ABSTRACT
The third century opened and closed with the emergence of strong, vigorous Emperors victorious in civil war, each of whom survived long enough to consolidate his power and reorganise the state. Septimius Severus defeated his last rival and embarked on sole rule in 197. Diocletian’s turn came nearly a hundred years after Severus in 284. Both made determined efforts to secure the succession, each in his own way, and not entirely successfully in the longer term. Both developed an autocratic style of government, and both relied upon a fabricated divinity and sacrosanctity of the Imperial household to bolster up their absolutist regimes. Both strengthened the frontiers and built or rebuilt fortifications. Finally, both reorganised the army in accordance with their own immediate needs and those of the state. Constantine took the work of his predecessors to its conclusion, creating a sacrosanct, absolutist, dynastic regime, but the changes that he crystallised had already begun under Diocletian.
