Chapter 25
1. 1,041 years after the foundation of the City, the army chose Diocletian
as the 33rd emperor and he held power for twenty years. Immediately he obtained full
power, he killed Numerian’s killer, Aper, with his own hand. Then, through great effort
in a most difficult war, he overcame Carinus who was living a disgraceful life in
Dalmatia where Carus had left him as Caesar.
243
...
13. Meanwhile,
Diocletian in the east and
Maximian Herculius in the
west ordered that churches be destroyed and Christians be attacked and
killed in the ninth persecution after that of Nero. This
persecution lasted
longer and was more brutal than almost all the previous ones. For ten
years there was no end to the burning of churches, the proscription of
the innocent, and the slaughter of martyrs.
260 14.
An earthquake in Syria
followed in which many thousands of men in Tyre and Sidon were killed by
falling buildings.261 In the second year of the persecution, Diocletian forced
Maximian against his will jointly to lay aside the purple and their power,
leaving younger men in charge of the state while they retired into private
life. And so on the same day, Diocletian laid down his imperial power and
its trappings at
Nicomedia,
while Maximian did the same at
Milan.
262
... Chapter 26
1. 1,061 years after the foundation of the City, Constantine became the 34th
man to steer the ship of state, taking its rudder from his father and holding on to it for thirty-one prosperous years.
266
Footnotes
243 Orosius’s chronology is four years awry. Diocletian was proclaimed emperor by his army
at Nicomedia on 20 November 1037 AUC/AD 284. He ruled until AD 305. Orosius’s account of his rise
is drawn from Eutropius, 9.19–9.20.1, and Jerome, Chronicle, A Abr. 2301
(who erroneously places his accession in 1040 AUC/AD 287).
260 For a discussion of this persecution, see Williams (1985) ch. 14 and MacMullen (1969) ch. 1.
261 The persecution and earthquake are drawn from Jerome, Chronicle, A Abr. 2320. This
persecution began in AD 303 and lasted until Constantine’s edict of Milan in AD 313.
262 The two abdicated on 1 May AD 305. Orosius’s account is a much-abbreviated version
of Eutropius, 9.27.1–2.
266 Orosius’s chronology is two years awry. Constantine became emperor in 1059 AUC/AD306.
