Dr. David Gwynn

The problem, of course, is if you delegate authority, you're setting up a potential rival and it so easily leads to civil war.

And if there is one thing Diocletian is brilliant at, it is choosing who can he delegate to, who will work with him and create a structure that functions.

And the problem, of course, is you need them to be loyal, but at the same time capable of intelligent, independent judgment.

And it is a marker of all the most successful leaders in history that they had the ability to identify the right subordinate.

So Augustus, the first Roman emperor, does it with Agrippa, a brilliant soldier who doesn't actually want power for himself.

They're not easy to find, but Augustus found one.

Diocletian...

looked back to his own origins.

He's not going to look for an ally in the old traditional Roman aristocracy, which he of course doesn't come from.

He needs a soldier because this is still a military crisis.

He needs someone who can work with him and who hopefully will also recognize that Diocletian is the senior partner.

He looks back to the Balkans.

And interestingly, his basic criteria seemed to be he doesn't want relatives, he's not interested in creating some kind of dynastic setup, but he does want Balkan-born soldiers.

So the first thing he did was share power.

create, sometimes that's called the diarchy.

It's a sharing of power with one other individual.

His name is Maximian.

He's another Balkan soldier.

Obviously, a lot of our sources come from the imperial propaganda machine and so insist these people are so close such friends.

In reality, they are going to work together remarkably well for the next 20 years.