ABSTRACT
On 1 March 293, the emperor Diocletian raised Galerius to the status of Caesar. Galerius had become a member of a college of rulers — four men, two Augusti and two Caesars, who between them ruled the Roman world. This college, the Tetrarchy as it has become known, seems at first glance to be a peculiar response to a series of stimuli. It has, in the past, invited suspicion from scholars. Otto Seeck, for one, could not conceive of this arrangement as a conscious creation and preferred instead to argue that it was a series of ad hoc responses and characterized by disunity and mistrust. Others, puzzled by the contradictions of collegial power in a monarchic empire, have followed him. 1 Partnerships of mutually suspicious men seem more credible and do have precedents in Roman history. They tend, however, not to be good precedents. They are either ephemeral, like that of Pupienus and Balbinus, or fratricidal, like the “Second” Triumvirate, or the brief joint rule of Caracalla and Geta.
