Dr. David Gwynn

And in the context of ancient medieval history, that is a phenomenal military to have as a standing professional army.

You only have to compare it to, say, the kingdoms of a thousand years later to realise this is a different scale.

Nothing overshadows Diocletian's reputation like the Great Persecution.

It's why he misses out on so many of the canons of great emperors.

And yet there's two key things here.

One is the great persecution makes sense within Diocletian's overall vision.

In other words, it can't just be separated off.

It's not some odd aberration and yes, everything else he does is sensible.

For Diocletian, it all made sense.

The second is indeed, it's a direct response to what's already been happening.

So Christianity, of course, originating back in the time of Augustus, back with the birth of Christ,

Christianity has been growing across the 280 years since, faster than any other religious movement the Romans or Greeks had ever met, but nonetheless, by Diocletian's accession in 284, there were perhaps 6 million Christians.

That's in an empire of 60 million.

To 10%, roughly.

Exactly.

So roughly 10%.

We've got no accurate figures.

But the fact that we've got no big churches that have been found, we can roughly reconstruct where there were bishops, where the church hierarchy was beginning to emerge.

That's what the rough numbers suggest.

So it's the single biggest religious minority bloc in the empire, but it is a very distinct minority.