While Diocletian was thus persecuting the Christians, he was also struggling with almost superhuman energy to hold together the crumbling elements of the Roman empire, assailed at every point by the barbarians. Nations die slowly: their groans are deep, their convulsions awful. For several centuries, Rome was writhing in death’s agonies.
In the twenty-first year of his reign, and the fifty-ninth of his age, Diocletian, enfeebled by sickness, and exhausted by the cares of empire, resolved to abdicate his throne. At the same time, he compelled Maximian to abdicate at Milan. It was his design to re-organize the Roman empire into two kingdoms, instead of four. This was the origin of the division of the Roman world into the Eastern and Western empires. The morning sun rose upon the Oriental realms of Galerius: its evening rays fell upon the Occidental kingdom of Constantius.
The ceremony of abdicating the empire of the world by Diocletian was very imposing. About three miles from the city of Nicomedia there is a spacious plain, which was selected for the pageant. Upon a lofty throne, Diocletian, pale and emaciate, announced to the immense multitude assembled his resignation of the diadem. Then, laying aside his imperial robes, he entered a closed chariot, and repaired to a rural retreat which he had selected at Salona, on the Grecian shore of the Adriatic Sea. It was the 1st of May, A.D. 305.
Accustomed for many years to luxury, he surrounded himselfin a magnificent castle with the highest appliances of wealth and grandeur. With the eye of an artist he had selected the spot. From the portico there was a view of wondrous beauty. The wide panorama spread out before him an enchanting landscape of the cloud-capped mountains of Greece, with towering Olympus, the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the green, luxuriant, and Eden-like islands of the Adriatic.
Ten acres were covered by the splendid palace he had here constructed. It was built of freestone, and flanked by sixteen towers. The principal entrance was appropriately named “the Golden Gate.” Gorgeous temples were reared in honor of the pagan gods, whom Diocletian ostentatiously adored. The surrounding grounds were embellished in the highest style of landscape-gardening. The saloons and banqueting-halls were filled with exquisite paintings and statuary.
But even here, in the most lovely retreat which nature and art could create, man’s doom of sorrow pursued the emperor. The keenest of domestic griefs pierced his heart, darkening the splendors of his saloons, and blighting the flowers of his arbors and parterres.
Bitterly had Diocletian persecuted the Christians. He had made every effort to infuse new vigor into pagan worship. Was this his earthly punishment? We know not: we simply know that for long years he wandered woe-stricken, consumed by remorse, through those magnificent saloons, into which one ray of joy never penetrated. The dread future was before him. Pagan as he assumed to be, he had no faith in paganism: he upheld the institution simply as a means of overawing the populace.
There is a marked difference between Christianity and all forms of idolatry. The intellectual men of olden time—Cicero, Plato, Aristotle—despised the popular religion: they regarded it merely as an instrument to intimidate the ignorant masses.
But, with Christianity, the ablest men, the profoundest thinkers, are its most earnest advocates. The presidents ofour colleges, the most prominent men at the bar, the most distinguished of our statesmen, our ablest scientific men, our most heroic generals, are men who revere Christianity; who seek its guidance through life, and its support in death.
The death of Diocletian is shrouded in mystery. Some say he was poisoned. Some affirm, that, tortured by remorse, he committed suicide. We simply know that he died with no beam of hope illuminating the gloom of his dying-bed. He passed away to the judgment-seat of Christ, there to answer for persecuting Christ’s disciples with cruelty never surpassed.