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cahnI'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.)
Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2022-12-27 09:40 am (UTC)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
Date: 2022-12-27 04:25 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2022-12-27 10:02 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2022-12-27 10:53 pm (UTC)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
Okay, rant over, but the historiographical situation re Diocletian tends to bring out these rants from me.
Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2022-12-28 03:22 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2022-12-29 03:22 pm (UTC)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.
Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2022-12-29 07:29 pm (UTC)Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2023-01-04 05:58 am (UTC)What did it mean in the ancient world? (I just read it as "four people ruling.")
Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2023-01-04 04:07 pm (UTC)"Tetrarchs" were independent rulers of portions of a kingdom, most famously post-Herodian Judaea, divided between surviving sons. Later in the century, Pliny the Elder described tetrarchies as regnorum instar singulae et in regna contribuuntur ("each is the equivalent of a kingdom, and also part of one"). But at no point was the term ever employed to refer to collegial power: a "tetrach" was not one of four rulers but the ruler of a quarter of a discrete region. It is hardly surprising to find that Diocletian, his colleagues and successors were never referred to in antiquity as "tetrachs"...
It was Edward Gibbon who, in magnificent and laudatory prose, identified the "new empire" as an entirely new system for the mediation of power. Gibbon's Diocletian is a noble prince and wise politician, a man, above all, of reason and moderation...Gibbon's Diocletian is a man of reason and his arrangements are to be comprehended as the constructions of a rational man. Gibbon's political analysis of Diocletian's entirely sensible, indeed clockwork, reform of the imperial office has been deeply influential and still provokes responses. It was not, however, Gibbon who called it a "Tetrarchy".
Indeed, the term does not seem to have been devised for this purpose until the 1870s.
Really, I should just nominate Gibbon's Decline and Fall as the fandom and Diocletian and Maximian as the characters. :P
In the *exact same way* as my love of Hannibal came from a 19th century German historian (and you know how they can be), Theodor Mommsen, and when I started reading modern works, I had to give the same internal sigh and go, "Okay, fannish brain is separate from scholarly brain"
Oh hi Fritz.Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2023-01-04 06:11 pm (UTC)I really need to read Gibbon some day. I only know quotes, I confess.
Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2023-01-04 06:37 pm (UTC)How could Shaw help falling for Mommsen's Caesar, I ask!
So I had to give the people around Hannibal a bit more credit and him a bit less after reading more modern takes.
Mommsen also manages to produce opinions like this, which I still remember 12 years later:
The good stock of the Latin nation had long since wholly disappeared from Rome. It is implied in the very nature of the case, that a capital loses its municipal and even its national stamp more quickly than any subordinate community. There the upper classes speedily withdraw from urban public life, in order to find their home rather in the state as a whole than in a single city; there are inevitably concentrated the foreign settlers, the fluctuating population of travellers for pleasure or business, the mass of the indolent, lazy, criminal, financially and morally bankrupt, and for that very reason cosmopolitan, rabble.
I need to reread Gibbon, I keep meaning to and then I get sucked into something else. He's pretty great if you take him for what he is, an 18th century Englishman breaking new ground and making a lot of mistakes along the way. (I really liked Mommsen too. I really liked Mommsen, to the point where he's been one of my motivations to learn German! I just had to adjust some opinions based on new evidence, as I did with Gibbon.)
Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2023-01-06 06:23 am (UTC)Gibbon's Decline and Fall was something I always meant to read and didn't, during the period in my life where I would actually have carried it out and possibly also fallen in love. Maybe someday!