860
Reviews of Books
biography that Bennett has written: students and the
wider audience will consult it with profit.
BRIAN W. JONES
University of Queensland
SIMON CORCORAN. The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial
Pronouncements and Government A.D. 284-324. (Oxford Classical Monographs.) New York: Clarendon
Press of Oxford University Press. 1996. Pp. xiv, 406.
$85.00.
Between 284 and 324, the Roman Empire experimented with rule by multiple emperors. The two most
important were Diocletian, who initially appointed the
co-emperors who joined him in a tetrarchy, a "Gang of
Four," and Constantine, who finally eliminated his
rivals and emerged again at the head of a single ruling
dynasty. Presumably one of the objectives of this
multiplication of emperors was to overcome the tendency toward regionalism and usurpation that had
appeared during the political and military chaos of the
mid-third century. Simon Corcoran's book now provides a fine study of the style and effectiveness of
imperial rule during the reigns of Diocletian, Constantine, and their colleagues. His primary sources of
information are the hundreds of imperial pronouncements subsequently collected in the Theodosian Code
and the Justinian Code, in particular Diocletian's rescripts, or responses to petitions from private citizens,
and Constantine's letters, or responses to requests
from cities or imperial magistrates. In a series of
painstakingly meticulous chapters and appendixes,
Corcoran carefully analyzes the nature of some earlier
but now-lost Codes, studies the characteristics of private rescripts and the emperors' use of earlier laws,
evaluates the possibility of identifying the secretaries
who drafted the rescripts, examines the status and
origins of the petitioners and the role of the provincial
governors, considers the impact of emperors at public
hearings, assesses the powers of the junior emperors,
and, finally, catalogues the letters and edicts in chronological order.
Even though Corcoran's excellent book will be of
most interest to historians interested in the period or
the legal texts, it also offers more general insights into
the nature of imperial rule. Contemporaries had immediately acknowledged the impact of both Diocletian
and Constantine. The rhetorician Lactantius may have
vilified Diocletian for his persecutions of Christians,
but he nevertheless credited the emperor as an innovator who enlarged the army, expanded the central
administration, and meticulously exacted revenues and
taxes. The bishop and historian Eusebius praised Constantine for converting to Christianity and then promoting the influence of the church throughout the
Mediterranean world and beyond. The fundamental
oddity of these evaluations, however, is the reality that
so many factors conspired against the imposition of
central directives. The Roman Empire was huge, communication was slow, and local aristocrats, imperial
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
magistrates, and even the secretaries at court might
prefer to promote their own agendas. Corcoran admits
that the machinery of government did not, could not,
live up to the ambitions and intentions of its emperors.
Diocletian in particular sometimes had grandiose ambitions. His notorious Prices Edict, issued in late 301,
was seemingly an attempt to cure inflation by putting a
ceiling on prices for goods and services, and its length
and scope (not to mention its survival) have earned it
a reputation as one notable attempt to impose a
general directive. Corcoran's discussion now cuts this
edict down to size. Rather than representing sound
economic policy, it was, like other rescripts, most likely
an ad hoc response to petitions, this time from soldiers. It also seems to have been a reaction to a
particular instance of profiteering at Antioch that was
a direct result of the presence of the imperial court and
the troops: "the emperor is in effect carrying a miniinflation with him wherever he goes" (p. 219). And,
despite Diocletian's rhetoric of universalism in the
preamble, the edict had a negligible impact, certainly
in the western provinces, where it was not promulgated, but also in the eastern provinces, where one
provincial governor simply replaced Diocletian's preamble with his own. Diocletian's directives for a
general persecution of Christians were also largely
ineffective, hindered by provincial governors and ignored even by junior emperors.
Emperors could hence show their authority both
through decisions about individual cases and through
gaudy announcements, but they could not necessarily
enforce it: "The government ... overreached itself' (p.
233). Since there was clearly a gap between intentions
and outcomes, Corcoran's study raises the question of
whether modern historians can or should attribute
general "policies" to various emperors or describe
them as innovators and reformers. Rather than imposing policies, most emperors seem to have been struggling just to keep up. Diocletian's "reforms" in particular were largely concessions to the chaotic events of
the mid-third century; his solution to political anarchy,
the appearance of multiple illegitimate emperors, was
the tetrarchy, the sanctioning of multiple legitimate
emperors. Constantine's patronage for Christianity
was likewise an acknowledgment of its already increasing prominence, not the initial impetus. Multiple emperors were no more effective than single emperors:
"the tetrarchic governments, having extended the
scope of their ambitions, could not remedy the limitations that thwarted them" (p. 297). When issuing his
Prices Edict, Diocletian had been reduced to indignant
sputtering about "raging greed" and "unrestrained
lust"; toward the end of the fourth century, the
Emperor Valens was so annoyed at his prefect's inability to enforce an edict that he punched him.
RAYMOND VAN DAM
University of Michigan
JUNE
1998