyranny.
From the Senate and the leading Roman citizens to despots
Although the Principate government was actually an emperor, it was a leading figure in the Senate and Roman citizens before it was built, and was also a member of the Senate and a Roman citizen.
It is said that this collapsed during the time of Emperor Karakala, and all of them collapsed when all the people in the territory gained Roman citizenship by the Edict of Antoninus issued by him.
Looking at the history of Rome from a bird's-eye view, Emperor Karakala is more terrible than Nero and Commodus.
Above all, the crime of significantly lowering the value of money and distributing bad money is heavy.
As the saying goes, bad coins drive out good coins, and silver coins that have lowered their silver holdings have caused inflation and have fallen into a state of no help.
When Emperor Diocletian took the throne, there were too many problems to solve.
He made a firm will to reform in order to solve all the problems in his hands.
To that end, he could not afford to respect the Senate.
By concentrating his power on himself, the Roman citizens became his vassals, and the emperor became his master (Dominus), and he swung down the great Nata.
Tax reform
The tax system in the days of the first emperor Augustus was as follows.
Taxes payable by Roman citizenship:military service (and volunteers), consumption tax sales tax 1% of price, inheritance tax 5%, liberating slaves Slave liberation tax that pays 5% of the market value of slaves at the time
State citizens without Roman citizenship:10% of income state tax
That is all.
Then, what happened when this replaced the dominated government was that the nation collected as much as necessary.
If you say that this is close to the tax system of modern Japan, you can see how hard it is.
The concept of local tax has disappeared, and it has been put together as a single national tax. Taxes are divided into land tax and poll tax, and tax collection is carried out by government-appointed bureaucrats.
It was exactly the centralization of power.
Political system reforms
The Senate remained in shape, but instead of being respected by the Senate faction, it was so overshadowed that it was ridiculed as the person in charge of signaling the start of the chariot race.
The republic, which was left behind even before it was built, is completely dead.
I also erased the concept of a province.
All were under the direct control of the emperor, and became a four-headed politics (Tetrarchy) governed by two emperors (Augustus) and two vice emperors (Caesar), and the administration was carried out by bureaucrats directly appointed by the emperor.
Although there are four emperors, the substance is that of Diocletian, which is close to a tyranny.
Princeps has many similarities to the current American politics, and Dominates has many similarities to the current Japanese politics.
Economic policy
Emperor Diocletian sought to optimize money.
Specifically, he tried to raise the silver content of money from 5% to 100%.
Originally, the silver content of silver coins was 100% in the time of Augustus, but in the time of the military emperor, the silver content had dropped to 5%.
Diocletian tried to make it 100%, but in the end it failed. He has become the best example of not having good money on the market once he is expelled.
Theory and reality are different. Those who got the new silver coins did not let go of it, and the amount of circulation was not enough, so the original bad coins eventually came into circulation.
Rather, it got worse.
Emperor Diocletian is also famous as the first emperor in the world to carry out a controlled economy.
The price of goods and services was controlled, but as the black market became popular after World War II, the black market was rampant in this era, and the money lost its credibility, so bartering took place, and as a result, it failed.
Christian repression
Later, the Byzantine Empire proposed the theory of the Pope, but at this time the Emperor =God. Diocletian can be equated with the main god Jupiter.
It was Christians who rebelled against this.
Christianity was the only people who swore allegiance to the god YHVH, and the others were evil gods who pretended to be gods.
Emperor Diocletian is said to have cracked down on Christians.
It seems that Diocletian himself was not enthusiastic about making a name for himself in history, and it was mainly recorded by Christians, but it is exaggerated to some extent. Because there is also a side.
Repression does not mean that he slaughtered like Nero.
The church was destroyed, congregations were banned, all bibles and crosses were burned, Roman law protection was lost, expulsion from public office, and property confiscation.
These are, of course, quite strict, but unlike the Holocaust, which Christians later went to Jews.
Was Dominates a success?
It can be said that it was a failure in terms of domestic affairs.
The economic turmoil was out of control and reforms failed.
However, that does not mean that Dominates is immediately regarded as a failure.
After all, during the time of Emperor Diocletian, the Roman territory was not devastated by foreigners.
The Germanic people were also unable to enter the interior of Limes, the Roman line of defense.
In that respect, it can be said that it was successful in foreign affairs.
However, Tetrarchy, ruled by four emperors, collapsed shortly after the disappearance of Diocletian, and was once again dictated by one emperor by one absolute tyranny, Constantine.
Rome will last 150 years. The Byzantine Empire was held until it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
Had it not been a dominated regime, it would have been destroyed during the 4th century.
With that in mind, it can be said that the results have been sufficiently achieved.
Dominates has completely stopped the republic's breath and has made a great crackdown on Christianity, so it has a very bad reputation in the current view of Christian history.
However, considering that it would have been impossible to maintain the huge Roman Empire without it, and that bold reforms had been carried out, it should be an achievement that deserves evaluation.