Diocletian

Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus was born around AD 244 in Dalmatia, probably to a humble family, and rose through the army. He was proclaimed emperor by the troops in AD 284, after half a century in which few emperors had lasted more than a few years. He ended that pattern. To share the burden he made Maximian his co-emperor, and in AD 293 he added two junior colleagues, creating the system known as the Tetrarchy, the rule of four.

He reorganized the provinces, the army and the taxes. He issued the Edict on Maximum Prices in AD 301 to fight inflation, and in AD 303 he began the last and harshest persecution of Christians. On 1 May AD 305 he abdicated at Nicomedia, and Maximian stepped down the same day in the West. Diocletian withdrew to his palace on the Adriatic, a vast fortified residence whose walls still enclose the old town of Split. The cabbage story comes from a late Roman summary of imperial lives: around AD 308, when Maximian and Galerius pressed him to take power again, he answered with his vegetables. He died there a few years later.