Editing Diocletian (section)

===Administrative===
In keeping with his move from an ideology of republicanism to one of autocracy, Diocletian's council of advisers, his {{lang|la|consilium}}, differed from those of earlier emperors. He destroyed the Augustan illusion of imperial government as a cooperative affair among emperor, army, and senate.{{sfn|Southern|2001|pp=162–163}} In its place he established an effectively autocratic structure, a shift later epitomized in the institution's name: it would be called a {{lang|la|[[consistorium]]}}, not a council.{{sfnm|1a1=CAH|1pp=171–172|2a1=Southern|2y=2001|2pp=162–163|3a1=Williams|3y=1985|3p=110}}{{refn|The term {{lang|la|consistorium}} was already in use for the room where council meetings took place.{{sfn|CAH|p=172, citing the ''[[Codex Justinianus]]'' 9.47.12}}|group="Note"}} Diocletian regulated his court by distinguishing separate departments ({{lang|la|scrinia}}) for different tasks.{{sfnm|1a1=Southern|1y=2001|1pp=162–63|2a1=Williams|2y=1985|2p=110}} From this structure came the offices of different {{lang|la|magistri}}, like the {{lang|la|[[magister officiorum]]}} ("Master of Offices"), and associated secretariats. These were men suited to dealing with petitions, requests, correspondence, legal affairs, and foreign embassies. Within his court Diocletian maintained a permanent body of legal advisers, men with significant influence on his re-ordering of juridical affairs. There were also two finance ministers, dealing with the separate bodies of the public treasury and the private domains of the emperor, and the praetorian prefect, the most significant person of the whole. Diocletian's reduction of the Praetorian Guards to the level of a simple city garrison for Rome lessened the military powers of the prefect&nbsp;– although a prefect like Asclepiodotus was still a trained general&nbsp;– but the office retained much civil authority. The prefect kept a staff of hundreds and managed affairs in all segments of government: in taxation, administration, jurisprudence, and minor military commands, the praetorian prefect was often second only to the emperor himself.{{sfn|Williams|1985|pp=107–110}}

Altogether, Diocletian greatly increased the number of bureaucrats at the government's command; Lactantius claimed that there were now more men using tax money than there were paying it.{{sfn|Lactantius|loc=7}} The historian Warren Treadgold estimates that under Diocletian the number of men in the [[civil service]] doubled from 15,000 to 30,000.{{sfn|Treadgold|1997|p=19}} The classicist [[Roger S. Bagnall]] estimates that there was one bureaucrat for every 5–10,000 people in Egypt based on 400 or 800 bureaucrats for 4&nbsp;million inhabitants.<ref>{{cite book|first=Roger S. |last=Bagnall |year=1993 |title=Egypt in Late Antiquity |location=Princeton |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=0-691-06986-7 |page=66}}</ref>{{refn|No one knows the population of the province in 300&nbsp;AD; Strabo, 300 years earlier, put it at 7.5&nbsp;million, excluding Alexandria. By comparison, the ratio in 12th-century [[Song dynasty]] China was one bureaucrat for every 15,000 people.{{sfn|CAH|p=173|loc=fn. 6}}|group="Note"}} Jones estimated 30,000 bureaucrats, which he remarks is "not an extravagant number" given the size of the empire. He breaks down the bureaucracy as less than 12,000 provincial officials, and roughly 6,000 diocesan officials. For the military, he estimates a modest 300 officials per {{lang|la|[[magister militum]]}}, and 40 per {{lang|la|[[dux]]}}, for a total of about 5,000 military officials. For the [[praetorian prefect]] and [[Praefectus urbi|urban prefect]], he estimates approximately 5,000 clerks. He comments that the expense the empire paid for these was not high, as many lower-level clerks were not paid, and the wage of higher officials was generally modest.{{sfn|Jones|1964|p=1057}} 

To avoid the possibility of local usurpations,{{sfn|Carrié|Rousselle|1999|p=678}} to facilitate a more efficient collection of taxes and supplies, and to ease the enforcement of the law, Diocletian doubled the number of [[Roman province|provinces]] from fifty to almost one hundred.<ref>As taken from the ''{{lang|la|[[Laterculus Veronensis]]}}'' or ''Verona List'', reproduced in {{harvnb|Barnes|1982|loc=chs. 12–13}} (with corrections in {{cite journal |last=Barnes |first=Timothy D.|title=Emperors, panegyrics, prefects, provinces and palaces (284–317) |journal=Journal of Roman Archaeology |volume=9 |pages=532–552, at 548–550 |year=1996 |doi=10.1017/S1047759400017037|s2cid=250350035 }}). See also: {{harvnb|Barnes|1981|p=9}}; {{harvnb|CAH|p=179}}; {{harvnb|Rees|2004|pp=24–27}}.</ref> The provinces were grouped into twelve [[Roman diocese|dioceses]], each governed by an appointed official called a {{lang|la|[[vicarius]]}}, or "deputy of the praetorian prefects".{{sfnm|1a1=Barnes|1y=1981|1p=9|2a1=Rees|2y=2004|2pp=25–26}} Some of the provincial divisions required revision, and were modified either soon after 293 or early in the fourth century.{{sfn|Barnes|1981|p=10}} Rome herself (including her environs, as defined by a {{convert|100|mi|km|adj=on}}-[[radius]] [[perimeter]] around the city itself) was not under the authority of the praetorian prefect, as she was to be administered by a city prefect of senatorial rank&nbsp;– the sole prestigious post with actual power reserved exclusively for senators, except for some governors in Italy with the titles of corrector and the proconsuls of Asia and Africa.{{sfn|Carrié|Rousselle|1999|pp=655–666}} 

The dissemination of imperial law to the provinces was facilitated by Diocletian's reform of the Empire's provincial structure, which meant that there were now more governors ({{lang|la|[[Praeses|praesides]]}}) ruling over smaller regions and smaller populations.{{sfn|Potter|2005|p=296}} Diocletian's reforms shifted the governors' main function to that of the presiding official in the lower courts:{{sfnm|1a1=Harries|1y=1999|1pp=53–54|2a1=Potter|2y=2005|2p=296}} whereas in the early Empire military and judicial functions were the function of the governor, and [[Promagistrate|procurators]] had supervised taxation, under the new system {{lang|la|vicarii}} and governors were responsible for justice and taxation, and a new class of {{lang|la|[[Dux|duces]]}} ("[[duke]]s"), acting independently of the civil service, had military command.{{sfn|Williams|1985|p=107. There were still some governors&nbsp;– like Arpagius, the 298 governor of [[Britannia Secunda]]&nbsp;– who still busied themselves with military affairs in strained circumstances}} These dukes sometimes administered two or three of the new provinces created by Diocletian, and had forces ranging from two thousand to more than twenty thousand men.{{sfnm|1a1=Barnes|1y=1981|1pp=9–10|2a1=Treadgold|2y=1997|2pp=18–20}} In addition to their roles as judges and tax collectors, governors were expected to maintain the postal service ({{lang|la|[[cursus publicus]]}}) and ensure that town councils fulfilled their duties.<ref>{{harvnb|Rees|2004|p=25}} citing {{cite book|last=Corcoran| first=Simon |year=1996 |title=The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government A.D. 284–324 |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press |pages=234–253 |isbn=978-0-19-814984-2}}</ref>

This curtailment of governors' powers as the Emperors' representatives may have lessened the political dangers of an all-too-powerful class of Imperial delegates, but it also severely limited governors' ability to oppose local landed elites, especially those of senatorial status, which, although with reduced opportunities for office holding, retained wealth, social prestige, and personal connections,<ref>{{cite book|first=Michele Renee |last=Salzman |year=2009 |title=The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-00641-6 |page=31}}</ref> particularly in relatively peaceful regions without a great military presence.<ref>{{cite book|first=Inge |last=Mennen |year=2011 |title=Power and Status in the Roman Empire, AD 193–284 |location=Leiden |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-20359-4 |page=77}}</ref> On one occasion, Diocletian had to exhort a proconsul of Africa not to fear the consequences of treading on the toes of the local magnates of senatorial rank.{{sfn|Cod. Justinianus|loc=2.13.1}} If a governor of senatorial rank himself felt these pressures, the difficulties faced by a mere [[praeses]] were likely greater.{{sfn|Carrié|Rousselle|1999|p=678}} This led to a strained relationship between the central power and local elites: sometime during 303, attempted military sedition in [[Seleucia Pieria]] and [[Antioch]] prompted Diocletian to extract bloody retribution on both cities by putting to death a number of their council members for failing in their duties of keeping order in their jurisdiction.<ref>{{cite book|last=Leadbetter |first=Bill |year=2009 |title=Galerius and the Will of Diocletian |location=Oxford |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-40488-4 |postscript=;}} {{cite book|last=Veyne |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Veyne |title=L'Empire Gréco-Romain |year=2005 |location=Paris |publisher=Seuil |isbn=2-02-057798-4 |at=p. 64 fn. 208}}</ref>