Diocletian argued that forbidding Christians from the bureaucracy and military would be sufficient to appease the gods, but Galerius pushed for extermination.

According to Lactantius, Diocletian and Galerius entered into an argument over imperial policy towards Christians while wintering at Nicomedia in 302.

Rhetorically Eusebius records the Oracle as saying " The just on Earth ..." These impious, Diocletian was informed by members of the court, could only refer to the Christians of the Empire.

Galerius convinced Diocletian that the culprits were Christians, conspirators who had plotted with the eunuchs of the palace.

* 303 – Diocletian, Roman Emperor, publishes his edict that begins the persecution of Christians in his portion of the Empire.

The Emperor Diocletian is said to have made Florentia the seat of a bishopric around the beginning of the 4th century AD, but this seems improbable as Diocletian was a notable persecutor of Christians.

The point of the work is to describe the deaths of the persecutors of Christians: Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, and the contemporaries of Lactantius himself, Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Maximinus.

After the abdication of Diocletian in 305, and the accession in Rome of Maxentius to the throne of the Caesars in October of the following year, the Christians of the capital again enjoyed comparative peace.

* Emperor Diocletian begins passing laws against Christians and a policy of religious oppression in Antioch.

* Great Persecution: Emperor Diocletian launches the last major persecution of Christians in the Empire.

St Caius may not have been martyred: Diocletian ’ s persecution of Christians began in 303 AD, after Caius ’ alleged death, and Diocletian was not immediately hostile to Christianity upon becoming emperor.

Marcellinus ’ pontificate began at a time when Diocletian was Roman Emperor, but had not yet started to persecute the Christians.

After two fires in Diocletian ’ s palace he took harder measures against Christians: they had either to apostatize or they were sentenced to death.

Instituted by Diocletian, it was avidly pursued by Galerius who noticed that Constantius was well disposed towards the Christians, and saw it as a method of advancing his career prospects with the aging Diocletian.

Coptic years are counted from 284, the year Diocletian became Roman Emperor, whose reign was marked by tortures and mass executions of Christians, especially in Egypt.

He died as a martyr during the persecution of Christians by co-ruling Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian in 303.

He invented a new system of numbering years to replace the Diocletian years that had been used in an old Easter table because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians.

Dionysius copied the last decennovenal cycle of the Cyrillian table ending with Diocletian 247, and then added a new 95-year table with numbered Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi ( Years of our Lord Jesus Christ ) because, as he explained to Petronius, he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians.

It had its roots in the social pressures among the long-established Christian community of Roman North Africa ( present-day Tunisia and Algeria ), during the persecutions of Christians under Diocletian.

Legend has it that a thousand Christians were martyred in Lichfield around 300 CE, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and that the name ' Lichfield ' actually means ' field of the dead ' ( see Lich ).

In modern histories the destruction of the palace of Diocletian at Nicomedia has been described as a " fourth-century Reichstag fire " used to justify an extensive persecution of the Christians.

According to Lactantius, " That /> Galerius might urge /> Diocletian to excess of cruelty in persecution, he employed private emissaries to set the palace on fire ; and some part of it having been burnt, the blame was laid on the Christians as public enemies ; and the very appellation of Christian grew odious on account of that fire.

The table counted the years starting from the presumed birth of Christ, rather than the accession of the emperor Diocletian on 20 November 284, or as stated by Dionysius: " sed magis elegimus ab incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi annorum tempora praenotare ..." It is assumed Dionysius Exiguus intended either 1 AD or 1 BC to be the year of Christ's birth ( a " year zero " does not exist in this calendar ).

Ar., lxiv, and De Syn., xviii ), St Athanasius does not recall from memory being a first hand witness to the onset of the great persecution by the Tetrarchy of Diocletian and Maximian in February 303, for in referring to the events of this period he makes no direct appeal to his own personal recollections, but falls back on tradition.

Art dating from the Diocletian period ( 286 – 305 AD ) in Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily depicts women in garments resembling bikinis in mosaics on the floor.

Dalmatia was the birthplace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who, upon retirement from Emperor in AD 305, built a large palace near Salona, out of which the city of Split later developed.

After the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, with the beginning of the Migration Period, Julius Nepos shortly ruled his diminished domain from the Diocletian palace after his 476 flight from Italy.

Diocletian (; c. 22 December 244 – 3 December 311 ), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305.

Diocletian exacted an oath of allegiance from the defeated army and departed for Italy.

Diocletian dated his reign from his elevation by the army, not the date of his ratification by the Senate, following the practice established by Carus, who had declared the Senate's ratification a useless formality.

There may have been a revolt in the eastern provinces at this time, because Diocletian brought settlers from Asia to populate emptied farmlands in Thrace.

The following spring, as Maximian prepared a fleet for an expedition against Carausius, Diocletian returned from the East to meet Maximian.

Diocletian invaded Germania through Raetia while Maximian progressed from Mainz.

Some time after his return, and before 293, Diocletian transferred command of the war against Carausius from Maximian to Flavius Constantius.

Diocletian spent the spring of 293 traveling with Galerius from Sirmium ( Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia ) to Byzantium ( Istanbul, Turkey ).

Diocletian left Africa quickly after the treaty, moving from Upper Egypt in September 298 to Syria in February 299.

On 1 May 305, Diocletian called an assembly of his generals, traditional companion troops, and representatives from distant legions.

Their homes were distant from political life, but Diocletian and Maximian were close enough to remain in regular contact with each other.

The historian Warren Treadgold estimates that under Diocletian the number of men in the civil service doubled from 15, 000 to 30, 000.

To avoid the possibility of local usurpations, to facilitate a more efficient collection of taxes and supplies, and to ease the enforcement of the law, Diocletian doubled the number of provinces from fifty to almost one hundred.

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.

Under the governance of the jurists Gregorius, Aurelius Arcadius Charisius, and Hermogenianus, the imperial government began issuing official books of precedent, collecting and listing all the rescripts that had been issued from the reign of Hadrian ( r. 117 – 38 ) to the reign of Diocletian.

In the edict, Diocletian declared that the current pricing crisis resulted from the unchecked greed of merchants, and had resulted in turmoil for the mass of common citizens.

* Diocletian from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Eusebius references to the encampment of the Legio X Fretensis at Aila ( in southern Israel, near modern Aqaba and Eilat ); the X Fretensis was probably transferred from Jerusalem to Aila under Diocletian.