The Legacy of Diocletian

Diocletian's last months were spent in agony, unable to insure the safety of his wife and daughter. His replacement candidates for the tatrarchy threw the balance of power so out of wax that civil war came all but inevitable. It would be easy to blame all this on galarius, and a lot of it does appear to have been galarius fault. But diocletian’s inability to have more foresight when it came to picking the men who would succeed him is a great, big black mark on his record. And he is easily one of the two or three best emperors of all time.