I know for Aurelian’s reign there is the troublesome Historia Augusta, but for Diocletian’s reign I’m having trouble finding sources. Any help would be much appreciated.
EDIT: Meant 305 A.D. / C.E.
I recently listened through the history of rome podcast, and during the episodes on the diocletian administrative reforms I got the seed for a new approach to vassal management, and while micro intensive to set up, once put in place it runs incredibly well.
during the crisis of the third century it had become aparent that governors holding both judicial, fiscal and military command of a province provided a system so independent and internally functional during uprisings that the administration of the provinces were split into a military branch and a civil branch, making it more difficult to divert the funding for the armies from peacekeeping to rebellion.
in ck2 terms the approach became this: designate superregions with a nexus of technological spread. for me this became dioclea for the balkans, provence for france, Venice for italy Barcelona for spain, wales for england etc. these I designated as prince bishoprics, and ensured all money generating baronies (bishoprics and cities) were vassals under that regional prince-bishop. while all feudal baronies were given to a OPM titular king on a useless county next to my crownlands (Kallipolis to begin with)
the result, as a catholic greek basileus. my superdukes, governing massive regions are pisspoor, can easily be bribed and their levy count is held back due to the lack of baronies. instead the princebishops around my realm are heavily taxed, and with free investiture they pay me enormous ammounts (between 400-800 depending on prosperity of regions)
since they have so many vassal bishops they get huge ammounts of piety, and as such you can kill of the pope and cycle popes from your vassal princebishoprics. as they inherit the gold they stack up, you can ask of a generous donation from each new pope, upwards to 10-15k per donation. since he only controls the duchy of latium, he is no danger in terms of power, and can easily be killed. the result? I can get my hands of nearly 100% of the money comming out from baronies in my realm. what I don't get from my regular taxation I get from the pope once he ascends the papacy. sure the prince bishops don't always have good taxation laws, but what does it matter? it impoverishes the feudals, and I get huge ammounts of money that I can use to build hospitals, universities etc. the prince bishops also get enormous ammounts of technology points, that they use to upgrade their duchy almost as well as my own, and from these hotspots of technological improvem
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Also, who made up the Senate during this time? (Elites? Imperial Family?)
The building is still standing today, yet I can't fit any notion of what happened to his remains. There seem to be several Saints' relics in the tombs now. But what did become of one of the most influential people in Western history?
