History of The Roman Constitution - Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall

When Diocletian became Roman Emperor in 284, the military situation had recently stabilized, which allowed him to enact badly needed constitutional reforms. Diocletian resurrected the "collegial" system that Marcus Aurelius had first used, and divided the empire into east and west. Each half was to be ruled by one of two co-emperors, called the Augusti. He then resurrected the precedent set by Hadrian, and ensured that each emperor named his successor early in his reign. Diocletian called that successor a Caesar. Diocletian then created a bureaucratic apparatus that was similar to the system that Hadrian had created, wherein each office had a defined set of responsibilities, a set rank, and a set path of promotion. In this administrative system, Diocletian followed the example that had been set by Domitian, and divided the Empire into small administrative units. He also assigned to the four tetrarchs (the two Augusti and the two Caesares) honorary titles and insignia that had been used by Domitian. One important consequence of these reforms was the fact that the image of a free republic had finally given way, and the centuries-old reality of monarchy now became obvious.

When Diocletian resigned, chaos ensued, but after the chaos had subsided, most of his reforms remained in effect. While the Emperor Constantine the Great did enact some revisions to this constitution, the most significant change over the centuries was in the abolition of the Caesares. Ultimately this constitution survived, in one form or another, until the Western Roman Empire fell in 476. Diocletian's division of the Empire into west and east set the stage for ages to come, and was a significant factor behind the ultimate division of the Christian church into western Roman Catholic and eastern Greek Orthodox, while his division of the Empire into prefectures and dioceses is used by the Catholic Church to this day.