A tyrant doesn’t voluntarily devolve there power or retire and refuse to come back even after multiple people beg them to.

Sure they do, if they think they’ve lost their ability to control events. No tyrant wants to be controlled by the whims of petty politics or public sentiment.

If you’re looking for a tyrant in that era I’d look to the golden boy Constantine. He was the one who seemed more motivated by his own self agrandizement then the well being of the empire.

Don’t worry, I hate Constantine plenty.

The tetrarchy didn’t work in the long run but the third century had proven the idea of having one legitimate emperor just leads to civil wars. He overshot it and it turned out the natural state would end up being two emperors but he couldn’t know that, and for someone traumatized by countless invasions from every direction all at once during the third century it seems like a pretty sound idea.

Problem: four Emperors led to civil wars, and two Emperors also led to civil wars.

The problem was never “one legitimate Emperor”.

The price controls also are dumb in hindsight but for a society with no concept of inflation and it’s workings it seems like a great idea to help out the people.

It was recognized even at the time by the educated that it was a dumb move. Diocletian passed it because he, like the less flashy barracks Emperors of the 3rd century, had no understanding of economics beyond the point of a sword.

The reforms of the legions and the frontier strategy were sort of necessary at that point and were a large reason the empire maintained some sense of territorial integrity over the next two centuries.

I would have to strongly disagree. The reforms of the legions resulted in a severely degraded military apparatus, and I would argue that this was intentional, as part of Diocletian’s broader attempt to neuter all power outside of the centralized bureaucracy that he and his co-emperors directly controlled. When the largest independent units are cut down to a fifth of their previous size and logistics are rerouted through centralized depots, the commanders of those units are no longer in a position to challenge any higher authority - in theory.

Unfortunately, this comes across several problems in practice, including reduced efficacy of the units themselves, the low level of coordination possible by even experienced officers under this system, the inefficiencies of a centralized distribution system across an empire where transportation is still one of the greatest costs of goods (much less the importance of circumstantial resources), and the fact that challengers to higher authority still arose, only now out of the members of the imperial families given power over these units instead of the professional officer corps.

The Empire retained any sort of territorial integrity over the next century not because of these reforms, but largely in spite of them - the frontier defence strategy did not considerably reduce barbarian incursions into Roman territory (though it did incur regular and severe losses upon the frontier garrisons and provinces), and the degradation of the field armies worsened until only the ‘Palatini’ grade troops upheld the prior standards - even in the tumultuous Crisis of the Third Century - of prior Roman soldiery. And all this at an increased cost to the national government, a reduced reaction speed to incursions, the destruction of the system of veteran colonization, and a severe manpower shortage as military service lost all appeal to even brutalized subsistence farmers - requiring, then, the additional cost, economic and social, of regular forcible conscriptions.

But it did do what it was meant to - it prevented power from passing outside of the imperial families by military force all the way until Valentinian III. Who, at that point, was ruling over only a husk of the Empire’s institutions, military included.

“Wherever will I get my CCP disinformation now”

But hey, don’t worry, Rednote has you covered - you can indulge in all your conservative-approved social media under the paternalistic gaze of the PRC

That’s it, I support the Quebecois now! They’ll understand the value of a good guillotine, at least

Bread made feeding people cheap.

Bread is a luxury, if feeding people cheap was the only concern, porridge would be a better use of grains than bread. Porridge predominated when peasant culture predominated; bread becomes common with civilization’s connections, innovations, and specialization.

I refuse to have anything to do with having a m*narch on my money 😤

I’m fine with being a province, but it’s republic or bust

Mixture of places. Some on other social media sites like Facebook or R*ddit, some on Google or Bing.

Unfortunately, I don’t even make the memes I post (usually)! I just spread other people’s hard work

Found the heretic

Give me a loaf of bread, and I will eat it and be happy. End of story.

Condiments are nice conditionally, but bread is always fantastic

Explanation: There was something of an ideological divide in expat/immigrant Italians fighting in the US Civil War - many of those fighting for the Union were veterans of the forces of the great liberal revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi - and many fighting for the Confederacy were veterans of the Bourbon monarchy of Two Sicilies which Garibaldi played a part in defeating. LET’S GO SONS OF GARIBALDI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Americans_in_the_Civil_War

Tetrarchy? Yeah, no. You can do better.

“Hmm, are you saying we need MORE Emperors? I like the cut of this man’s jib!”

Here’s a nice compromise position - Canada becomes a republic; in exchange, the West Coast and the East Coast down to Maryland (or Virginia) join as unincorporated territories or whatever the Canuck equivalent is.

please save us from Y’All Qaeda

Ha ha, the REAL answer is that ‘feudalism’ is, itself, a very contentious term! How broadly or narrowly it can be applied causes serious fights amongst academics specializing in the periods of history where it’s applicable! Ask two historians whether ‘feudalism’ is real or not if you want to see a brawl - ask three if ‘feudalism’ can be applied to late Medieval Japan if you want to see a war.

The answer in context of the meme, I would say, is an acknowledgement that the Late Roman Empire (‘Dominate’) under Diocletian did lack some elements commonly associated with feudalism (semi-sovereign vassal overlords with independent power bases, for example), but was an early form of the development of later, more indisputably feudal systems (with the establishment of the degraded legal status of coloni being precedent and precursor for serfdom, for example).

Still works for me, looks like!

Global warming and proxy wars around the world will kill millions of people, so it’s less that I “don’t give a shit about you” and more “I see larger dangers on the horizon”

Ah yes, the GOP, the well-known champions of reducing emissions and proxy wars.

Explanation: Diocletian was the last Emperor to come to power during the tumultuous Crisis of the Third Century. The constant invasions and civil wars of the Third Century AD had severely damaged the Roman Empire’s integrity, and what remained was little more than a military dictatorship with some republican trappings. It was far from absurd to look at it and think that it needed reforms - however, Diocletian’s reforms were in entirely the wrong direction. He bound common people to the land and to the professions of their parents, creating, at one stroke, serfdom and a caste system; he changed the (at least nominally, at that time) volunteer legions into a force that was conscripted - for lifelong terms; he bloated the imperial bureaucracy to an insane degree, split the Empire between four co-rulers of absolute autocratic power, and demanded that he be worshipped as a living god (offensive to Roman and republican norms); he instituted the biggest and most brutal of the persecutions of the Christians - and while I’m no friend of Christianity, senseless religious persecution is not moral nor practical.

This is but a fraction of Diocletian’s tyranny. He eventually retired to farm cabbages. No joke.

[dropkicks a man through a fourth-story window]

“I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”

I have adblocker solely set up to block Youtube ads.

They broke the implicit contract of “Don’t make ads too intrusive and I won’t go out of my way to block your revenue”. THEY DREW FIRST BLOOD

The Sacred Band of Thebes, on the other hand 😳

DEMOCRACY AND HOLSUM HOMOSEXUALITY LET’S GO THEEEEEEBES

I’d love to give up modding the community entirely. Not because it’s a huge burden, but because I already mod too many communities as-is.

The Taliban was highly unpopular in 2001,

Fuck’s sake, the Northern Alliance was hard-pressed in 2001.