60 A RECENT VISIT TO THE DALMATIAN COAST. 
will not be out of place to dwell a little upon the life, the work, 
and influence of that great man at whose bidding this palace arose. 
‘As the reign of Diocletian was more illustrious than that of 
any of his predecessors, so was his birth more abject and obscure.” 
His parents had been slaves in the house of Annulinus, a Roman 
senator, and obtaining the freedom of his family his father had 
acquired the humble office of scribe. Conscious of his own 
superior merit, and as fully imbued with the certainty of his future 
greatness as was the young Napoleon fifteen centuries later, he 
threw himself into the profession of arms. Rising rapidly in 
military command he was promoted to the government of Meesia 
and the honours of consulship ; he distinguished himself in the 
Persian war, and at Chalcedon. After the mysterious death of the 
Emperor Numerian, the choice of the army fell upon him as 
successor and avenger. This was in the year of our era 284. 
Scarcely had he attained to the purple before he commenced the 
completion of that great change for which the time was ripe, by 
which the chief magistrate of the commonwealth was transformed 
into the sovereign of the empire. His life was one of ceaseless 
activity in the field and in the cabinet, and having crushed the 
remaining power of the Senate he soon left it a mere ‘‘ venerable 
but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline hill” 
(Gibbon, chap. xili.). Surrounding himself with all the pomp and 
majesty of an Oriental despot, he commenced that constructive 
portion of his policy which stamps him as a great ruler, and which 
delayed for many years the dissolution of that Empire which was 
still mistress of the world. 
Convinced that the abilities of no single man were adequate to 
the public defence, he associated with himself three others to share 
in the government. The Empire was divided between these four 
rulers, but the various parts were still to some extent federated 
The work of rescuing the Empire from the inroads of barbarians 
occupied Diocletian and his colleagues for twenty years, and it was 
after vanquishing all his enemies and after the complete fulfilment 
of all his ambitious designs that, deeming his work accomplished, 
he “cast away both the form and substance of power,” and retired 
