Diocletian Divides the Empire

Emerging from fifty years of near-collapse, Diocletian concluded the empire had simply grown too large for one man to defend and split its administration between east and west, each with its own emperor. He doubled the army, expanded the bureaucracy, fixed prices by decree to stop inflation — and the price edict failed, because goods vanished from the market. The reforms bought Rome another two centuries at the cost of a heavier, more rigid state. The line he drew across the empire is roughly the line that still separates Catholic from Orthodox Europe.