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Diocletian’s accession to power in 284 is an important watershed in the conventional chronology of the Roman Empire, marking the end of the Augustan Principate and the beginning of a new form of autocratic monarchy labeled by modern historians the Dominate, or simply as the beginning of the Later Roman Empire, or in French, as the transition from Le Haut-Empire to Le Bas-Empire. Adherents of the “World of Late Antiquity” school trace Late Antiquity as far back as to the period around the year 150. Oxford University in its wisdom also used to designate 284 as marking the beginning of its “Modern History Schools” syllabus!

My own view is that, though Diocletian’s rule marks an important break with the past, it also represents the culmination of trends that can be traced back to the beginning of the Principate, including the sidelining of the senatorial aristocracy, which, however, was reversed in the West under Constantine, as is shown in Chapter 3.