many imperial catastrophes. Emperor in
his turn, Diocletian treasured up this profound idea of the difficulty of
government, and he set to work, ably, if not successfully, to master it.
Convinced that the empire was too vast, and that a single man did not
suffice to make head against the two evils that were destroying it,--war
against barbarians on the frontiers, and anarchy within,--he divided the
Roman world into two portions, gave the West to Maximian, one of his
comrades, a coarse but valiant soldier, and kept the East himself. To
the anarchy that reigned within he opposed a general despotic
administrative organization, a vast hierarchy of civil and military
agents, everywhere present, everywhere masters, and dependent upon the
emperor alone. By his incontestable and admitted superiority, Diocletian
remained the soul of these two bodies. At the end of eight years he saw
that the two empires were still too vast; and to each Augustus he added a
Caesar,--Galerius and Constantius Chlorus,--who, save a nominal, rather
than real, subordination to the two emperors, had, each in his own state,
the imperial power with the same administrative system. In this
partition of the Roman world, Gaul had the best of it: she had for
master, Constantius Chlorus, a tried warrior, but just, gentle, and
disposed to temper the exercise of absolute power with moderation and
equity. He had a son, Constantine, at this time eighteen years of age,
whom he was educating carefully for government as well as for war. This
system of the Roman empire, thus divided between four masters, lasted
thirteen years; still fruitful in wars and in troubles at home, but
without victories, and with somewhat less of anarchy. In spite of this
appearance of success and durability, absolute power failed to perform
its task; and, weary of his burden and disgusted with the imperfection of
his work, Diocletian abdicated A.D. 303. No event, no solicitations of
his old comrades in arms and empire, could draw him from his retreat on
his native soil of Salona, in Dalmatia. "If you could see the vegetables
planted by these hands," said he to Maximian and Galerius, "you would not
make the attempt." He had persuaded or rather dragged his first
colleague, Maximian, into abdication after him; and so Galerius in the
East, and Constantius Chlorus in the West, remained sole emperors. After
the retirement of Diocletian, ambitions, rivalries, and intrigues were
not slow to