DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 71
- harge of an increasing number of state industries. Whether
the State killed private business by so much paternal inter- ference, or whether the State interfered because private business was dying already, is a problem that our sources do not suffice to solve. The chief flaw in Diocletian's "system," as it has been called, was that he subdivided functions too much, and especially that he divided the imperial office Defectso f itself between two Augusti and two Caesars, the the Diode- latter of whom were to succeed the former when their terms of ten years expired. But here again he perhaps did the best that could be done and was forced to accept an inevitable tendency of the Empire to split into two parts, the East and the West, if not to go to pieces entirely. Ap- parently a ruler with all the attributes and trappings and sanctity of the imperial office was now needed simultane- ously in East and West to control the situation. During a period of nearly two hundred years after Diocletian's sys- tem first went into effect, there were less than thirty years when there was not more than one emperor. But the elabo- rate officialdom introduced by Diocletian was very expen- sive to maintain. Heavy taxation was necessary to support two Augusti and two Caesars, each with a splendid court and a large army, the four praetorian prefects, the vicarii or heads of the ten or a dozen dioceses into which the Empire was divided, and the hundred-odd consular es and prcesides, who, under the superintendence of the prefects and vicars, ruled the smaller provinces which formed subdivisions of the dioceses, and all of whom drew large salaries and kept numerous clerks and assistants. All this made a burden almost too much for the diminished population of the Empire to bear. Constantine, who became the sole emperor for a time in the first half of the fourth century, took two very impor- tant steps. He rebuilt and fortified the city of The epoch- Byzantium, situated where Europe and Asia re i gn of meet at the entrance to the Black Sea, and hence- Constantine forth named Constantinople in his honor, and he made it
