13 APRIL 1985, Page 28

Villain into hero

Peter Levi

Diocletian and the Roman Recovery Stephen Williams (Batsford £17.50)

Nothing changes as rapidly as the past, and the longer ago it is, the more it changes. Prehistoric dates mysteriously al- ter by many thousands of years. The 19th century is relatively stable, the 17th is less so, and the Romans refuse to stay in place for even a few decades. As one grows older, the comforting aspect of this con- tinual shift is that what was whispered in coffee shops and argued among wild-eyed graduate students in one's younger days becomes the orthodox view later in one's life. Presumably, if one grows older still, the orthodoxy will become embattled and a new generation of wild-eyed graduate stu- dents will be muttering about something else, in coffee shops one is too old to frequent. People have yet to come round to my own view that far from the Dark Ages being called Late Roman Empire, the Romans ought to be called the Early Dark Ages.

Stephen Williams is not a professional Roman historian, but he is certainly an expert, and his view of Diocletian is original and convincing. I do remember clever young historians voicing similar views 30 years ago, but this bold book is the first biography of Diocletian in Eng- lish. We think of him in terms of the embracing porphyry Tetrarchs at the cor- ner of the Doge's Palace in Venice, and the extraordinary splendours of the palace at Split. I own to a personal interest: because Diocletian gets such a bad press as an anti-Christian, when I was ten I undertook a play in blank verse in a mathematics exercise book, called 'Death to Diocle- tian', in which I think the Christian martyrs overthrew the Roman army. It tailed off, I fear, towards the end of the first act. The truth about Diocletian is that under him the Empire recovered from catas- trophic decline, and without him there might have been no Byzantine continuity, and no Greek or Russian Orthodox Christ- ianity. He reorganised the army, dealt severely and directly with economic prob- lems, and put administration on a solid basis. Inflation was rampant, and it was nourished by imperial spending. The palace at Split must have cost a few pence, let alone the army. Diocletian dealt with inflation by decree, and a rigid and dictator- ial edict on prices and wages, and a new tax system. Has this a familiar sound? If! live to see Oxford put up a porphyry statue of Mrs Thatcher, I will think the better of my university.

But one should take a more realistic tone about this extremely serious and well- informed biography. I am very fond of the Edict of Prices, which goes into details about goat meat and olives and roses, but it is only one fragment of the masterplan. Diocletian was colossally active. Stephen Williams has thought hard about the ancient world. He is not innocent about archaeology, and he has had help fiorn Professors Robert Browning, Fergus Mil- lar and Tony Honore and from the archaeologists at Split. Otherwise, I do not see how one man could well encompass all these mighty themes. I found his treatment of law and of religion particularly interest- ing. His penultimate chapter on 'Constan- tine's Completion' is a classic piece of historical analysis, lucid and compelling to read, forthright in its views and to my mind perfectly convincing.

Diocletian's general war on Christianity makes an alarming story and has coloured most of the accounts of Diocletian that we have. Modern writers have attempted to take the heat off him by blaming Galerius, junior Tetrarch, with the argument based on a hint in Lactantius that Diocletian was secretly frightened of him. In that world, everyone had secret fears, but Stephen Williams rightly resists this motive, which simply does not fit with Diocletian's for- midable power. He was not cowed by Galerius, but finally persuaded. Like Sta- lin, he had proclaimed that catastrophe was over and peace and prosperity lay ahead.

The apocalyptic views of Christians were insupportable to him. Diocletian's persecu- tion was ferocious, but it failed. By 306, the storm had begun to blow itself out. 'It . . . . marked the point at which the initiative in this struggle passed to the Christians. The mood of State and society was altering. It ranged from the weariness of torturers who no longer had enthusiasm for their work; the growing feeling of magistrates that enough was enough, that the effect was becoming disproportionate to the goal; pity for the Christians and awe for their God who put such courage in them; to simple disgust that Roman citizens who were neither criminals nor barbarians should be treated in this way.' That sounds a fair statement of the case, and it makes sense. We had to wait for Christianity to lose its grip on our intellec- tual life for justice to be done to such a figure as Diocletian, though neo-paganism sometimes goes too far in transforming villains into heroes. Still, the great recov- ery was pagan not Christian and Roman not Constantinian. Stephen Williams is an equitable and a balanced historian and I think one can rely on him.

He ought perhaps to have payed more attention to Sainte Croix, because class struggle really is an important element in third- and fourth-century history. He does make solid use of MacMullen on The Roman Government's Response to Crisis (1976) and the work of T. D. Barnes (1982), but a book as full as this one must have been many years in gestation, so possibly Sainte Croix appeared too late in the process. My other quibbles are that wish his appendix on the Edict of Prices gave the whole thing, not just a selection, and I wish some of his well-known plates were less foggy. Diocletian's retirement was an act of imprudence, his death was lonely, and I wish we knew more about it,

but the details of such stories are unreli- able, and we cannot blame Stephen Wil- liams for that. The Emperor's mausoleum is nearly intact; it survives as the church of St Duje at Split. It still has its black Egyptian lions, its frieze of animals and gods, and its 'rather weathered portraits of Diocletian and Prisca'. We could have done with some photographs of that. Final- ly, how very odd it is that the most remarkably preserved example of Diocle- tian's new fortifications, though this one was probably built by Carausius; should be Porchester Castle. There is a strangeness

and freshness about page after page of this book, and I hope someone gives Stephen Williams a medal. He sent me back with new appetite to Evelyn Waugh's Helena.