The Reforms Of Diocletian

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Diocletian’s Reforms

The Roman empire regained order and stability through its powerful emperor Diocletian. He made a set of reforms to stabilize the empire. He knew that if he did not do so, the empire would eventually fall.
One of the first notable things Diocletian decided to do to stabilize the empire was to establish a capital. He said,”Wherever I am, that’s where the capital is.” The capital was in no specific place. However he did spend most of his time fighting for his empire against the Germans along the Northern border.
The next set of reforms involved the military. First, he took each legion and divided them in half. This created double the amount of legions, but they were significantly smaller. When he drafted soldiers to fight, he did not draft a certain number of men but rather a number of legions. He never increased the men per legion. This then led to the military becoming more mobile. Since the Roman army moved too slow, Diocletian wanted to mount them on horses. This created a light calvary and enabled them to move on and off the battlefield more of a swift fashion.
His next set of reforms included the establishment of the Oriental Monarchy. This meant that their was a psychological distance between him and his subjects. This created a huge bureaucracy and his subjects had to wait weeks just to see him. He overwhelmed his subjects by wearing a huge gold crown and cape that took nearly 12 men to carry behind him.
He then set up economic reforms. These played a huge part in Diocletian’s attempt to reconstruct the empire. He invented a coinage system and put a value to each coin. It is similar to the system we have today. ( for quarters equal one dollar. So on and so forth.) However, some problems developed from his economic system. Their were not enough metals to go around, which made it impossible to create more coins, and eventually led to gold being worth much more ...