Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

Comments

Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[cahn]

I was informed when I woke up this morning that there is a Diocletian/Maximian fic in Madness, and I read it and was highly entertained, and also read about the Tetrarchy as directed by the endnote, but I must admit that I still really do not have any idea as to the personalities involved and therefore am clearly missing most of what's going on. (My sole knowledge about this period is that Helena found the True Cross and was Constantine's mom, and Constantine was the first Christian(-ish?) emperor??)

So... O beneficent denizens of salon -- by which I mostly mean selenak because she's so skilled at this, but mildred_of_midgard or anyone else with period knowledge, feel free to reply at will -- please synopsize the tetrarchy and the related personalities in amusing simple words for me? :)

(Yes, I know, I should listen to the podcast, but this is going to take a while as I still am figuring out the German History podcast -- the happy thing is that I think listening in the car might work, though very slowly!)

(Also, I tried to at least leave a kudos and it tells me I left one but it's not showing up??)

(Also, would be happy for this to become a more general discussion thread for this fic if people want as mildred_of_midgard has somewhat indicated she would like to happen)

Re: Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[mildred_of_midgard]

(Also, I tried to at least leave a kudos and it tells me I left one but it's not showing up??)

I had the same experience! I wonder if the AO3 servers are just a bit overwhelmed by the amount of incoming kudos.

Primer: Okay, my Roman history is 10 years rusty, so I'm going to open with a simplified prelude, and then give Selena a chance to say stuff about Diocletian and Maximian proper, and then we can discuss!

The first thing you have to understand about Diocletian and Diocletian/Maximian is that what makes them so impressive is what happened before them. To give a very simplified account:

Phase one, there was the expansionist heyday of the Roman empire with the emperors you've heard of: Augustus, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, etc.

Phase two, the empire reaches its greatest extent in circa 100 CE, and it looks like this That looks really impressive! But. Some problems ensue.

1. The Romans only have the communications and transportation technology of circa 100 CE, which means that even if they're militarily superior to any one of their enemies, that border is way way overextended. Can you imagine living in Rome and trying to administer all those provinces and defend all the outreaches of the that red area?

2. The Roman emperors are really, really bad at founding dynasties. They keep dying without male heirs. They try out adoption, but they don't have a really good stable principle of succession. The major principle of succession ends up being, "If you defeat the rival candidates, you win!"

"If you defeat the rival candidates, you win!" very easily translates into "If you're an army based in Gaul or Illyria or Africa or wherever, you can grab your general, go, 'Our general is emperor!' and fight everyone else to make your guy emperor so he will give you big bonuses."

By the mid 3rd century, you have phase three: anarchy. The main means of becoming emperor is being a general, promising your troops money and favors, and marching on Rome to get acknowledged by the Senate before any other generals who have the same idea get acknowledged by the Senate. Bloodline? Previous ruling experience? What's that?

If you make it, and you have a male heir, you can try to get him on the throne, but it's a tossup whether it works, and it doesn't work for long.

One day, another emperor dies, and this soldier guy who was the son of a slave or freedman from somewhere in the Balkans becomes emperor. We know little to nothing about him before he changed his name from Gaius Valerius Diocles to Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus upon becoming emperor. (It's really incredibly tantalizing: I want backstory!)

And the newly minted Diocletian decides that all this anarchy and chaos has got to go! In a nutshell, phase four of the history of the Roman empire is when Diocletian initiates a bunch of reforms, promotes a strong government, and stabilizes the empire reasonably well (and impressively considering the litany of problems he was facing), but also commits at least two major fuckups, which Selena will tell you about if she has time. :)

And once we've covered that, I will describe what led me to request Diocletian/Maximian in the first place. Diocletian for his (usual) competence, obviously, and Diocletian/Maximian for a loyalty kink that you're going to hear all about. :DD

Re: Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[selenak]

I will add comments when I have more time, but for now, have some funny yet educational (and short) vids instead about Diocletian and the rest of the gang:

Introducing Diocletian and his rise to power

Dioclection invents the Tetrachy and stabilizes the Empire (this one also has Maximinian and also Galerius and Constantius Chlorus, Dad of Constantine the future Great)

Diocletian greenlights The Great Persecution (of Christians) and retires from office with some INTERESTING succession arrangements (aka the two fuckups an otherwise super competent man commits)

Re: Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[cahn]

Me: Videos??
selenak: funny yet educational (and short)!
Me: ...it's like Selena knows me or something!!

I've just watched the first one and it is GREAT! I will watch the other two but probably not until tomorrow, thank you!!

Re: Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[selenak]

Also, have this pictorial illustration. This sculpture depicting the original Tetrarchy (Dioclectian & Maximian, Galerius & (Constantius) Chlorus) today is in Venice, as medieval crusaders looted it when sacking Constantinople, but it's as near contemporary a depiction of Mildred's OTP as you can get outside of coins:

Re: Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[mildred_of_midgard]

This statue group was my first introduction to Diocletian! Way back in undergrad when I was taking art history. I of course remembered this statue and would have liked to see it when I was in Venice, but by then I had forgotten where it was located, and it wasn't until shortly after I left Venice that I relearned that it was Venice and realized I must have walked right past it without noticing it! But it was too late to go back (on my budget). I am cursed.

(Selena, you will "like" this: the single most incompetent professor (I think he was a postdoc) I had in college was the one for this intro art history class. He called this statue a depiction of four popes. POPES. His entire course was like this.)

Re: Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[mildred_of_midgard]

it's as near contemporary a depiction of Mildred's OTP as you can get outside of coins:

And panegyrics! :D

ETA: Unless you meant "visual depiction", in which case yes. :) But the near lovers' tryst is really something.

Re: Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[selenak]

Oh, no doubt! BTW, the last time I saw that statue in Venice, I had no idea whom it depicted, either, but "popes" definitely would never have been my guess. The swords all four are depicted carrying kind of gives it away.:)

I do think the statue group aesthetically is closer to early medieval sculptures than it is to, say, late Republican/early Empire Roman ones (cahn, think of the famous and endlessly copied statue of Augustus for a contrast and compare depiction of how the first Roman Emperor wanted to be depicted), and a good reminder that any movie or tv show set in the late Roman Empire which has everyone still looking Augustan is not trying. But like I said - of all the possible guesses, "popes" is.... *headdesk*

Re: Diocletian/Maximian primer??

[cahn]

See, THIS is what wikipedia needs to give me. If salon and rheinsberg didn't already exist I'd say there needs to be a place where someone who is starting from basically scratch can get an overview of What The Heck Is Going On.

Can you imagine living in Rome and trying to administer all those provinces and defend all the outreaches of the that red area?

Ha, I remember this was a problem even with the Flavian dynasty, when I read about them this fall -- that they kept having rebellions and things they had to go look after :D

I also am assuming you guys are going to tell me about... Maxentius, Constantine, Theodora (Constantine's evil stepmother??), Chlorus (oh wait, Constantius Chlorus, huh. But I still need to know the gossipy deets!), Maximinus Daza (?), Severus II, Galerius, Lactanius, Fausta, Crispus, and I'm probably forgetting others! :)

Who is Who in the Tetrarchy

[selenak]

Okay, once you've watched the other two vids, which will have given you the political outline (in a funny way) and the most important events, here are the family footnotes:

1) Diocletian and Maximian: not (originally) related, both of humble Balcan origin, rose through the ranks together, though Maximian, a few years younger and not as brilliant, was always a few steps behind. Diocletian appointing him Co-Emperor wasn't unprecedented - there'd been several throughout the by now centuries of Roman Empire history - but it is worth noting that this was still a risky move, because for every successful combination, there were Co-Emperors turning against each other. As the second vid says, at first Maximian was given the title "Caesar" while Diocletian was "Augustus", Caesar implying junior rank; also, state propaganda referred to them as Jupiter (Diocletian) and Hercules (Maximian), and the god and his loyal (brawny) son (greatest of heroes, but still, the son) also implies a certain rank. However, as the vid points out, the workload was still too much for the two of them, and that's how we end up with Diocletian promoting Maximian to Augustus and each of them getting themselves a Caesar - Constantius Chlorus, who shall be Chlorus in order not to be confused with his more famous son, for Maximian, and Galerius for Dioclectian. Presto, the Tetrarchy. Now, both Dioclectian and Maximian were married and had daughters. Maximian also had a son (Maxentius, more about him in a minute). Practically the moment Galerius and Chlorus were appointed Caesars, they also got married to Dioclectian's and to Maximian's daughter, respectively, in order to strengthen the bonds. What were these particular daughters - (Galeria)Valeria and Theodora - like? We have no idea. Chauvinist sources focus on the men folk and don't say. Usually, the only way you got some Roman historian's attention as a woman was when you (in their eyes) misbehaved, usually by aquiring power for yourself and/or having affairs.

2.) Which brings me to (Constantius) Chlorus. He hadn't been single when becoming Maximian's Caesar. He was either married to or had as a steady concubine Helena, mother of his son Constantine, and an important figure of Christian history. The reason why we don't know whether or not these two were married is of course that Constantine emerged of the Tetrarchy implosion as the last man standing and later as top dog of the Roman Empire had some influence on historians, to put it mildly. Also, because Helena was important to Christian history, even once Constantine was dead, her origins kept being rewritten and enobled, which is how we go from Helena, daughter ofa Balcan tavern keeper, waitress and possibly part time prostitute (as waitresses were forced to be at that ime) to Helena, British princess. The later is what she is both in Evelyn Waugh's novel about her and in Dorothy Sayers' play, not because by the 20th century, people were still ignorant of her "lower" origin, but because these were English writers, and the tradition of basically claiming Constantine as a half Brit through his mother and said mother as a full Brit (and of course a princess, not some lowly waitress) had been going on for more than a millennium in Britain at that point. Anyway, Chlorus dumped Helena the Christian and married Theodora (with whom he had some more kids, including the father of later Emperor Julian the Apostate) the daughter of Maximian, but he did always treat Constantine as his legal first born son. (This is not something Constantine later made up, but documented at the time.) The notions of bastardy were murky in the ancient world anyway, but still, if you want an argument that Chlorus and Helena were married after all, you can always resort to this. Chlorus, btw, comes across in general as both competent (he reconquered Britain for the Tetrarchy after some splitaway wannabe Emperor named Cosaurus had ruled it in the aftermath of Diocletian's ascension to power) and the least ego-driven of the Tetrarchs.

3.) Constantine didn't see much of his father as a kid, though, since after Chlorus' promotion to Caesar he was raised at Diocletian's court. As Mike Duncan said in the "History of Rome" podcast, "hostage is such an ugly word". Diocletian might have correctly trusted that his three co-rulers would all remain loyal to him instead of trying to split from the Roman Empire and/or gun to be sole Emperor, but he didn't rely on trust alone in the case of the younger guys. Anyway, young Constantine clearly learned a lot, including when to shut up and when to sway people, because once Dioclatian had retired, and Galerius had become Augustus in Diocletian's place, Constantine somehow talked him into permitting him, Constantine, to leave (now) Galerius' court and let him join his father Chlorus in Britain. Galerius later claimed he was drunk when giving his permission. (Mike Duncan: He would say that. Imagine how he'd look when saying he was sober.) Once permission was given, Constantine rode day and night and made it to GB to be at his father's side the next few years which was absolutely crucial. Because when Chlorus died at Eboracum (York), his troops supposedly intantly hailed Constantine as his successor and new Emperor, and hey, what's a guy to do if the troops want it? Write to Galerius (who together with Chlorus had been promoted from Caesar to Augustus when Diocletian and Maximian retired) that he's the new Augustus (not Caesar, note) in Dad's place because the troops want it so, that's what. (Galerius was so enraged by this letter that he threatened to burn both the messenger and the message.)

4) Galerius, as Diocletian's Caesar, had been earmarked to succeed him as Augustus from the get go. He was another Balcan origin guy of humble origin with a respectable military career when Diocletian picked him as Caesar and married him to his daughter Valeria, though then Galerius wasn't as successful in his wars with the Persians as Chlorus was in his task to reconquer Britain (see above). Otoh, Galerius was VERY successful in keeping his relationhip with Diocletian smooth. Some later chroniclers blame the Great Persecution (see third vid), the greatest and last of the official anti-Christian measures, solely on Galerius in order to make Diocletian (who when all is said and done even in the Christian era of the Empire was seen as having restored order and being a predecessor of the great Constantine) look better, but to me it looks as if they were both united in their desire to get rid of this weird cult once and for all. By that point, Christianity was already the fasted growing religion within the Empire. Not the only popular and growing faith - see also Sol Invictus, Mithras Cult - but definitely the most popular. The Great Persecution created an according backlash, and this in turn played an important role in Constantine's popular support and success. (Not to mention in a lot of less than forgiving Christians once Constantine had made them the state religion.)

Now, whether or not Galerius was the driver behind the Great Persecution, he definitely was the guy to suggest the two new Caesars once Diocletian prepared for his (and Maximian's) retirement. Because both candidates were Galerius' men through and through - one, (Maximinus) Daza, to be referred to as just Daza in order to avoid confusion with Maximian, was Galerius' nephew, the son of his sister, and the other, Severus, was his bff in the army. (One apparantly with a reputation for hard partying, dancing and drinking, but that might have been slander by Christian writers later.) Now clearly, Diocletian should have seen this would not result in a balanced new Tetrarchy, and that Chlorus would feel ganged up upon, so that even if Chlorus hadn't died and been replaced by his son Endgame!Constantine, it a structure just asking to tear itself apart. But Diocletian still let Galerius get away with this.

5.) Meanwhile, two of the four original Tetrarchs - Maximian and Chlorus - had adult sons ready and more than willing to succeed their fathers, to wit, Maxentius and Constantine, respectively, whom Diocletian pointedly did NOT choose to become Caesars. I've already talked about what Constantine did. Note, however, that having been "forced" by his troops to become an Augustus, Constantine mostly stuck to Britain and Gaul, content to watch everyone else tear themselves apart for a while, until he personally went after the remaining competition. Whereas Maxentius, son of Maximian, didn't wait. Diocletian had pissed off a lot of Romans by his constant disdain for the ancient capital in general and the Senate in particular, and they were more than happy to support young Maxentius in his instant rebellion. Galerius sent Severus to deal with this Italian uprising. Maxentius asked his (retired, but clearly just because Diocletian had asked him to) Dad for help. Maximian obliged. Most of Severus' staff and troops were former Maximian soldiers. The inevitable ensued. After his troops had deserted to Maximian, their old commander, Severus either committed suicide or was killed at Maximian's and Maxentius' orders.

6.) Constantine, while watching all of this from Britain and eating popcorn, had also followed his Dad's footsteps in that upon becoming Emperor, he dumped his either concubine or wife, the mother of his oldest son Crispus (while still keeping Crispus as legit oldest son), and married Maximian's younger daughter Fausta. Of all the wives and daughters, Fausta is one of the few we know a bit more about than their name. And not because she found the True Cross, so imagine ominous music playing here. For now, though, all the action was in Italy, because having defeated Severus, Maxentius wanted Dad to go back to retirement, and Maximian very much wanted to remain Emperor and thought that this had been what their team up had all been about. This resulted in a very unbecoming father/son struggle, allegedly down to literally pulling of the imperial purple cloak. And lo, Maximian's old troops now sided with the younger guy. At this point everyone asked Diocletian to come back and sort out this mess. He did briefly emerge from retirement at an All-Emperor-Meeting to give everyone a stern talking to and managed to talk Maximian into retirement again, plus Constantine while accepted as one of the new Tetrarchy Emperors got booted back to Caesar instead of Augustus, but alas Diocletian also made the same mistake of letting Galerius pick the new Augustus. Who was another bff of his, Licinius. Maxentius (still not regarded as a candidate for official Empordom by anyone) just about exploded, and the long neglected Daza (remember him?), hearing this newbie Licinius had been made Augustus instead of Caesar and that Constantine while booted back to Caesar still had gotten an in, just about had it and rebelled as well. In short, the conference only very temporarily had solved anything, and sure enough, Maximian couldn't resist coming out of retirement again and join the struggle.

7) This is where it starts to get really depressing. Maximian had a fallout with his new son-in-law Constantine, because his way of coming out of retirement for the fatal last time (after having stayed with Constantine and Fausta for a while) was to tell the troops in Gaul that Constantine was dead and promote himself back to Emperor in Constantine's place. This resulted in Constantine (once he heard about this one) showing off his military skills and effortlessly defeat him, and then strongly encouraging his father-in-law to committ suicide. Maximian hanged himself. Much later in Constantine's own reign, this whole story was rewritten into an elaborate plot where Maximian tries to personally assassinate Constantine while staying with him, confiding his intentions to Fausta and Fausta warning her husband, resulting in Maximian being executed, but historians from what I can see go with the less complicated version. Galerius also dies, but of an illness (gleefully reported by Christian writers later to have been extremely painful); his wife, Diocletian's daughter Valeria, and her mother, Diocletian's wife, were with him at the time, which was to prove fatal for the two of them. They went to Daza, who was after all a cousin, but wanted Valeria to marry him. She refused, he confiscated her property, locked her and her mother up, and ignored Diocletian's (still alive) entrities to free them. This happened during the last nine months of Diocletian's life, and then he either died of illness or committed suicide himself. Once Daza himself was dead, Licinius (the last appointed Emperor) ordered both Valeria and her mother, Diocletian's widow, executed in the town square, which they were.

8.) Meanwhile, once Maximian had died, Maxentius rediscovered his filial love and declared war on Constantine to avenge his father's honor (and get rid of Constantine). Big mistake. Constantine marched on Rome, famously had a vision telling him to paint the Chi-Ro (aka the cross) on his soldiers' shields "and in this sign you will conquer", and defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. This, btw, was NOT when Constantine himself became a Christian, or Christianity the state religion. (Constantine still was playing it safe while there were still other emperors around and had coins issued showing him with Sol Invictus, the other popular deity.) During his fight against Maxentius, Constantine had temporarily arranged for a pact with Licinius by marrying him to his sister Constantia (daughter of Theodora, not Helena), but once Maxentius exited the world stage, the Constantine versus Licinius end fight was inevitable. Big spoiler: Constantine won. His oldest son Crispus, btw, distinguished himself greatly as one of the leading commanders and was already very popular with the army.

Sol Invictus

[mildred_of_midgard]

Constantine still was playing it safe while there were still other emperors around and had coins issued showing him with Sol Invictus, the other popular deity.

Not a light read, but one of my all-time favorite books of any genre is Jonathan Bardill's Constantine: Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age. He argues against the traditional interpretation that Constantine was playing it safe and being accommodating to other emperors' religious sensitivities by keeping Sol Invictus on his coins until Licinius was gone, and then going full-out Christianity. Bardill argues that Constantine saw Sol Invictus (a monotheistic cult) and Christianity as compatible based on Christian solar imagery, and he was trying to syncretize the two. But eventually Constantine supposedly realized a better way of making his imagery acceptable to both pagans and Christians was by not specifying that this was Sol Invictus, because the Christians were not cool with actually *depicting* God, nor with treating monotheistic religions as equivalent. So Constantine gradually dropped the Sol Invictus imagery (even while Licinius was alive), but continued to syncretize pagan and Christian solar imagery even after Licinius' death (e.g. the statue in Constantinople), and Christians were supposedly okay with this as long as he didn't *say* this was the Sol Invictus cult.

I'm not enough of an expert to have an informed opinion beyond what this book has told me, but the book is heavily footnoted and draws heavily on the contemporary iconographical evidence; in fact, it covers a lot of areas but I personally treat it primarily as an art history book. That's why it remains one of the ~40 undigitized books I own in physical form, because it's difficult to digitize all those images and keep the original quality. But given the number of times I've wanted to either reread this book or look something up in it since I lost my ability to read physical books, I should probably acquire a paperback copy, and digitize that one just for the text.

Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy

[cahn]

Thank you!! Both the videos and these posts have been amazingly helpful. Also, I am no longer wondering why I couldn't keep track of all these people in an AU, because there are a lot of them! Who are related in unexpected ways! Around point (4) or (5) I started having to draw diagrams with numbers and letters to keep everyone straight, which was very helpful to me (not least because I'd keep realizing I'd put names in the wrong place, so it was useful to fix my comprehension mistakes... Maybe I should do this for all the historical fandoms...)

and in Dorothy Sayers' play

Me: Wait, I own that play! But I can't remember anything about it!
Me: *goes to look, finds it right there on the bookshelf where I thought it was, flips through it*
Me: Apparently I... never read this play? Huh.

Well, I've put it on the very-long queue :P
(I haven't read Waugh's novel either, but that is farther down on the queue...)

As Mike Duncan said in the "History of Rome" podcast, "hostage is such an ugly word".

Hee!

Now clearly, Diocletian should have seen this would not result in a balanced new Tetrarchy, and that Chlorus would feel ganged up upon

So this must be one of the two errors Mildred talks about?

Constantine, while watching all of this from Britain and eating popcorn

I laughed out loud at this!

and married Maximian's younger daughter Fausta. Of all the wives and daughters, Fausta is one of the few we know a bit more about than their name. And not because she found the True Cross, so imagine ominous music playing here.

First, hee!
Second: So... according to my diagram/family tree, Constantine married his aunt-by-marriage? (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

but alas Diocletian also made the same mistake of letting Galerius pick the new Augustus.

Is this the second mistake?

Maxentius (still not regarded as a candidate for official Empordom by anyone) just about exploded, and the long neglected Daza (remember him?)

Heeee! I only remember him because he was on my diagram and I was like, hey, whatever happened to this guy?

Gosh, that was... something... about Valeria and her mom :(

Constantine marched on Rome, famously had a vision telling him to paint the Chi-Ro (aka the cross) on his soldiers' shields "and in this sign you will conquer", and defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge.

Ah, right! I'd forgotten but I'd heard of that before (though I didn't know any of the context of whom he was fighting).

Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy

[mildred_of_midgard]

Maybe I should do this for all the historical fandoms..

I frequently draw out genealogies by hand so I can keep people straight! I keep telling myself I should look for software so 1) I don't have to strain my back (writing by hand is hard), 2) nobody has to read my handwriting!

Constantine married his aunt-by-marriage? (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Hey! Unrelated, does anyone know if the Catholic Church permits that these days? I was researching yesterday for my fanfic if you can marry your late husband's uncle. :P

Is this the second mistake?

Sorry for lack of clarity! The two mistakes are 1) mass persecution of Christians, which created a lot of bad PR (martyrs!) and backfired, 2) almost every single thing he did re the succession, which resulted in civil wars.

I'd forgotten but I'd heard of that before (though I didn't know any of the context of whom he was fighting).

I also learned about that so far back I don't even remember, and then had an "Aha!" moment when I started studying this period.

As Mike Duncan said in the "History of Rome" podcast, "hostage is such an ugly word".

Hee!

And as I stated in my write-up, almost every single thing one historian claims, another historian will contradict. William Leadbetter, author of Galerius and the Will of Diocletian, which I need to read cover-to-cover at some point, argues:

The Origo Constantini Imperatoris, generally an excellent and reliable source, notes that Constantine was "a hostage with Diocletian and Galerius" (obses apud Diocletianum et Galerium). The implication here is that Constantine was kept close to Diocletian, not because he was trusted (as Lactantius implies) but because he was not. That Constantine was a hostage at all, however, is highly implausible. Constantius had many more children who might be "brought up" at the courts of Diocletian and Galerius in order to ensure their father's continued loyalty, or at least, acquiescence. There is no suggestion in the sources that this was the case. Moreover, no equivalent arrangement existed for Maxentius, the son of Maximian.

Now, I could argue against both of those. One, if you assume the father cares about all his children, you only need one hostage. If you assume he treats his children as interchangeable and he has "spares", then, yeah, you need more than one. History shows that how parents react to children being held hostage can vary widely, from "Okay, I'll do anything!" to "I can always make more!" (Though some of the latter are probably apocryphal.) And if Diocletian trusts Maximian without a hostage, I argue that they may have had a special relationship that didn't apply to Constantius, come on. :P

What Leadbetter thinks is really going on:

As a vir militaris of some experience, and the son of a Caesar, he might lgoically have considered himself to be a candidate for the purple. Others did not, Diocletian amongst them...Constantine's position had its own clear explanation. He was a mature man, holding a senior rank. He had served with Diocletian and Galerius in Egypt, Mesopotamia and on the Danube, but was no mere officer cadet, climbing the ranks of the service. He was an imperial bastard, who might reasonably expect responsibility and command. Significantly, his active service was always in the immediate entourage of either Diocletian or Galerius. He never had an independent command: Constantine had entered Palestine in 295 with Diocletian; had served then with Galerius in Armenia and Mesopotamia; thence went to the Danube, again with Galerius; and finally served with Diocletian as a tribune amongst the soldiery of the Nicomedian court. It is, then, plausible to conclude that, if he were obses at all, it was against his own ambition, on the political principle of keeping one's friends close and one's potential enemies even closer.

But Roger Rees has a third take:

It is perhaps less easy to accommodate the virtual house-arrest the Anonymous Valesianus says Constantinue experienced under Diocletian and Galerius, unless we assume that in fact Constantine was being trained for office by Diocletian rather than kept from it.

I could pull out almost any sentence in Selena's primer, or those videos, and do this. We know almost nothing!

Some footnotes:

Lactantius: I notice you asked about him and we haven't covered him yet. Lactantius was a major early Christian writer, a contemporary of Diocletian and Constantine, who wrote works of (Christian) history explaining how persecutors of Christianity (esp. Diocletian and Galerius) came to bad ends because God punished them and emperors who embraced Christianity (Constantine) flourished. He is one of our few sources, one of our most major sources, for Diocletian, and you can see why he's not a source we can take at face value. I can't stress this enough: we can't take any source at face value! It's so bad, it's a million times worse than Fritzian historiography. We have some panegyrics, some Christian polemics, a handful of less contentious narratives, and...detective work.

Diocletian's death: Selena and I talked about this in the thread on her blog, where she mentioned that Duncan thinks Diocletian might have committed suicide after watching his life's work disintegrate before his eyes. Accoridng to Rees, the roughly contemporary sources go like this:

Lactantius claims Diocletian starved himself for grief that his reign had not been appreciated (II 6 42.1-3); the anonymous epitomator speaks of suicide by poison, prompted by fear of Constantine and Licinius (II 4 39.7); Eusebius writes of a fatal condition (II 8 8.Appendix 3); Aurelius Victor makes no mention of Diocletian's end at all; and Eutropius gives no details, but speaks of his death and deification in terms which suggest neither suicide nor illness (II 2 9.238). There can be no compromise between the various sources, and the reliability of each can be challenged on some ground or another (Barnes 1982 31-2); but in particular, if either of the accounts of his suicide were to be favoured, there would be significant implications for appreciation of wider politics.

We don't even know what year he died in. Imagine not knowing what year Fritz died in!

Another thing we don't know: what is up with the Tetrarchy? The word "tetrarch" meant something different in the ancient world, and the word was never used by contemporaries to describe the structure of the Roman empire under Diocletian. It wasn't applied to Diocletian et al. until the 1870s, and its usage didn't take off until the 1930s. At that point, everyone started using it like they knew what it meant and what it meant could definitely be applied to Diocletian's reign. But the structure of the government at the top changed constantly, and what we've done is decide that one period is the "norm" and everything else is a deviation from it. And we've also decided that we know what Diocletian was doing and that that was being radically innovative by creating a tetrarchy along specific lines. Only...it seems to be a whole lot more complicated, and many interpretations can be placed on the evidence.

...You see the theme that is emerging here. This is why I like 18th century history, there's more to work with. And every so often over the last few years, I've fantasized about writing an article on historiography called "What 18th century history can teach us about ancient history" and it will come down to "Stop stating everything as fact!" When we have a plethora of sources, we see that even things that we think are well attested turn out to be wrong. And when we have almost no sources and they're all unreliable, we should stop making statements about things like people's personalities with so much confidence. (This is a huge problem with Alexander the Great, omfg.) I once read an intro to a book on ancient Athens where the author said, "Okay, sure our sources are unreliable, but if they're as bad as some people have argued, then we have no business doing ancient history at all," and I went, "Well, you have no business doing it the way you're doing it!" I am tired of watching ancient history be written like this:

Historian 1: X is true.
Historian 2: Historian 1 is an idiot, the opposite of X is true.

when I personally know what the source for each claim is and neither historian has any business being that confident! It's one thing when you have to write an intro to the subject for cahn in 2,000 words or less, but another when you have a whole book at your disposal and are going "Historian 1 is an idiot, because I choose to take everything Plutarch wrote centuries later as gospel!"

Okay, rant over, but the historiographical situation re Diocletian tends to bring out these rants from me.

Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy

[mildred_of_midgard]

I should also point out that this means that if I myself say something, anything, like "Diocletian grew cabbages," what I am saying is that this is what historians put in their books based on what the sources say. It's not like saying Fritz grew fruit at Sanssouci, which we can confidently believe. You would have to do a certain amount of research to decide what confidence level to give this. But since this is not the Classics salon (yet), we're just going to tell you things and you're going to understand that each one may or may not be true, even more than usual. I mean, we're kind of used to changing our mind about things in 18th century salon, but here we have to start from the assumption that everything is tentative and most things we will simply never know.

Some things we do know! Like British coinage starts showing a third Augustus around the time sources tell us that Britain revolted and made a local guy, Carausius, emperor. Which tells us *something* was going on politically. But the chronology is uncertain, and so all attempts to reconstruct a military strategy are necessarily hazy.

Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy

[mildred_of_midgard]

I was researching yesterday for my fanfic if you can marry your late husband's uncle. :P

Update: As of 1983, you can (without a dispensation)! That's why it was so hard to find: I kept finding sources that were old enough that I wasn't sure the same laws still applied.

Constantinian Aftermath

[selenak]

9.) And now it gets gruesome and controversial. Seemingly out of the blue, Constantine (now the last and only Emperor standing; he's already hosted the Council of Nicea and started to move his capital to Byzantium) has his son Crispus executed, and then his wife Fausta, the later in a very brutal way, by having her boiled alive by having her locked in her bath which was then overheated. What happened? Depending on the chronicler and historian, either:

a) Crispus and Fausta had an affair, and Constantine found out

or

b) Fausta, seeing Crispus as competition for her own sons or because she wants him but he doesn't want her, accused him of raping her, and Constantine, never having read any version of the Phaedra myth, it seems, first falls for it and kills his son, then, finding out the truth, orders Fausta dead

or
c) paranoid Constantine was jealous of Crispus' popularity with the troops and suspected him of wanting to topple him.

Now, as much as b) sounds like the plot of Phaedra and thus fake, apparantly one thing historians agree on is that Constantine between the death of Crispus and the death of Fausta met with his mother Helena. In the audio series Caesar!, the Constantine episode, "The Maker of all Things" does have Helena convince Constantine that Crispus was innocent and Fausta is a lying liar, but they also use this last mother-son meeting for another turn, to which, Constantine from using Christianity and Christian support pragmatically (because Christians are a big part of his power base) to, use it to atone for what he did. He needs someone to forgive the unforgivable. The dialogue goes something like this:

C: I want you to go to Jerusalem for me. Go to the place where the Nazarene was executed. I will pay for a church there.

H: It's going to take more than building a church, my son.

C: Christianity will now be not only a legal religion in the Empire, but the only religion. I myself will acknowledge the Christian God not just as God but the only God.

H: When do I start?

The series Caesar! does not use Latin at any point except in this episode at the end, when Constantine, for the rest of the episode a hard nosed pragmatist, after all is said and done and the report of Fausta's death has arrived monologues that he still loves Crispus and Fausta and he only sees one way out to live with himself, and then he starts with: "Pater noster quis est in caelum, sanctificetur nomen tuis" etc, the Our Father in Latin.

Re: Constantinian Aftermath

[cahn]

WOW. *blinks* I don't even know what to say to that. (Except that I can see how everyone wants to know what his conversation with Helena was like, because I do too! Thanks for the Caesar! version!)

Re: Constantinian Aftermath

[selenak]

More Constantinian aftermath. because to be fair to good old Diocletian, Constantine fucked up arranging a neat succession even more.

So: Constantine rules uncontested, changes the Roman world, also uncontested, - there are few Emperors who have made that big and irrevocably a change as having Christianity go from Great Persecution to State Religion, as his nephew will find out - , moves the Empire's capital to Byzantium, which gets renamed into Constantinope and gets a massive building program. The Nicean Council happens, and speaking of that: Sure, his dream of One Emperor, One Religion is already having to deal with the fact Christians, no longer persecuted, love nothing better than arguing with other Christians, and Arius vs Athanasius won't be the last schism threatening row, not to mention that one of his younger sons is an Arian and another follows Athanasius-like Orthodoxy, but hey. Nobody would dispute his greatness.

Then he inexplicably decides it's been too long since the last war with the Persian Empire, makes noises in that direction which are replied to, and dies, famously finally getting baptized on his deathbed (by a bishop named Eusebius, who is an Arian, which becomes a tad inconvenient later because the Arian heresy is seen as heresy etc.). Note what he HASN'T done: said which of his three remaining sons (after poor Crispus' demise, sniff) is supposed to be the next Augustus. Instead, he made them all three Caesars. And because three's a crowd and not big enough, he also made two of his nephews Caesars. Reminder: Helena had just the one kid from Constantius Chlorus, Constantine, but Theodora had many, boys and girls both.) We therefore have Fausta's sons Constantine (II), Constantius (II) and Constans plus two nephews all of equal rank (i.e. appointed Caesar) when Constantine (I and Great) dies.

Next, we have "The massacre of the princes", which is just what it sounds like. The son who is closest to Constantinople when Constantine dies, Constantius, races back (all the sons are either supposed to go ff fighting Persians or leading the troops in other corners of the Empire) and organizes the funeral. And then, depending on the historian, either Constantius organizes the death of every single male offspring of the Chlorus/Theodora marriage and the sons of said offsprings except for the two youngest (Gallus and Julian, who are very young children), or some soldiers do it completely on their own initiative because they hate the Theodora line of the family that much. (Three guesses as to which version becomes more widely believed.) The two survivors of said massacre, little Gallus and little Julian, aren't allowed to remain with their surviving female relations but are exiled to Cappadocia (for their own protection, of course, because Theodora's descendants are so hated).

Now there are three, and if anyone thinks the fact they are three full brothers and have all three been raised as Christians, think again. It's brother vs brother vs brother. Constans offs big brother Constantine. Constantius would have killed Constans but doesn't have to, because a new player, one Magnentius who thinks he wants to be Emperor, too, enters the scene, and fights and defeats Constants. This leaves Constantius with an opportunity (kill Magnentius in the name of brother avenging) and a problem (because the Empire is still too big to be ruled alone). Now, in theory, he could accept Magnentius as a fellow Emperor, of course. But in practice, Constantius' own sole claim to the throne rests on the fact he's the son of Constantine the Great. If he justifies it by bloodline, he can't accept any other Emperors who aren't related to Constantine the Great, and he's just made sure there aren't many relations left. So he decides to make the older of the two surviving cousins, Gallus, his Caesar, and even marries him to his (Constantius') sister. This works for a while; Magnentius is defeated, in one of the bloodiest battles of this latest Roman Civil War (supposedly 50 000 dead soldiers), Gallus rules a part of the Empire. Incidentally, all these dead well trained soldiers mean that the Roman armies start to suffer from serious losses, and there's a reason right there as to why it won't last undivided much longer and why invading barbarians are just around the corner.

Of course, Gallus ruling doesn't last long just because he's now not just a cousin but a brother-in-law, and soon it's Constantius vs Gallus. Gallus' wife heads off to Milan to mediate between husband and brother but dies en route, and then all bets are off. For some reason, Gallus is stupid enough to believe the story that Constantius plans to elevate him from Caesar to Augustus if he shows up in Milan as well. No such thing happens; Gallus gets executed.

This means young Julian, hitherto only noticeable as the most bookish member of the not large anymore family, is the sole other survivor, because Constantius doesn't have any sons. This means he now gets to be appointed Caesar, oh joy. To everyone's surprise, Julian - with zero military and political training because remember, he and Gallus grew up in genteel housearrest in Cappadokia - actually proves himself to be good at soldiering and ratches up impressive victories in Gaul. Impressive enough to get paranoid Constantius thinking dark thoughts, and yes, next it's Julian vs Constantius, but then Constantius actually dies of natural causes before their forces can meet on the battlefield, and young Julian becomes Emperor. And instantly reveals he has very INTERESTING religious ideas. Yes, he's Julian the Apostate, and he'll only rule two years before dying as the last member of the short lived Constantinian dynasty.

Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer

[mildred_of_midgard]

Thanks to Selena giving you the who's who rundown, I am now free to give you the fandom primer! I.e. why this is my fandom, and what is fanon and what is canon.

First and foremost, everything derives from a single fact: my fandom source is Gibbon's Decline and Fall.

Gibbon, as you probably know, is 18th century. This means almost everything he says has been challenged or even refuted by modern scholars. Hell, much of what selenak says has been at least challenged by modern scholars. The sources are so brief, biased (in one direction or the other), and otherwise unreliable that for almost every fact you will find a historian confidently stating, another scholar will claim the opposite, and a third will point out that the so-called "fact" depends on a single unreliable narrative source, or is contradicted by non-narrative sources or archaeological evidence.

For example, did the junior emperors marry the senior emperors' daughters as soon as they were appointed junior emperors, or did the marriages take place several years earlier and the senior emperors appointed their sons-in-law whom they'd had plenty of opportunity to observe at close range? You can make a case either way! Was Diocletian's reign really that sharp of a break with his predecessors? Has the extent of the 3rd century crisis and the extent to which his reign represents a "recovery" been overstated? Whose idea was it to retire, and when? Was there actually a conference at Carnuntum? Did Diocletian actually not like Rome? Was Maximian Caesar before he was Augustus? Did Diocletian divide up the empire amongst the tetrarchs? If so, how and when and how many times? And so on and so forth. For most things, we just don't know! And even where modern scholars have achieved a consensus, it took a lot of work and deciding what evidence to give more weight to.

So if you want to write a primer, you have to pick some things to state as fact (like Selena did), otherwise the summary will be impenetrable, and if you want to write a fanfic, you should go with Gibbon's take actually have a whole lot of flexibility!

The beauty of Gibbon's take is that he will give detailed personality descriptions of the people involved; modern historians correctly state that this is absolutely historically irresponsible. His description of Diocletian, for example:

It would not be easy to persuade us of the cowardice of a soldier of fortune who acquired and preserved the esteem of the legions, as well as the favour of so many warlike princes. Yet even calumny is sagacious enough to discover and to attack the most vulnerable part. The valour of Diocletian was never found inadequate to his duty, or to the occasion; but he appears not to have possessed the daring and generous spirit of a hero, who courts danger and fame, disdains artifice, and boldly challenges the allegiance of his equals. His abilities were useful rather than splendid - a vigorous mind improved by the experience and study of mankind; dexterity and application in business; a judicious mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and rigour; profound dissimulation under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and, above all, the great art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition, and of colouring his ambition with the most specious pretences of justice and public utility.

And Maximian:

Maximian was born a peasant, and, like Aurelian, in the territory of Sirmium. Ignorant of Letters, careless of laws, the rusticity of his appearance and manners still betrayed in the most elevated fortune the meanness of his extraction. War was the only art which he professed. In a long course of service he had distinguished himself on every frontier of the empire; and though his military talents were formed to obey rather than to command, though, perhaps, he never attained the skill of a consummate general, he was capable, by his valour, constancy, and experience, of executing the most arduous undertakings. Nor were the vices of Maximian less useful to his benefactor. Insensible to pity, and fearless of consequences, he was the ready instrument of every act of cruelty which the policy of that artful prince might at once suggest and disclaim. As soon as a bloody sacrifice had been offered to prudence or to revenge, Diocletian, by his seasonable intercession, saved the remaining few whom he had never designed to punish, gently censured the severity of his stern colleague, and enjoyed the comparison of a golden and an iron age, which was universally applied to their opposite maxims of government. Notwithstanding the difference of their characters, the two emperors maintained, on the throne, that friendship which they had contracted in a private station. The haughty, turbulent spirit of Maximian, so fatal afterwards to himself and to the public peace, was accustomed to respect the genius of Diocletian, and confessed the ascendant of reason over brutal violence. From a motive either of pride or superstition, the two emperors assumed the titles, the one of Jovius, the other of Herculius. Whilst the motion of the world (such was the language of their venal orators) was maintained by the all-seeing wisdom of Jupiter, the invincible arm of Hercules purged the earth from monsters and tyrants.

For historical purposes, all you can say is, "I mean, maybe?" Some of it might be true, but the level of confidence is just way overstated. For fanfic purposes, however, all I can say is, "Ship them with great shippiness!" :D

Another side-effect of me encountering them via Gibbon is that first I got a description of the lead-up to Diocletian, which meant a whole lot of rival candidates for the purple trying to kill each other. The thing Selena described where Maximian and his son Maxentius allegedly wrestled over the purple cloak? A hundred years earlier, you had two brothers, Caracalla and Geta, being co-emperors and living like this:

On their arrival at Rome, they immediately divided the vast extent of the Imperial palace. No communication was allowed between their apartments: the doors and passages were diligently fortified, and guards posted and relieved with the same strictness as in a besieged place. The emperors met only in public, in the presence of their afflicted mother; and each surrounded by a numerous train of armed followers.

Then Caracalla has his younger brother Geta killed so he can rule alone!

So of *course* when Diocletian appointed Maximian co-emperor, I was yelling, "No, don't do it! Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'm several hundred pages in, and this never ends well!"

And I read Diocletian's entire reign waiting for Maximian to betray Diocletian...and he...didn't? Despite having the kind of headstrong and domineering personality where you'd totally expect him to? (See what happened post-retirement.)

And then he (somehow) got Maximian to retire! And then, somehow, even though being a retired emperor should make you entirely powerless, and Maximian had everything to lose and nothing to gain by agreeing, he did it again! Despite the fact that it didn't last--even that just proved to me that Diocletian had some kind of in-person influence over Maximian, because Maximian clearly had the kind of personality that did not want to give up power for one minute. Which made it all the more impressive.

Because I was reading, going, "Yeah, okay, I see that on a political level Diocletian did not have the whole going into retirement and smoothing over the succession thing down, but on a personal level he clearly he had some kind of hold over Maximian! Tell me more!"

Because my entire ship here is based on the complementary skills and personalities that allow them to do things together that they couldn't do alone (I loved their good-cop bad-cop act as described by Gibbon), plus the absolute loyalty. It's very much the dynamic of the Duc de Belle-Isle and his brother. In fact, you could call Maximian Diocletian's "other self". ;) A contemporary panegyric pretty much did:

[Your brotherhood] even conquers your difference in age, and with care for each other renders equals the older and younger...For although you are different in age, most sacred emperors, we understand you have a twin accord...Neither of you favours his own nature more; each wishes to be what his brother is.

This is also, cahn, one of the ships where I have always imagined loyalty gestures like kneeling, swearing, etc. Like even leaving aside the part where Diocletian became emperor and thus everyone was performing gestures of submission, it's impossible for me to believe there weren't some special gestures between those two.

ALSO. From the same panegyric, which focuses on Diocletian and Maximian meeting in Milan after years apart ruling different parts of the empire, describes the end of the meeting where they had to go their separate ways again:

What were your feelings at that time, what were your expressions! How incapable were your eyes of disguising the evidence of emotion! Of course, you looked back frequently, and this is not an empty fiction made up about you--you exchanged such assurances since you intended soon to return to see each other.

Modern scholar Rees describes this as "the presentation of the Dyarchs' meeting in Milan almost as a lovers' tryst."

Note for historiographic purposes, there's no reason (that I know of) to believe this was an eyewitness report, and it was definitely propaganda meant to be over the top. But for fandom purposes, it's catnip!

Also, I should point out that, yes, they spent most of their reigns separated by half of Europe and only meeting up a couple of times and they retired separately (Italy for Maximian, modern-day Split, Croatia for Diocletian). So my personal headcanon has always been to ship them non-romantically, but like Karl XII and Görtz, or Belle-Isle and his brother: doing things together that they couldn't do separately, trusting each other, and bringing a lot of intensity to their working relationship, but not having a typical romantic or sexual relationship.

HOWEVER. I am deeply grateful to my mystery author for this line:

When you said we’d retire together, I thought you meant TOGETHER.

Because it is giving me more traditional shippy feelings like whoa! GUH. <3

Also, speaking of retirement, Diocletian's palace still stands! This is where he grew his cabbages in his post-retirement life (again quoting Gibbon):

His answer to Maximian is deservedly celebrated. He was solicited by that restless old man to reassume the reins of government and the Imperial purple. He rejected the temptation with a smile of pity, calmly observing that, if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he had planted with his own hands at Salona, he should no longer be urged to relinquish the enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power.

Sadly, when I was in Croatia, I hadn't yet discovered my love for Diocletian, so I did not go to Split. Actually, it was that trip (which was largely to Italy) that caused me to think, "You know, my Roman Empire history is non-existent, I should fix that," and as soon as I came back, or maybe even on the last couple days, I started reading Gibbon. Then I immediately wanted to go back! But of course I haven't.

Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer

[selenak]

Here is a video tour through Diocletian's palace in Split. Incidentally, the APs and I wanted to go to Croatia in May 2020, which was nixed for obvious reasons, and we might try again in 2023. If so, I'll put Split in the list and make some photos for my friend who is a scholar of the the Katte family the Tetrarchy.

Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hahahaha! Well, I wouldn't go so far as "scholar" with the Tetarchy, ahem, but pictures definitely appreciated! <333

Where else in Croatia are you thinking of going?

Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer

[mildred_of_midgard]

When you said we’d retire together, I thought you meant TOGETHER.

Btw, I still have a tab open to this line in my browser, and I keep rereading it. Turns out it's my favorite line. <3

Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer

[cahn]

So, um. Since we're discussing this fic, my reading (once I went back to read it, armed with my New Knowledge, and leave another comment :) ) was that it wasn't actually (AU)Maximian who wrote that line, but Theodora and Fausta writing it for Maximian as their conspiratorial plot to get them together. (which I thought was AMAZING, btw.) I got the impression from your comment that this wasn't your reading?

But of course I suppose they were only writing what he was thinking anyway, which is why it worked! And it's a GREAT line either way, possibly my favorite too <3333

Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer

[mildred_of_midgard]

No, that's my reading too! It's wildly out of character for Maximian. (Or at least, you know, my reading of same.) But the POINT is that SOMEONE wrote ME, a Diocletian/Maximian shipper, that exchange, and it's been giving me FEELS all week. !!! I don't know who would know me so well, but we'll find out soon and be very surprised. :P

Much of the reason it's giving me so many feels is that I always *wanted* them to retire together, and sometimes I would go off and imagine that they did. And now that line has given my imagination full rein and it's galloping off.

I actually always imagined historical Diocletian might have been down for it and that it was Maximian who was extremely not interested. Which is entirely consistent with this fic, and, you know, now that I think about it, the fact that Diocletian falls for it here (assuming our reading is correct)...he wants to believe. More awwww!

Ah, wait, now that I reread my AO3 comment, I see what you mean: I wrote, "Maximian breaking out the Diocles name of their youth." Okay, this is where I have to explain how I write comments: for the same reason I can't write summaries (same cognitive process, same brain noping out), comments are excruciating unless I liveblog my reactions as I go. Normally I just paste the liveblog reaction into the box and that is my comment, but this time I decided to try cobbling together the reactions into something resembling a normal-person comment. (ETA: This is also how the Prussian Doll comment got written, if anyone is wondering.) So yes, when I hit the "Diocles" line, I had not yet gotten to the part that I feel is OOC, and so I attributed "Diocles" to Maximian. And that part is entirely in-character, I maintain. :P It had never actually occurred to me Maximian might do that, but now I totally think he did, in the same way that I think we can all agree Fredersdorf sometimes called Fritz "Fritz". <3

But of course I suppose they were only writing what he was thinking anyway, which is why it worked!

ETA: Honestly, my take, now that I've given it more thought (previously I stopped at, no, Maximian would never), is that they were writing what *Diocletian* was thinking, which is why it worked. Here's my take:

Diocles

As noted, I totes think this is in-character and probably got Diocletian in the right mood to hear what he wanted to hear.

remember when it was just the two of us, being no names under Aurelian? Those were the days.

I mean, not that Maximian can't have complex feelings, and maybe that's what our mystery author intended? But it strikes me as more plausible for Diocletian, the voluntarily retired and exhausted by years of stress, than Maximian the power-at-all-costs. I have a hard time buying this, and I think it says a lot about Diocletian that he did.

Look, maybe I overreacted to certain things

Again, not that Maximian can't ever apologize, so this could be what he's thinking, buuuuut...Who really wants to hear this?

but it comes down to the subject line. I do. I really do.

Well, *I* like to think this is true, and I hope it is, but not as much as Diocletian would like to think it's true. :P

When you said we’d retire together, I thought you meant TOGETHER.

So, upon reflection, I love the idea that this may have been how Maximian got talked into retirement in the first place, and then when he realized that wasn't going to be the case, he went, "Well, fuck this!" and decided there was no reason to be retired at all. And I could see the two of them not communicating this at aaallll. BOYS!

But my first reading was Diocletian silently hoping that Maximian would be more interested in hanging out, and Maximian being totally unable to tolerate retirement and being solely interested in getting back in power, and Diocletian being silently disappointed. And then he's so relieved to get the message that Maximian does actually miss him, that he doesn't question the "those were the days" line. (I think the Diocletian who bought "those were the days" from Maximian is the same Diocletian who let Galerius make the succession arrangements, i.e. no one can be "on" all the time. :P)

But either way, for this exchange to work at all, they have to have had the kind of relationship where one, it would be plausible for Maximian to want to continue a personal relationship after retiring, and two, Diocletian would want to hear it. Which is giving me more traditional shippy feelings, because let's just say that for all I miss working under Best Boss Ever (the one now at Facebook), and I want him to found a company so I can work with him again, we are not going to have an exchange like this, not even if someone hacks our emails. ;)

Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer

[cahn]

Ahahaha okay so for this person who has only met these people these post, basically, I didn't think (or realize?) the text was out of character for Maximian, exactly -- like, I think in the world of the AU he DID miss Diocletan. But I do think sending an email like that would have been out of character, because that would have been, like, communication! Which is where our girls step in :D

(I think the Diocletian who bought "those were the days" from Maximian is the same Diocletian who let Galerius make the succession arrangements, i.e. no one can be "on" all the time. :P)

I mean, in this AU the Diocletian who let Galerius make the succession arrangements was arguably the one who was boffing him, which honestly I think is brilliant on the part of the writer, it posits a reason for him making those not-great decisions, and at the same time gives Maximian a motivation as well for suddenly throwing his weight behind Maxentius.

My reading of the AU is that explicit Diocletan/Maximian (in AU) was how Maximian got talked into retirement in the first place (per Lactantius's blog), then post-retirement, there MAY have been some sort of Diocletian/Galerius hijinks, but regardless of whether anything DID happen (which I think it probably did, because as Maximian says, Diocletian never denied it! Now, perhaps, like we think may have been the case with Fritz and Fredersdorf, he maybe didn't do much, but emotional affair, sure!) Maximian thought something happened, which is how he decided yeah screw this retirement for Diocletan thing! And then both of them are too mad at each other to take the first step, but once Theodora/Fausta do, they're both like "...yeah, I miss you :( "

(But the great thing here is that some of my evidence is from Lactantius' blog, and both you and Selena would be the first to tell me that Lactantius can't be trusted as far as one could throw him... ;) )

ETA: I wanted to reply to this as well:
Normally I just paste the liveblog reaction into the box and that is my comment, but this time I decided to try cobbling together the reactions into something resembling a normal-person comment.

This is basically what I do as well :) So, like, if one was wondering what was in that liveblog mentioned in I waited until she woke up to read it so I could liveblog my reactions at her in our time-honored Yuletide tradition (she did hers at me yesterday), it basically became my "Prussian Doll" comments, with more explanatory remarks added :)