13d: Roman Totalitarianism

Plagued by civil war, famine, and economic chaos, the Roman Empire was barely hanging on. Slowly the frontiers stabilized - more from lack of outside pressure than from anything the Romans did right. Stronger emperors like Aurelian (270-275 AD) were able to suppress rebellious subjects in Gaul and Syria. Yet the Principate, like the Republic three centuries earlier, was effectively broken. The Roman Empire was too large and its frontiers too long to be ruled effectively. The government had no time to pay attention to nice old Republican customs like Senate meetings and annual elections. Citizenship was likewise a thing of the past. If you were wealthy and powerful, like the honestiores, you told others what to do. If not, you were one of the humiliores, and did as you were told, or else. Ironically, this distinction between "better" and "worse" citizens echoed the old patrician-plebeian divisions of Rome's earliest days. Those Romans who still embraced the mos maiorum blamed the Christians for breaking the pax deorum and causing the empire's ills. They found the Christian tendency to endure even the harshest persecution even more aggravating. The Christians themselves, while not openly opposing the Roman government, still focused less on the secular world - that is, their everyday lives as Romans - and more on their spiritual lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Into this situation stepped the emperor Diocletian (284-312 AD). He was born a poor Serbian boy who thought the Roman Army would be a great place to start. He rose through the ranks, and like many generals, found himself acclaimed as Imperator by his troops. Despite his humble birth and lack of formal education, he identified the Roman empire's political, military, and economic ills, and he took bold steps to address them. The first casualty was the Principate itself. The ruler of the world's largest empire could no longer even pretend to be like Bubbacus or Jethra in their sixth-story apartment. Diocletian was the first Roman emperor to discard entirely the pretense that Rome was still a republic. He insisted on being addressed as dominus et deus - "God and Master." He insisted upon being treated accordingly, complete with a new Imperial ritual largely borrowed from the East. Three centuries earlier, Augustus used to welcome common Romans to his humble home on the Palatine dressed in clothes made by his wife Livia. But those were different times. The "God and Master" Diocletian required visitors to crawl into his palace and prostrate themselves before they were allowed to kiss the hem of his gown. No part of Rome's government escaped Diocletian's attention, and his every word was an unbreakable law. If you disobeyed Diocletian, or even thought of disobeying him, or one of his numerous spies thought that you might someday think of someday disobeying him... you were in big trouble. Diocletian's reforms of the government were as totalitarian as it could be, well earning his age the name of "the Dominate."

Diocletian's most important administrative reform was the "Tetrarchy," which divided power between two senior emperors (Augusti), and two assistant emperors (Caesars) for a grand total of four. One Augustus ruled the Western half of the Empire and one Augustus ruled the Eastern half; each Augustus was assisted by a Caesar, who was also his adopted son and designated successor. Each of the four emperors had his own capital and his own court, close to the hot spots on the Roman frontier, which excluded (significantly) Rome herself.  The plan was that the Augusti would retire at the same time, and each would be replaced by his Caesar. The two new Augusti would each adopt a new Caesar. The Tetrarchy would keep rolling along. That was the plan. The Tetrarchy was a well-meaning attempt to divide the responsiblity of ruling the Empire and ensure the smooth succession of qualified emperors. As long as Diocletian himself was one of the Augusti, it worked well. But the plan was far too complicated to survive his retirement in 304 AD. The Tetrarchy's only lasting effect was foreshadowing the ultimate division of the Roman world into Eastern and Western empires.

Finally, Diocletian was concerned that economy could support his system of government. He first tried to reform currency, which did not work. His next move was to fix wages and prices on pain of death, which also failed. He finally wound up taxing the masses in labor, in money, and by taking their possessions. Landowners and tradesmen were obliged to stay in their livelihoods so they could not escape their share of the tax burden. In that regard, at least, Diocletian was an equal opportunity tyrant. The elaborate economic rules and regulations was overseen by a bloated and expensive bureaucracy, locking the government into a vicious circle - and marking the first step of Western society into feudalism.  The bureaucracy also became responsible for governing the "dioceses," each of which was made up of several provinces. Instead of letting the major cities of the region run the surrounding countryside, everyone was responsible to the diocesan "vicar" appointed by Diocletian. Needless to say this vicar put his "God and Master's" best interests first regardless of what it meant for the people. The layers upon layers of bureaucracy added nothing to the tax revenues and even less to the security of the Empire. Perhaps Diocletian slept better at night knowing that no single one of this faceless army of stylus pushers would ever get big enough to take him down. Centuries later, a Russian named Joseph Stalin would adopt the same iron fisted - but futile - tactics in building up and defending the Soviet Union.

In sum, Diocletian's invention of the Dominate ensured the Roman Empire another two centuries of security. But Rome's temporary internal and external stability came at a painful cost. For rich and poor alike, personal initiative was now pointless, only adding to the residual malaise, or sense of despair, from the Crisis of the Third Century. The once-vibrant cities of the Empire were now ghost towns by comparison. The fields which once teemed with citizen soldiers were now worked by beaten-down peasants who were basically serfs. Everything was controlled by a huge, soulless, all-powerful bureaucracy answerable only to someone with the job title "God and Master." Everybody knew that the Roman Empire was being squeezed to death internally, but nobody dared say anything about it for fear of Diocletian's spies. Better, perhaps, the evil that Romans knew than the prospect of being overrun by barbarians from the north or the east or the south. But were secure frontiers and a functioning economy really worth the creation of a police state?